William Gerber – författare

The book aims to present the wisdom of sages, great thinkers, renowned writers, and philosophers, of many countries and time periods, in their own words, regarding life. The book also aims to place the numerous quotations from these sources in a structured organization, with introductory and explanatory comments and comparisons. Main Topics or Fields - See Organization or Principal Parts.

This book offers a copious selection of insights about the world and life, crafted in engaging language by Jewish sages, scholars, rabbis, and literary luminaries, from ancient to modern times. These remarkable explanations, queries, and proposals are connected by expository comments and comparisons by the author. The passionate care for human values which underlies much of Jewish thinking is made accessible in this comprehensive work. In it the reader may find counsel on how to achieve a good and satisfying life while responding to the joys and sorrows that touch us all.

This book explores and illustrates the individuating characteristics - and the interrelationships - of love, poetry, and literary immortality (such immortality, that is, as writers may win, in the sense of being long remembered and appreciated by future readers). From the book's numerous quotations of glittering literary passages, it is evident that love is often expressed in poetry, and that many authors (especially those writing about love) have expressed the winsome hope that their works would be greatly cherished by later generations. Part One of the book illustrates by passages of matchless poetry the joys and perils of love and other outstanding features of love. Part Two outlines the history of expressions by writers in many cultures of their confidence or hope that their works will make them immortal.

William Gerber has matched his keen analysis of the key problems concerning God with a wealth of reflections from the wisdom of the ages. Thus, he has gotten the great thinkers of the world to work for him - and for you [...] This handy book has considerable value as a reference work while giving abundant thought to the reflective reader who wonders about God. Philosophy as an art of wondering must face the God questions. These are questions not only of God's existence, but of what God might exist as, of how we might know that, and of what such a God's relationship to human beings may be. Reading through this book is journeying through our humanity caught in a universe of wonder [...] Gerber's comments - critical, gentle, eminently reasonable - are a consolation as well as guide to the reader. Even if this work of erudition and inquiry doesn't answer all our questions about God, we are better human beings for reading it and taking it to heart. Maybe God could learn something about us from it too. - Robert Ginsberg, Executive Editor

The book analyzes, synthesizes, and evaluates the insights of the world's outstanding thinkers, prophets, and literary masters on the good, the morally right, and the lovely (part one); the question whether the world operates on the basis of such universal laws as the logos, the tao, and the principle of polarity (part two); what there is and isn't in the world, including such categories as existence, reality, being, and nonbeing (part three); and pre-eminently credible and enriching beliefs about truth, wisdom, and what it all means (part four). Emphasis is placed on the divergent views of such intellectual giants as Confucius and Laotse in ancient China; the classical Hindu philosophers from ancient times to Gandhi and Tagore; patriarchs and prophets quoted in Scripture; Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle; Saints Augustine and Thomas Aquinas in the Middle Ages; Descartes, Spinoza, Locke, Hume, and Kant; and nineteenth- and twentieth-century luminaries such as Bentham, Mill, Peirce, James, Dewey, Sartre, and Wittgenstein. The differences and resemblances of their cogitations are portrayed as a conversation of the ages on questions of persistent concern.

This work acts as a guide to those who wish to enhance their inner potential to achieve a more serene lifestyle. Provides a philosophical account of what serenity is and offers specific mental exercises to be performed in order to cope with the stresses of modern life. Suitable for the scholar and student of philosophy and psychology, as well as the general reader. Co-published with the North American Society for Social Philosophy.

This book analyzes the concept of liberalism, interprets the history of liberalism in the United States, appraises the reasons why liberalism has not brought about the millennium in America, and offers a prognostication as to the future of liberalism. This reprint of the G.K. Hall & Co. edition is co-published by the North American Society for Social Philosophy.