Böcker av Predrag Cicovacki

"Kant and Hartmann share a belief that is less common than it once was: that the aim of morality is to guide us toward becoming the best version of ourselves. Morality is not the same as prudence, nor is it a utilitarian calculus about what actions lead to our advantage. Yes, we do need to see what is in front of us, and handle what demands our immediate attention, in accordance with the rules endorsed by our societies. We also need to secure our existence as well as the material flourishing of ourselves and those who depend on us. But focusing exclusively on such issues deflects our consciousness from the high road of morality. [...] These essays explore ideas relating to the suffocating and hope-crushing atmosphere of negativity and disorientation in the contemporary world. The message of this collection is that, if we dare to open our eyes and our hearts, we can find that there is much in ourselves and the world that deserves our reverence and our loving gaze. It is not too late to recall that besides the natural and the social worlds, there is yet another order of being: the spiritual. And without a connection with this spiritual order, we cannot experience our humanity at its best."

Nalin Ranasinghe undertakes the monumentally brash assignment of accusing man and then offering his defense, precisely as Homer does of Odysseus in the Iliad. Odysseus is portrayed as a human being deserving of both. For this reason and Homer's perceptive descriptions, Ranasinghe claims Homer's epic is the cornerstone of Western civilization. The central insights herein compel Ranasinghe to admit the necessity of heeding its lessons today, of minding its characters and seeing them in action off the page and in our own world. Predrag Cicovacki in his indispensable preface to the book, elucidates: "In Ranasinghe's view, Odysseus is both the first recognizable human being and a model of curious and concupiscent human rationality that constantly strives toward the virtues of self-knowledge and moderation. Homer leads us to believe that the cosmos leans toward virtue, although its fundamental truths may be inherently unspeakable. This is the line of thought that Ranasinghe believes was further developed by Socrates, Plato, and Jesus, while being obscured by Aristotle, Augustine, and their followers. Homer's later epic and his central insights are, according to Ranasinghe, the most fertile soil on which a humane civilization can grow and flourish." Yet Ranasinghe ultimately says it best. "Homer must be read as the wisest Greeks did, not for fantastic tales of the Olympians but because his myths reveal eternal constants of the human state: the soul's ruling passions and the possibility of knowing and educating these false gods. Wrestled with thus the Iliad becomes a cautionary tale, not one urging literal reading or mindless mimesis. It may always be that for the few who grasp Homer, many more will obey his gods or imitate his antiheroes; but the Odyssey hints that while its poet sees this potential for misuse, he is willing to take a noble risk and hope that eros can listen to and educate thumos. This faith is implicit in his tale of Achilles and the Trojan War. It is vital today that we see how the West's end resembles its angry origins, as depicted in the Iliad. This is why Homer is said to be as fresh as the morning newspaper. His wisdom may outlive our literacy."

This book examines Leo Tolstoy's struggle to understand the relationship of God and man, in connection with his attempt to answer questions regarding the meaning of life.

This collection of 15 essays on various aspects of the problem of evil brings together the opinions of well known authors from various disciplines [philosophy, theology, literary criticism, political science, etc].This collection brings together a variety of responses to the ancient questions of whether we are -- individually and collectively -- destined for evil. The history of the previous century brought this question into the open morepoignantly than perhaps any other before it. Not surprisingly, then, what you will find here is a wide spectrum of opinions concerning the mystery of evil formulated throughout the twentieth century and at the very threshold of the twenty-first, which has inherited all of its open wounds and nightmarish memories. The pieces included here come from diverse fields: philosophy, religious studies, psychology, history, political science, and art; they also assume a variety of forms: essays, treatises, stories, correspondence, and interviews. The reader should not expect that the pieces collected here offer proven recipes of how to eliminate evil from the world: rather, they present a compelling testimony of human struggles with an aspect of our lives we cannot afford to ignore. Contributors: Sharon Anderson-Gold, Hannah Arendt, Gil Bailie, Daniel Berrigan, Albert Camus, John P. Collins, Thomas Del Prete, Albert Einstein, Emil Fackenheim, Sigmund Freud, Philip Paul Hallie, Carl Gustav Jung, Michael Lerner, John Montaldo, Susan Neiman, Jeffrey Burton Russell, Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, Tzvetan Todorov, Leo Tolstoy, Michael True, Nicholas Wolterstorff Predrag Cicovacki is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the College of the Holy Cross, Worcester, Massachusetts, where he served as director of Peace and Conflict Studies and editor-in-chief of Diotima: A Philosophical Review. His publications include Anamorphosis: Kant on Knowledge and Ignorance (1997), Between Truth and Illusion: Kant at the Crossroads of Modernity (2002), Essays by Lewis White Beck: Fifty Years as a Philosopher (1998), and Kant's Legacy: Essays in Honor of Lewis White Beck (2001).

Dostoevsky's philosophy of life is unfolded in this searching analysis of his five greatest works: Notes from the Underground, Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, The Possessed, and The Brothers Karamazov

Mahatma K. Gandhi's dedication to finding a path of liberation from an epidemic of violence has been well documented before. The central issue and the novelty of this book is its focus on what Gandhi wanted to liberate us for. The book also provides an assessment of how viable his positive vision of humanity is.

Contemporary philosophy has reasserted the belief that philosophy has practical tasks

The central questions of this text are "what is truth?" and "why do we value truth so highly?" Predrag Cicovacki approaches them not as isolated questions but as being closely related to what Kant considered to be the ultimate philosophical concern - what is means to be a human being.