A manual for Mindful Focusing—a new integration of Western psychology and Buddhist mindfulness techniques for accessing your inherent wisdom and solving life’s problems Ever come up against one of those moments when life requires a response—and you feel clueless? We all have. But there’s good news: you have all the wisdom you need to respond to any situation, even the “impossible” ones. It’s a matter of tuning in to your felt sense: that subtle physical sensation that lives somewhere between your (...) conscious and subconscious mind and that can be accessed through Focusing—the well-known method developed by the psychologist Eugene Gendlin. David Rome’s technique of Mindful Focusing unites Gendlin’s method with Buddhist mindfulness practices to provide a wonderfully effective method for accessing your felt sense—so you can problem solve, deal with challenges, and respond honestly and creatively to the world around you. (shrink)

Foreword: Synchronicity is more than a happy accident by Brian Tart -- The quest -- Cycles of history and the law of one -- What is synchronicity? -- Understanding the sociopath -- The global adversary -- Karma is real -- Reincarnation -- Mapping out the afterlife -- The hero and his story -- The first and second acts of the hero -- Facing your fear and completing the quest -- Joan of arc rises again -- The 2,160-year cycle between (...) class='Hi'>rome and the usa -- Vietnam, watergate and the fall of the iron curtain -- The sky is not falling-only our blindfolds -- September 11th-from both sides of the veil -- The thirteen years' war repeats in america -- 9/11 and the defeat of the cabal-the cycle perspective -- History gets a wicked case of deja vu -- Fomenko's cycles of history-and the Book of Daniel -- Explaining the cycles and the fourth-density shift. (shrink)

All too often, historians of the ‘Galileo Affair’ fail to recognize the dynamic – indeed, tumultuous – nature of the political landscape surrounding Galileo’s condemnation and the events leading to it. This was a landscape rent by the Thirty Years War, which dominated the affairs of Europe’s rulers, including Galileo’s patrons. In fact, Galileo’s publication of the Dialogo in 1632 could not have come at a more ill-advised moment: in the aftermath of the battle of Breitenfeld, the nadir of Catholicism (...) in Germany. Blame for this calamitous defeat fell on Galileo’s most important protector, Pope Urban VIII. Thus, when Galileo’s book appeared, Galileo became a useful example by which Urban could consolidate his severely weakened position. The Pope carefully crafted the public image of an unusual trial, at the expense of his old friend. Certainly, Galileo’s trial resulted from profound intellectual and political tensions that pervaded early modern Rome, but it must also be understood in light of the European exigencies of the moment. (shrink)

This book is about love in the classical world -- not erotic passion but the love that binds together intimate members of a family and close friends, but may also include a wider range of individuals for whom we care deeply. Among the topics discussed are friendship, loyalty, gratitude, grief, and civic solidarity.

Summary This article argues for the usefulness of recent scholarship on democratic decay (especially in the disciplines of political science and constitutional law) for explaining the breakdown of Rome’s res publica during the 50s BCE, with a particular focus on Steven Levitsky and Daniel Ziblatt’s “How Democracies Die” (2018). Using “democracy” in the neo-republican sense of government free from domination, Levitsky and Ziblatt show how the actions and reactions of political actors can damage a political system without any intention (...) to overthrow it. This article combines their insights with concepts from Christian Meier’s “Res Publica Amissa” (2nd edition 1980) to analyse Caesar’s first consulship in 59 BCE. After explaining how the theory can responsibly be applied, it closely examines the major events of the year, especially the contest over the agrarian law. Caesar’s actions throughout the year demonstrate Levitsky and Ziblatt’s warning signs for a potential authoritarian, as do those of the opposition. This analysis helps us more clearly understand just how the events of “the consulship of Julius and Caesar” (Suet. Iul. 20.2) contributed to Rome’s democratic decay in succeeding years. The article connects to much recent work on late-republican political institutions. It also helps make this dramatic period of Roman history comprehensible to political scientists by analysing it in their own theoretical terms. (shrink)

In this book, David Konstan argues that the modern concept of interpersonal forgiveness, in the full sense of the term, did not exist in ancient Greece and Rome. Even more startlingly, it is not fully present in the Hebrew Bible, nor in the New Testament or in the early Jewish and Christian commentaries on the Holy Scriptures. It would still be centuries - many centuries - before the idea of interpersonal forgiveness, with its accompanying ideas of apology, remorse, (...) and a change of heart on the part of the wrongdoer, would emerge. For all its vast importance today in religion, law, politics and psychotherapy, interpersonal forgiveness is a creation of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, when the Christian concept of divine forgiveness was fully secularized. Forgiveness was God's province and it took a revolution in thought to bring it to earth and make it a human trait. (shrink)

Fields of enquiry. Rome Harré on What is social science -- Toby Miller on Cultural studies -- Lawrence Sherman on Criminology -- Jonathan Haidt on Moral psychology -- Robert J. Shiller on Behavioural economics -- Births, deaths and human population. Sarah Franklin on the Sociology of reproductive technology -- Ann Oakley on Women's experience of childbirth -- Sarah Harper on the Population challenge for the 21st century -- Steven Pinker on Violence and human nature -- Social science through different (...) lenses. Gregory Clark on Names -- Robin Dunbar on Dunbar numbers -- David Goldblatt on the Sociology of football -- Trevor Marchand on Craft -- Bruce Hood on the Supernatural -- Doreen Massey on Space -- Politics and social science. Craig Calhoun on Protest movements -- Danny Dorling on Inequality -- Kate Pickett on the Case for equality. (shrink)

In the mid fourth century b.c. some Roman gentes drew on a Pythagorean tradition. In this tradition, Numa's role of Pythagoras’ disciple connected Rome with Greek elites and culture. The Marcii, between 304 and 300 b.c., used Numa's figure, recently reshaped by the Aemilii and the Pinarii for their propaganda, to promote the need for a plebeian pontificate. After the approval of the Ogulnium plebiscite, the needs for this kind of propaganda fell away. When Marcius Censorinus became censor, Numa's (...) pontificate was no longer relevant for promoting the gens. For this reason, the Marcii used another genealogy for similar propagandistic effect: the figure of Marsyas, a symbol of plebeian ideals. (shrink)

In this collection of provocative essays, historians and literary theorists assess the influence of Michel Foucault, particularly his History of Sexuality, on the study of classics. Foucault's famous work presents a bold theory of sexuality for both ancient and modern times, and yet until now it has remained under-explored and insufficiently analyzed. By bringing together the historical knowledge, philological skills, and theoretical perspectives of a wide range of scholars, this collection enables the reader to explore Foucault's model of Greek culture (...) and see how well his interpretation accounts for the full range of evidence from Greece and Rome. Not only do the essays bring to light the assumptions, ideas, and practices that constituted the intimate lives of men and women in the ancient Mediterranean world, but they also demonstrate the importance of the History of Sexuality for fields as diverse as Greco-Roman antiquity, women's history, cultural studies, philosophy, and modern sexuality. The essays include "Situating The History of Sexuality" (the editors), "Taking the Sex Out of Sexuality: Foucault's Failed History" (Joel Black), "Incipit Philosophia" (Alain Vizier), "The Subject in Antiquity after Foucault" (Page duBois), "This Myth Which Is Not One: Construction of Discourse in Plato's Symposium" (Jeffrey S. Carnes), "Foucault's History of Sexuality: A Useful Theory for Women?" (Amy Richlin), "Catullan Consciousness, the 'Care of the Self,' and the Force of the Negative in History" (Paul Allen Miller), "Reversals of Platonic Love in Petronius' Satyricon" (Daniel B. McGlathery), and an essay from Dislocating Masculinity (Lin Foxhall). (shrink)

In _The Later Middle Ages,_ the third volume of his monumental _History of Political Ideas,_ Eric Voegelin continues his exploration of one of the most crucial periods in the history of political thought. Illuminating the great figures of the high Middle Ages, Voegelin traces the historical momentum of our modern world in the core evocative symbols that constituted medieval civilization. These symbols revolved around the enduring aspiration for the _sacrum imperium,_ the one order capable of embracing the transcendent and immanent, (...) the ecclesiastical and political, the divine and human. The story of the later Middle Ages is that of the "civilizational schism"—the movement in which not only the reality but the aspiration for the _sacrum imperium_ gradually disappeared and the unification of faith and reason dissolved. His recognition of this civilizational schism provides Voegelin with a unique perspective on medieval society. William of Ockham, Dante, Giles of Rome, and Marsilius of Padua all emerge in Voegelin's study as predecessors to modern thought; each turns to personal authority and intellectual analysis in an attempt to comprehend the loss of the _sacrum imperium_ as an authoritative ideal. Voegelin is further drawn into investigations that, despite insufficient attention by scholars, still bear relevance to the study of the later Middle Ages. The mysticism apparent in _Piers Plowman_ and the apocalyptic revolt of Cola di Rienzo are merely two reactions to the disintegration of wholeness. Yet the story of the later Middle Ages does not merely revolve around disintegration. Voegelin recognizes the emergence of the constitutional political tradition as the most positive development of this period. He is at his best when explaining the difference between the presence of a representative institution and the growth of communal consciousness. Voegelin's study of the English political pattern is matched only by his unique perspective on the German imperial zone, culminating in a fitting conclusion on Nicholas of Cusa—the one political thinker with the ability to evoke the unity of mankind beyond fragmentation. _The Later Middle Ages_ is at once a brilliant examination of the symbols that characterized medieval society and a remarkable predecessor to Voegelin's study of the modern world, beginning with the Renaissance and the Reformation. (shrink)

This study uses university commentaries on Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics as a window onto changing ideals and practices of education and of humanist Aristotelianism in Renaissance Italy, particularly in Florence, Padua, Bologna, and Rome (including the Collegio Romano).