Glenn Hughes - Böcker

Inherent Human Dignity explores the philosophical and existential foundations of what it means to be human.Inherent Human Dignity is a philosophical meditation and defense of the value of being human. Glenn Hughes explores the existential foundations of these concepts in this structured and accessible study about the experience of being human.Hughes locates human dignity within the philosophical, political, and historical horizons of human culture. Guided by Eric Voegelin and Bernard Lonergan, literary and artistic examples, key moments of our modern era, and his own scholarship on the religions of the world, Hughes unfolds and accounts for human dignity's place in our world. He additionally utilizes key moments of our modern era to frame our understanding of human dignity, paying close attention to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that was created by the United Nations following World War II. Ultimately, Hughes's meditation is concerned both with exploring the maximally differentiated set of insights into the meaning of being human and with articulating why the discovery of the inherent equal dignity of every person—without exception—is a profound and unique achievement.

Inherent Human Dignity explores the philosophical and existential foundations of what it means to be human.Inherent Human Dignity is a philosophical meditation and defense of the value of being human. Glenn Hughes explores the existential foundations of these concepts in this structured and accessible study about the experience of being human.Hughes locates human dignity within the philosophical, political, and historical horizons of human culture. Guided by Eric Voegelin and Bernard Lonergan, literary and artistic examples, key moments of our modern era, and his own scholarship on the religions of the world, Hughes unfolds and accounts for human dignity's place in our world. He additionally utilizes key moments of our modern era to frame our understanding of human dignity, paying close attention to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights that was created by the United Nations following World War II. Ultimately, Hughes's meditation is concerned both with exploring the maximally differentiated set of insights into the meaning of being human and with articulating why the discovery of the inherent equal dignity of every person—without exception—is a profound and unique achievement.

Transcendence and History is an analysis of what philosopher Eric Voegelin described as 'the decisive problem of philosophy': the dilemma of the discovery of transcendent meaning and the impact of this discovery on human self-understanding. The explicit recognition and symbolization of transcendent meaning originally occurred in a few advanced civilizations worldwide during the first millennium. The world's major religious and wisdom traditions are built upon the recognition of transcendent meaning, and our own cultural and linguistic heritage has long since absorbed the postcosmological division of reality into the two dimensions of 'transcendence' and 'immanence.' But the last three centuries in the West have seen a growing resistance to the idea of transcendent meaning; contemporary and 'postmodern' interpretations of the human situation - both popular and intellectual - indicate a widespread eclipse of confidence in the truth of transcendence.In Transcendence and History, Glenn Hughes contributes to the understanding of transcendent meaning and the problems associated with it and assists in the philosophical recovery of the legitimacy of the notion of transcendence. Depending primarily on the treatments of transcendence found in the writings of twentieth-century philosophers Eric Voegelin and Bernard Lonergan, Hughes explores the historical discovery of transcendent meaning and then examines what it indicates about the structure of history. Hughes's main focus, however, is on clarifying the problem of transcendence in relation to historical existence. Addressing both layreaders and scholars, Hughes applies the insights and analyses of Voegelin and Lonergan to considerable advantage.Transcendence and History will be of particular value to those who have grappled with the notion of transcendence in the study of philosophy, comparative religion, political theory, history, philosophical anthropology, and art or poetry. By examining transcendent meaning as the key factor in the search for ultimate meaning from ancient societies to the present, the book demonstrates how 'the decisive problem of philosophy' both illuminates and presents a vital challenge to contemporary intellectual discourse.

Glenn Hughes examines the ways in which six literary modernists - Emily Dickinson, Marcel Proust, T. S. Eliot, Ezra Pound, Samuel Beckett, and Bob Dylan - have explored the human relationship to a transcendent mystery of meaning. Hughes argues that visions of transcendence are, perhaps surprisingly, a significant feature in modernist literature, and that these authors' works account for many of the options for interpreting what transcendent reality might be.This work is unique in its extended focus, in a comparative study spanning a century, on the persistence and centrality in modernist literature of the struggle to understand and articulate the dependence of human meaning on the mystery of transcendent meaning. Hughes shows us that each of these authors is a mystic in his or her way, and that none are tempted by the modern inclination to suppose that meaning originates with human beings. Together, they address one of the most difficult and important challenges of modern literature: how to be a mystic in modernity.

Eric Voegelin (1901–1985) was one of the most original philosophers of our time, working throughout his life to account for the endemic political violence of the twentieth century, in an effort variously referred to as a philosophy of politics, history, or consciousness. Drawing from the University of Missouri Press’s thirty-four-volume edition of his collected works, Charles Embry and Glenn Hughes have assembled a selection of Voegelin’s representative writings, satisfying the need for a single volume that can serve as a general introduction to his philosophy. The selection demonstrates the range and creativity of Voegelin’s thought, including writings that show his thinking as it developed historically in his long search for order in human society.The Eric Voegelin Reader will be welcomed by students of political philosophy, political science, philosophy of history, theology, and other fields, including those who are unfamiliar with Voegelin’s difficult, but exciting and stimulating, thought. The editors have provided a short introduction and situate each selection in the context of Voegelin’s overall work.

Edited by veteran Czech diplomat and senior religion scholar Glenn Hughes, The Presence of the Past presents new insights from a conference hosted by the Václav Havel Program for Human Rights and Diplomacy at Florida International University, in cooperation with the Czech non-profit organization Post Bellum and the Vaclav Havel Library. Its fundamental topic is memory, the human capacity to retain its contents in the flux of time, which is explored and discussed both theoretically and in terms of current action-oriented public discourse.The distinguished group of philosophers, theologians, political scientists, historians, journalists, and political activists who contributed to this volume share their perspectives on pressing issues in the modern world, at the nexus of politics and philosophy. This book’s most central goal is to bring together those who are used to operating in the realm of ideas, in the so-called “ivory tower,” and those who work on the ground—sharp observers of human matters, trained to study them from different perspectives and exposed in their daily lives to the practical problems connected with our capacities of memory, individual or collective. The aim of this dialogue and communication is to open a path to a new beginning. A postscript tries to demonstrate that such an encounter is truly possible; that it can even be productive, and make a good deal of sense.

This volume brings together critical review papers, many specially commissioned, on key themes and questions in the work of the political scientist, philosopher and religious thinker Eric Voegelin (1901-1985). Areas covered include: (1) Political science: 'Political Religions': manifestations in Nazi Germany and in contemporary European and North American nationalism; (2) International relations: the 'Cold War' in critical perspective; (3) Philosophy: Plato and Aristotle in the reading of Eric Voegelin: contemporary assessments; (4) Sociology: Correspondence of Voegelin and Alfred Sch++tz; (5) New Testament studies and Christology: questions and developments for Voegelin's interpretations; (6) Old Testament studies: questions and developments from Voegelin's Israel and Revelation; (7) Historical sociology: Revelation and order in axial-age societies; (8) Philosophy of history: Voegelin and Toynbee in contrast; (9) Literary studies: Voegelin in contrast with contemporary literary theory; critical readings of Milton, Greek tragedy.