"Vril naturally signifies the height of dominion attained by cultivation of man's latent power ... it expresses, with precision, nerve-energy and will-force combined in the developed individual."The Art of Living is Volume 1 of Arthur Lovell's masterful Ars Vivendi series. Lovell was a founding member of the turn-of-the-century Vril-ya Club, whose members sought to cultivate and master the mysterious energy of Vril. "The Vril-ya maintain a perpetual calmness of outward demeanour, with the inborn consciousness of superior power."Originally published in the 1890s.

This volume examines the questions of what constitutes a good life and how one can achieve happiness and well-being, and analyses different ways in which people can strive for a good life. First, it presents an overview on important concepts in psychology that are related to living a good life. Then, a new approach is introduced: the concept of art-of-living as a holistic way to reach happiness. Empirical studies are reported involving a questionnaire for measuring art-of-living, and the validity of the questionnaire is demonstrated with respect to a wide range of concepts. In addition, the volume provides results from empirical studies, showing that, and how, art-of-living and happiness can be enhanced. Several intervention studies are described in detail, which have been performed with different groups of subjects, including pupils, university students and employees. Also, results of interviews are summarized, which were held with people who had been nominated as exemplary artists-of-living. The volume concludes with a description of art-of-living in autobiographies, and presents suggestions for further research with respect to art-of-living.

From Latin humanists to popular writers, Italian Renaissance culture spawned a lively debate on vocational choice and the nature of profession. In The Culture of Profession in Late Renaissance Italy, George W. McClure examines the turn this debate took in the second half of the Renaissance, when the learned 'praise and rebuke' of profession began to be complemented with more popular forms of discourse, and when less learned vocations made their voice heard. Focusing primarily on sources assembled and published in the sixteenth century, McClure's study explores professional themes in comic, festive, and popular print culture. A pivotal figure is Tomaso Garzoni, a monk whose popular encyclopedia, Universal Piazza of all the Professions of the World, was published in 1585. A funnel for earlier traditions and an influence on later ones, this massive compendium treated over 150 categories of profession - juxtaposing the world of philosophers and poets, lawyers and physicians, merchants and artisans, teachers and printers, cooks and chimneysweeps, prostitutes and procurers. If the conventional view is that Italian Renaissance society generally grew more aristocratic in the later period, this and other sources reveal a professional ethos more democratic in nature and bespeak the full cultural discovery of the middling and lowly professions in the late Renaissance.

Emmanuel Falque, one of the foremost philosophers working in the continental philosophy of religion today, takes us by the hand into the very heart of 12th-century monastic spirituality. Translated into English for the first time, The Book of Experience weaves together contemporary phenomenological questions with medieval theology, revealing undiscovered dialogues already underway between Hugh of St. Victor and Maurice Merleau-Ponty, between Richard of St. Victor and Emmanuel Levinas, between Aelred of Rievaulx and Michel Henry, and not least between Bernard of Clairvaux and the trio of Descartes, Heidegger, and Jean-Luc Marion, consummating in a masterful phenomenological reading of Bernard's sermons on the Song of Songs. Whether it is a question of 'the idea that comes to God' (Anselm of Canterbury) or actively 'feeling oneself fully alive' (Aelred of Rievaulx or Bernard of Clairvaux), Falque uses these encounters to shed light on both parties, medieval and modern, theological and philosophical. Leading us through works of art, landscapes, architectures, and liturgies, this major contemporary philosopher of religion clarifies mysteries and discovers experience lying at the heart of the medieval tradition.