Never before, in any anthology, have contemporary epistemologists and philosophers of language come together to address the single most neglected important issue at the confluence of these two branches of philosophy, namely: Can we know facts from reliable reports? Besides Hume's subversive discussion of miracles and the literature thereon, testimony has been bypassed by most Western philosophers; whereas in classical Indian (Pramana) theories of evidence and knowledge philosophical debates have raged for centuries about the status of word-generated knowledge. `Is the response "I was told by an expert on the subject" as respectable as "I saw" or "I inferred" in answer to "How do you know?"' is a question answered in diverse and subtle ways by Buddhists, Vaisesikas and Naiyayikas. For the first time this book makes available the riches of those debates, translating from Sanskrit some contemporary Indian Pandits' reactions to Western analytic accounts of meaning and knowledge. For advanced undergraduates in philosophy, for researchers - in Australia, Asia, Europe or America - on epistemology, theory of meaning, Indian or comparative philosophy, as well as for specialists interested in this relatively fresh topic of knowledge transmission and epistemic dependence this book will be a feast. After its publication analytic philosophy and Indian philosophy will have no excuse for shunning each other.

Perfect for readers of The Secret Life of Bees and The Help, a perceptive and searing look at Apartheid-era South Africa, told through one unique family brought together by tragedy. Life under Apartheid has created a secure future for Robin Conrad, a ten-year-old white girl living with her parents in 1970s Johannesburg. In the same nation but worlds apart, Beauty Mbali, a Xhosa woman in a rural village in the Bantu homeland of the Transkei, struggles to raise her children alone after her husband's death. Both lives have been built upon the division of race, and their meeting should never have occurred...until the Soweto Uprising, in which a protest by black students ignites racial conflict, alters the fault lines on which their society is built, and shatters their worlds when Robin’s parents are left dead and Beauty’s daughter goes missing. After Robin is sent to live with her loving but irresponsible aunt, Beauty is hired to care for Robin while continuing the search for her daughter. In Beauty, Robin finds the security and family that she craves, and the two forge an inextricable bond through their deep personal losses. But Robin knows that if Beauty finds her daughter, Robin could lose her new caretaker forever, so she makes a desperate decision with devastating consequences. Her quest to make amends and find redemption is a journey of self-discovery in which she learns the harsh truths of the society that once promised her protection. Told through Beauty and Robin's alternating perspectives, the interwoven narratives create a rich and complex tapestry of the emotions and tensions at the heart of Apartheid-era South Africa. Hum If You Don’t Know the Words is a beautifully rendered look at loss, racism, and the creation of family.

In McQuiston's new book the bestselling author of "Always We Begin Again" collects inspired and inspiring prose and poetry from many of the brilliant men and women who have tried to translate the inexpressible. These include Teresa of Avila, T.S. Eliot, Reinhold Neibuhr, Rabbi David Cooper, Abraham Joshua Heschel, Confucius, and many more.

For the Greeks, the craft of Odysseus and the wisdom of Athena were examples of metis, an elusive cast of mind that ranged from wisdom and forethought to craft and cunning. Although it informed many aspects of Greek society, metis was all but absent from the language of Greek philosophy. Invoking Indigenous Chinese debates, Lisa Raphals here examines the role and significance of metic intelligence in classical Chinese philosophy, literature, history, and military strategy. Raphals first examines the range of meanings of the Chinese word zhi. As with the Greek metis, the uses of zhi include "wisdom, " "knowledge, " "intelligence, " "skill, " "cleverness, " and "cunning." Drawing on parallels between the two traditions, she argues that, in China as in Greece, metic intelligence tacitly informed many aspects of cultural and social life. In China, these included views of the nature of knowledge and language, standards of personal and social morality, and theories of military strategy and statecraft. After surveying representative texts from the Warring States period, Raphals considers the function of metic intelligence as the dominant quality of central characters in two novels from the Ming dynasty, the Romance of Three Kingdoms and Journey to the West. Finally, she compares the treatment of themes of heroism and recognition in the Chinese and Greek narrative traditions. Knowing Words will be welcomed by sinologists, classicists, and scholars of comparative philosophy and literature.

Crime writer Sara Paretsky is known the world over for her acclaimed series of mysteries starring Chicago private investigator V. I. Warshawski, now in its seventeenth installment. Paretsky’s work has long been inflected with history—for her characters the past looms large in the present—and in her decades-long career, she has been recognized for transforming the role of women in contemporary crime fiction. What’s less well-known is that before Paretsky began her writing career, she earned a PhD in history from the University of Chicago with a dissertation on moral philosophy and religion in New England in the early and mid-nineteenth century. Now, for the first time, fans of Paretsky can read that earliest work, Words, Works, and Ways of Knowing. Paretsky here analyzes attempts by theologians at Andover Seminary, near Boston, to square and secure Calvinist religious beliefs with emerging knowledge from history and the sciences. She carefully shows how the open-minded scholasticism of these theologians paradoxically led to the weakening of their intellectual credibility as conventional religious belief structures became discredited, and how this failure then incited reactionary forces within Calvinism. That conflict between science and religion in the American past is of interest on its face, but it also sheds light on contemporary intellectual battles. Rounding out the book, leading religious scholar Amanda Porterfield provides an afterword discussing where Paretsky’s work fits into the contemporary study of religion. And in a sobering—sometimes shocking—preface, Paretsky paints a picture of what it was like to be a female graduate student at the University of Chicago in the 1970s. A treat for Paretsky’s many fans, this book offers a glimpse of the development of the mind behind the mysteries.

Do you know what "quatrefoil" and "impolitic" mean? What about "halcyon" or "narcolepsy"? This book is a handy, easy-to-read reference guide to the proper parlance for any situation. In this book you will find: Words You Absolutely Should Know (covert, exonerate, perimeter); Words You Should Know But Probably Don't (dour, incendiary, scintilla); Words Most People Don't Know (schlimazel, thaumaturgy, epergne); Words You Should Know to Sound Overeducated (ad infinitum, nugatory, garrulity); Words You Probably Shouldn't Know (priapic, damnatory, labia majora); and more. Whether writing an essay, studying for a test, or trying to impress friends, family, and fellow cocktail party guests with their prolixity, you will achieve magniloquence, ebullience, and flights of rhetorical brilliance.