Showing titles in Consciousness & Thought

While we tend to think of the great thinkers as hailing from Ancient Greece, the 20th century has had more than its fair share of sharp minds. "500 Quotations from the Great Philosophers of the 20th Century" is a collection of reflections, insights, and observations from some of the best brains of that era. A superb book for dipping in and out of, this makes a great gift for anyone with an interest in history or philosophy.

Failure is a topic discussed in every creative writing department in the world, but this is the book every beginning writer should have on their shelf to prepare them. Less a guide to writing and more a guide to what you need to continue existing as a writer, On Writing and Failure: Or, On the Peculiar Perseverance Required to Endure the Life of a Writer describes the defining role played by rejection in literary endeavors and contemplates failure as the essence of the writer’s life.

Это необычная книга – книга-противостояние: Владимир Познер ставит перед своими гостями и вопросы вечные, и вопросы сиюминутные: Возможна ли демократия в России? Свободен ли художник, которому платит деньги государство? Можно ли любить власть и оставаться при этом независимым политиком? Есть ли отличие между религией и церковью?На эти и другие вопросы отвечают протоиерей Дмитрий Смирнов, Ален Делон, Александр Проханов, Рената Литвинова, Стинг, Тина Канделаки, отвечают то удачно, то не очень, то обороняются, то атакуют.

「課題解決」「アイデア発想」「イノベーション」「人材・組織開発」「ビジョン構築」……問いから始まる対話で思考を拡張せよ!

Do you feel exhausted by daily life? Are you unsure where to start? Unable to stop? A practical guide to restoring your natural energy and nurturing yourself inside and out. With 20 essential self-renewal practices to take you from surviving to thriving, Restore helps you reconnect with yourself and revitalise your life. Packed with tried-and-tested strategies and practical tips, from cultivating patience to embracing solitude and supercharging your senses, you will learn how to replenish your natural energy and become so much more.

This text draws together central components of Hegel's philosophical system as he explores the development of Mind (Spirit, Geist) in its individual, communal and conceptual aspects. Translator William Wallace writes (1894): 'I here offer a translation of the third or last part of Hegel's encyclopaedic sketch of philosophy, Philosophy of Mind. The volume, like its subject, stands complete in itself. But it may also be regarded as a supplement or continuation of the work begun in my version of his logic.'  

Internationally acclaimed author of many best-selling titles including: The Stress First Aid Kit and Body Transformation Inside-Out.

To imagine - to see that which is not there - is the startling ability that has fuelled human development and innovation through the centuries. As a species we stand alone in our remarkable capacity to refashion the world after the pictures in our minds. Traversing the realms of science, politics, religion, culture, philosophy and history, Felipe Fernández-Armesto reveals the thrilling and disquieting tales of our imaginative leaps - from the first Homo sapiens to the present day.

In Artificial You, Susan Schneider says that it is inevitable that AI will take intelligence in new directions but urges that it is up to us to carve out a sensible path forward. As AI technology turns inward, reshaping the brain, as well as outward, potentially creating machine minds, it is crucial to beware. Homo sapiens, as mind designers, will be playing with "tools" they do not understand how to use: the self, the mind, and consciousness.

Matter and Memory, (Matière et Mémoire), published in 1896, was the second book written by Henri Bergson (1859-1941), one of the leading French philosophers of his age. It followed Time and Free Will (1889) and helped to establish him as a major force in anti-mechanistic thought, opposing the trend towards uncompromisingly secular and scientific views. However, when Matter and Memory appeared, Bergson was 39 and had yet to become the hugely influential figure he became in the first decades of the 20th century. 

This addition to Oxford's Very Short Introductions series traces how Americans have addressed the issues and events of their time and place, whether it is the Civil War, the Great Depression, or the culture wars of today. 

The Moral Powers: A Study of Human Nature is a philosophical investigation of the moral potentialities and sensibilities of human beings, of the meaning of human life, and of the place of death in life. It is an essay in philosophical anthropology: the study of the conceptual framework in terms of which we think about, speak about, and investigate homo sapiens as a social and cultural animal. This volume examines the diversity of values in human life and the place of moral value within the varieties of values.  

'What is life?' asked the poet Shelley, and could not come up with an answer. Scientists, too, have not solved the puzzle. Yet biographers and obituarists continue to corral lives in a few columns, or a few hundred pages, aware all the time how fleeting and elusive their subject is. In Lifescapes, the acclaimed biographer and obituarist Ann Wroe reflects on a career spent pursuing life: a process, as she sees it, not of chronological narration but of trying to seize souls.

 Does learning require thinking, or only awareness? To be aware is to be conscious, to be in relationship with what you observe outwardly and also our inward reactions. Awareness reveals that I have a conclusion from which I act, which prevents the free flow of energy. You see that you have many opinions and conclusions. You don't know why you have them or how to be free of them. Start with not knowing.

Violence. Why do you control? Security means to be in a state in which there is no choice at all. The mind has become sensitive because it has observed, not because it has experienced. Either you see the fact with the past or you see the fact as it is now. The word is of the past.

Is there self-progress? Conflict. Security. Any form of division within oneself is a source of conflict. Can the brain be quiet? 

The problems of life do not demand a method, because they are so vital and alive that if we approach with a method we totally misunderstand and don’t adequately meet that problem. Where there is efficiency there is ruthlessness. The means and the end are not separate. Reality or God is something that cannot come by a technique, a means or through a long determined practice and discipline. Aloneness implies no means. You are not alone when you have a means.

We are educated to follow, accept and conform. This is tradition, second-hand. When you become aware of conformity without reaction, is that awareness the act of intelligence? Does the mind realize the nature of conformity, intelligence and awareness? I am attentive for a minute and there is no border, no time, no ‘me’, no problem. The whole energy is involved in that attention. This is a tremendous movement. Attending, I can do things without effort and thought.

The word chaste means pure, clean, untouched. Have we a chaste mind, a mind that has not been hurt, has no image, is free from the pleasure of yesterday and is innocent? Is chastity a quality of the mind? Can the mind be free of the word, symbols and the condemnation and approval of the word? What is the nature of the mind when there is no attempt through will or desire for any way out through the known? If you are really serious, not just with words but burning with responsibility, then you ask whether the mind can ever be free from the known.

Is there a totally different way of approaching the whole turmoil of life? As long as the centre is creating darkness, and thought is operating in that darkness, there must be disorder, there must be everything as society now is. To move away from that, you must have insight. Insight can only come about when there is a flash which abolishes not only the darkness but the creator of darkness. Human beings have been acting according to one pattern, responding to hatred by hatred and so on. There are those few, perhaps many, who did not.