Predrag Cicovacki - Böcker

Albert Schweitzer's leading philosophical idea was "reverence for life": good consists in maintaining and perfecting life, evil in destroying and obstructing life. For Schweitzer, all life is sacred, and ethics deals with human attitudes and behavior toward all living beings. Unlike most other moral philosophers, Schweitzer argues that knowledge of human nature does not lead to any unique moral theory. For that reason, he bases his ethics on much broader foundations, articulated in his philosophy of civilization and philosophy of religion. His central idea is that the material element of our civilization has become far more important than its spiritual counterpart. Even organized religion has put itself in the service of politics and economics, thereby losing its vitality and moral authority. Schweitzer's ethics of reverence for life, argues Predrag Cicovacki, offers a viable alternative at a time when traditional ethical theories are found inadequate. Collecting fifteen of Schweitzer's most effective essays, this volume serves as a compelling introduction to this remarkable thinker.

This collection of eight essays by world-renowned philosophers and literary critics thoroughly examines the philosophical perspectives of Leo Tolstoy's immortal novel War and Peace. By examining the narrative structure, as well as the struggles and destinies of the central characters, the authors offer in-- depth analyses of the multilayered topics of this work. These topics range from those of war and peace, of the possibility of historical truths, and of freedom and determination, to the issues about friendship, love, living, and dying. Underlying all these discussions is the examination of Tolstoy's preoccupation with the pursuits of truth, goodness, and beauty in a world replete with deceptions, destructions, and artificiality. Taken together, the essays suggest that Tolstoy's novel leaves open the door for the possibility of objective values and judgments, as well as for the possibility of discerning some fundamental truths regarding the value and meaning of human life. The novel's accounts of complex and multifaceted interactions among facts and values, as well as of the intrusion of the extraordinary into the ordinary, challenge readers to reflect on fundamental truths in the context of such interactions and intrusionsif they can only give full attention to what is present, rather than be carried away by constant anticipations of what may come next.

This collection of eight essays by world-renowned philosophers and literary critics thoroughly examines the philosophical perspectives of Leo Tolstoy's immortal novel War and Peace. By examining the narrative structure, as well as the struggles and destinies of the central characters, the authors offer in-- depth analyses of the multilayered topics of this work. These topics range from those of war and peace, of the possibility of historical truths, and of freedom and determination, to the issues about friendship, love, living, and dying. Underlying all these discussions is the examination of Tolstoy's preoccupation with the pursuits of truth, goodness, and beauty in a world replete with deceptions, destructions, and artificiality. Taken together, the essays suggest that Tolstoy's novel leaves open the door for the possibility of objective values and judgments, as well as for the possibility of discerning some fundamental truths regarding the value and meaning of human life. The novel's accounts of complex and multifaceted interactions among facts and values, as well as of the intrusion of the extraordinary into the ordinary, challenge readers to reflect on fundamental truths in the context of such interactions and intrusionsif they can only give full attention to what is present, rather than be carried away by constant anticipations of what may come next.

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. Predrag Cicovacki deals with a fundamental issue in Dostoevsky's opus neglected by all of his commentators: How can we affirm life and preserve a healthy optimism in the face of an increasingly troublesome reality? This work displays the vital significance of Dostoevsky's philosophy for understanding the human condition in the twenty-first century.The main task of this insightful effort is to reconstruct and examine Dostoevsky's "aesthetically" motivated affirmation of life, based on cycles of transgression and restoration. If life has no meaning, as his central figures claim, it is absurd to affirm life and pointless to live. Since Dostoevsky's doubts concerning the meaning of life resonate so deeply in our own age of pessimism and relativism, the central question of this book, whether Dostoevsky can overcome the skepticism of his most brilliant creation, is innately relevant.This volume includes a thorough literary analysis of Dostoevsky's texts, yet even those who have not read all of these novels will find Cicovacki's analysis interesting and enthralling. The reader will easily extrapolate Cicovacki's own philosophical interpretation of Dostoevsky's literary heritage.

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. Predrag Cicovacki deals with a fundamental issue in Dostoevsky's opus neglected by all of his commentators: How can we affirm life and preserve a healthy optimism in the face of an increasingly troublesome reality? This work displays the vital significance of Dostoevsky's philosophy for understanding the human condition in the twenty-first century.The main task of this insightful effort is to reconstruct and examine Dostoevsky's "aesthetically" motivated affirmation of life, based on cycles of transgression and restoration. If life has no meaning, as his central figures claim, it is absurd to affirm life and pointless to live. Since Dostoevsky's doubts concerning the meaning of life resonate so deeply in our own age of pessimism and relativism, the central question of this book, whether Dostoevsky can overcome the skepticism of his most brilliant creation, is innately relevant.This volume includes a thorough literary analysis of Dostoevsky's texts, yet even those who have not read all of these novels will find Cicovacki's analysis interesting and enthralling. The reader will easily extrapolate Cicovacki's own philosophical interpretation of Dostoevsky's literary heritage.

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.Gandhi revolutionized the struggle for Indian liberation from Great Britain by convincing his countrymen that they must turn to nonviolence and that India needed to be liberated from its social ills—poverty, unemployment, opium addiction, institution of child marriage, inequality of women, and Hindu-Muslim frictions—even more than it needed political freedom.Although Gandhi's legacy has not been forgotten, it has often been distorted. He is called "Mahatma" and venerated as a saint, but not followed and often misinterpreted. Predrag Cicovacki attempts to de-mythologize Gandhi and take a closer look at his thoughts, aims, and struggles. He invites us to look at the footprints Gandhi left for us, and follow them as carefully and critically as possible. Cicovacki concludes that Gandhi's spiritual vision of humanity and the importance of adherence to truth (satyagraha)are his lasting legacy.

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.Gandhi revolutionized the struggle for Indian liberation from Great Britain by convincing his countrymen that they must turn to nonviolence and that India needed to be liberated from its social ills—poverty, unemployment, opium addiction, institution of child marriage, inequality of women, and Hindu-Muslim frictions—even more than it needed political freedom.Although Gandhi's legacy has not been forgotten, it has often been distorted. He is called "Mahatma" and venerated as a saint, but not followed and often misinterpreted. Predrag Cicovacki attempts to de-mythologize Gandhi and take a closer look at his thoughts, aims, and struggles. He invites us to look at the footprints Gandhi left for us, and follow them as carefully and critically as possible. Cicovacki concludes that Gandhi's spiritual vision of humanity and the importance of adherence to truth (satyagraha)are his lasting legacy.

In 1913, Albert Schweitzer (1875-1965) left his internationally renowned career as a theologian, philosopher, and organ player to open a hospital in the jungles of Africa. There he developed in theory and practice his ethics of reverence for life. When he published his most important philosophical work, The Philosophy of Civilization, few people were serious about treating animals with dignity and giving any consideration to environmental issues. Schweitzers urge was heard but not fully appreciated. One hundred years later, we are in a better position to do it. Predrag Cicovacki book is a call to restore Schweitzers vision. After critically and systematically discussing the most important aspects of the ethics of reverence for life, Cicovacki argues that the restoration of Schweitzer does not mean the restoration of any particular doctrine. It means summoning enough courage to reverse the deadly course of our civilization. And it also means establishing a way of life that stimulates striving toward what is the best and highest in human beings.

Structured to introduce the reader into all aspects of the philosophy of Nicolai Hartmann (1882-1950), this book aims to stimulate further interest into his thought. Once considered the most studious and systematic of all the German philosophers of the twentieth-century, this prolific author has been nearly forgotten. For many years a student and an admirer of Hartmann's work, Cicovacki argues that a closer look into Hartmann's ontologically and axiologically oriented philosophy contains a promise of a vital philosophical orientation, especially with regard to our understanding of the nature, place, and role of humanity in the larger world. "The Analysis of Wonder" - Hartmann's own definition of philosophy - is an invitation to the readers to challenge their preconceived and self-interested notions of reality in order to relearn to appreciate the always changing and conflicting world, in all of its complexity, richness, and sublimity.

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 WolterstorffPredrag 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).

"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."

This interdisciplinary collection of essays examines Leo Tolstoy’s unorthodox and provocative approach to spirituality, as presented in his numerous literary and his philosophico-religious works. The collection includes twelve contributions, especially written for this collection, and its contributors are writers, philosophers, literary critics, and experts for Russian literature. Six of the essays examine Tolstoy’s literary works, while the other six scrutinize more closely his philosophical views. The two central foci of examinations of the included essays are The Kreutzer Sonata and The Kingdom of God is within You.

Robert Holmes is one of the leading proponents of nonviolence in the United States, and his influence extends to the rest of the world. However, he has never presented his views on nonviolence in full-length book form. The Ethics of Nonviolence brings together his best essays on the topic, both classic works and more obscure pieces, as well as several important essays that have never been published. Holmes started his career by following Dewey and James, and then turned toward metaethics. The Vietnam War finally led him toward moral problems related to war and violence. For the last forty years he has been a great proponent of nonviolence and pacifism in the style of Tolstoy and Gandhi. If ethics is meant to be more than a purely academic exercise, the theoretical ethics of philosophy must be shown to be relevant to applied morality; the ongoing process of making moral judgments must add value to the world we live in. For Robert Holmes, no aspect of reality is more in need of ethical thinking and reform than the culture of war and violence that cannot be ignored. There are morally viable alternatives to this violence, Holmes argues, and he scrutinizes the sources and implications of such positions. Holmes shows that nonviolence and pacifism can lead us toward a more peaceful and humanely dignified world.

Structured to introduce the reader into all aspects of the philosophy of Nicolai Hartmann (1882-1950), this book aims to stimulate further interest into his thought. Once considered the most studious and systematic of all the German philosophers of the twentieth-century, this prolific author has been nearly forgotten. For many years a student and an admirer of Hartmann's work, Cicovacki argues that a closer look into Hartmann's ontologically and axiologically oriented philosophy contains a promise of a vital philosophical orientation, especially with regard to our understanding of the nature, place, and role of humanity in the larger world. "The Analysis of Wonder" - Hartmann's own definition of philosophy - is an invitation to the readers to challenge their preconceived and self-interested notions of reality in order to relearn to appreciate the always changing and conflicting world, in all of its complexity, richness, and sublimity.

Robert Holmes is one of the leading proponents of nonviolence in the United States, and his influence extends to the rest of the world. However, he has never presented his views on nonviolence in full-length book form. The Ethics of Nonviolence brings together his best essays on the topic, both classic works and more obscure pieces, as well as several important essays that have never been published. Holmes started his career by following Dewey and James, and then turned toward metaethics. The Vietnam War finally led him toward moral problems related to war and violence. For the last forty years he has been a great proponent of nonviolence and pacifism in the style of Tolstoy and Gandhi. If ethics is meant to be more than a purely academic exercise, the theoretical ethics of philosophy must be shown to be relevant to applied morality; the ongoing process of making moral judgments must add value to the world we live in. For Robert Holmes, no aspect of reality is more in need of ethical thinking and reform than the culture of war and violence that cannot be ignored. There are morally viable alternatives to this violence, Holmes argues, and he scrutinizes the sources and implications of such positions. Holmes shows that nonviolence and pacifism can lead us toward a more peaceful and humanely dignified world.

In 1913, Albert Schweitzer (1875-1965) left his internationally renowned career as a theologian, philosopher, and organ player to open a hospital in the jungles of Africa. There he developed in theory and practice his ethics of reverence for life. When he published his most important philosophical work, The Philosophy of Civilization, few people were serious about treating animals with dignity and giving any consideration to environmental issues. Schweitzer's urge was heard but not fully appreciated. One hundred years later, we are in a better position to do it. Predrag Cicovacki's book is a call to restore Schweitzer's vision. After critically and systematically discussing the most important aspects of the ethics of reverence for life, Cicovacki argues that the restoration of Schweitzer does not mean the restoration of any particular doctrine. It means summoning enough courage to reverse the deadly course of our civilization. And it also means establishing a way of life that stimulates striving toward what is the best and highest in human beings.

?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.