A Phenomenological Reading of Hosea 12.4-5 and 11.1-2: Commune with Us explores two passages from the Hebrew Bible’s prophetic book containing puzzling plurals in the original language, pieces so enigmatic they are usually changed entirely in translation. Andrew Oberg, however, considers them delightfully confusing, and through in-depth examinations builds a “patchwork” version for each. These reconstructions are then brought to bear on four separate interpretative interactions per pairing, based on alternative pre-comprehensions that the author investigates using phenomenological methods to trace, describe, and wonder on the resulting responses. Finally, Oberg widens the focus of study and presents an approach to engaging with scripture, of whatever faith and lineage, that applies the lessons taken into a technique that could be used by any reader towards a deeper “interrogation” of their literary heritage. Oberg finds that the treasures we have received from tradition still – yet, always – have volumes and volumes to speak.
Jump behind Hosea's eyes to rediscover re-reading today.
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The Christ is Dead, Long Live the Christ: A Philotheologic Prayer, a Hermeneutics of Healing
The Christ is Dead, Long Live the Christ: A Philotheologic Prayer, a Hermeneutics of Healing is a call for renewal and reinvention. Following a brief examination of the historical Jesus (Yeshua, using his actual Aramaic/Hebrew name), the book moves into a phenomenological study of the image, idea, and the place of both in our felt experiences. Looking closer at what we think were the actual words of this wandering sage, the picture we arrive at is one that will surprise, possibly unsettle. Moved out of our traditional comfort zones, we find the need to question what we have been told were Yeshua’s teachings, compelling us to further re-think messages on the afterlife, human finitude, so-called atonement theologies, and above all the “kingdom of God.” Whatever this vision was – and might yet be – it seems central to Yeshua’s efforts, and so we finally weigh these “kingdom” facets against a broader ideascape, offering suggestions for how a Yeshuan “kingdom” project situated within the panoply of a widely comprehended Judaic way-of-being might yield fresh life to we who find worth in the utterances and what they point towards, to we who wonder about a more human(e) world.
Re-situate yourself in history today.
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Blurred: Selves Made and Selves Making
The question of the self, of what the self is (or even if there is a self), has been one that has grown alongside humanity – has haunted humanity – throughout our history. Blurred: Selves Made and Selves Making guides the reader down these dark corridors, shining light on the specters of theories past and unveiling a new self-view to hover afresh, beckoning to roadways beyond.
In this remarkably interdisciplinary study, philosophy of mind joins with contemporary neuroscience and cutting-edge psychology to lay bare the how of identity formation, judgment, and behavior generation. Drawing on thinkers from both the Continental and Analytic traditions, consciousness is explored and a uniquely realist self concept presented that, if adopted, offers a life lived otherwise.
Begin to live otherwise today.
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Father Forgive Us, for We Know Not What We Do is a first-person account of a series of lucid thoughts, a quilted inner delving. In some ways Descartes redux, in others Holden Caulfield, it is observational and analytic, a work of “philosophy” – but only to a sort. Entirely non-academic and written for a popular audience, the book promotes the reader’s thought and engagement, challenging every preconception and assumption. Supporting this is a methodology which is loosely aphoristic: sometimes carrying a thought over several paragraphs, sometimes only a line or two. It is a work to be explored and re-explored, and its short sections and frequent divisions will keep the reader blissfully turning pages.
Presenting a philosophical soliloquy, the inquiries into life, art, culture, human nature, thinking and language, and finally technology and machines, form the sections of the book and explore what it is to be human today. Its deliberations don’t attempt any final answers (because how could there ever be any), but profound and unsettling questions are raised time and again. Father Forgive Us, for We Know Not What We Do will evoke, entertain, enlighten, and above all encourage. Each of us is a work in progress.
Continue the work today.
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Kazenoko Takebayashi is slowly coming undone. She has just left her husband, uprooted her two young children, and hauled everyone across town to a new apartment, a new school, a new life. She can’t count on any support from her ex, even as she knows the presence of their daughters will keep him annoyingly in her life. She’ll have to discover her own way for the ends to meet and everything to click together. Yet she’s convinced that this was the right choice, and that it is – or will anyway prove to be – for the best. Will it?
Moonshadows is Kazenoko’s story told in her own words, a diary of her thoughts, feelings, perspectives, and efforts as she struggles in an unfair world and reflects on the fate laid bare at her feet. Could she have taken another path than the one she did? Would it have helped? As the pressures mount and her daily worries close in Kazenoko sinks into an emotional breakdown, becoming both sacrifice and sacrificer on life’s altar. Depression, madness, suicide, murder, all pass through her in the constant striving to find some meaning and make some sense, to attain some peace with having been born. She never asked for any of it, and there’s so little she can control; can she at least preserve herself?
Sneak a peek of her diary and find out today.
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The Essential Essay Experience - Steps Towards Academic Writing: Essays and Beyond, 2nd Edition (with Joël Joos)
Formal writing can be a daunting task, made all the more difficult by the specific structures and conventions of academia. This textbook aims to help students with the writing tasks that face them. Useful for both non-native speakers of English and native speakers, this textbook will take readers from the basics of paragraph form and transitions through to full essays, dissertations, research reports, and more. This textbook contains a number of model essays, exercises, explanations, and useful phrases, each of which builds upon the other to help guide students along the path to improved composition. If writing is a skill that must be practiced – and it is – then this textbook will provide all the coaching that is needed.
With this book you will learn about:
1) Paragraph formatting and connecting paragraphs
2) Introductions, conclusions, and the body portions
3) Critical thinking skills, planning, and organizing
5) Grammar, punctuation, bibliographies and referencing, footnotes and endnotes, and style guides
6) Shorter essays, longer essays, and common essay types
7) Theses and dissertations, research reports, data usage, and writing about statistics…and much more
Included are model writing samples, exercises, answer sections with explanations, and much more.
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Frank Tollman has just woken up in the middle of a rice paddy. Under a blazing sun. Being poked by someone he does not know and who is speaking to him in a language he has never heard. The last thing he can remember is stopping for drinks and then stumbling to catch the Tokyo Metro home after another day of grinding numbers for a multinational. Life abroad was supposed to be so much more exciting. And then suddenly, in a most unwelcome way, it was.
In the tradition of Camus, Hesse, and Huxley, Freedom’s Mask is a breathtakingly fresh philosophical novel that follows its hero-anti-hero on a quest for knowledge and for self. As Frank struggles to make sense of the world he finds himself in, he is forced to face the difficulties of meaning, the purpose of choice, consent, and the vast puzzle of being. He must not only relearn how to live, but come to terms with what it is, or what it could be, to live well. With its unflinching look at identity, self-making, and the ceaseless struggle of life alone among so many others, Freedom’s Mask is the kind of book that haunts you long after you’ve put it down. Frank’s story is our story, and his questions might be our answers. Don’t miss your chance to ask them too.
Fall in with Frank on his/our journey today.
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Tomorrow, as the Crow FliesTomorrow, as the Crow Flies is a book of ideas. Written in the style of a blog, it covers such philosophical topics as the absence of a soul, issues of personal identity and community, core values for modern life, and the nature of truth. Personal, social, and political concerns are also discussed, with a unique form of government offered for consideration in the author’s “control socialism”. Each chapter consists of the recorded lectures of a wandering thinker, a present-day Zarathustra, and is followed by the comments and narratives of one of his disciples, along with an assortment of voices from those reading the content online. It will offend, entertain, uplift, and most of all challenge readers to look at themselves and their world in an entirely different way.
Take flight to start seeing things differently today.
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Randolph's One BedroomWhen winter stretches on for half the year and people are forced to spend entirely too much time indoors, strange things are bound to happen. Randolph’s city of Sornsville, and the local coffee shop he works at, are no exceptions. But through all the irate customers and cryogenically preserved mammals, the drinks that magically disappear just when their order has come up, and the simian clerks that know far too much for their own good, Randolph somehow manages to keep an even keel. Here are twenty linked stories, or twenty episodes if you will, about Randolph and the small, frozen, and thoroughly odd part of the world he inhabits.
Join Randolph on his commonly uncommon adventures today.
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Green Skies (with artist Eric Uhlich)Rampant climate change. Unchecked and self-serving authorities. Clinging to imported traditions. Thriving but hostile indigenous tribes. Racism. Starvation. Murder. It is Western Settlement, Greenland, late fifteenth century, and the Norse colony there is plagued by all these problems and many more. Green Skies tells their tale through the eyes of a young farmer named Bjorn Thorsson, a man whose efforts to eke out a living are mirrored countless times across his community. Season after season, from midnight sun to polar night, their hardships mount until the settlement’s very survival is in question. Will the Norse be able to limp their way through another harsh winter? Or will the Inuit finally push them over the brink? Will Bjorn be able to find peace in his eerily modern medieval world? Or will he succumb to the despair that haunts his neighbors and afflicts his nation? Green Skies is a story of the struggle we all face to survive in a changing world—physically, certainly, but much more so psychologically.
Slip into a Norse top and make your way to Greenland today.
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