"We each embark on two life journeys - one out into the world, the other inward to the self. With these journeys in mind, the eminent anthropologist Keith Hart reflects on a life of learning, sharing and remembering to offer readers the means of connecting life's extremes - individual and society, local and global, personal and impersonal dimensions of existence and explores what it is that makes us fully human. As an anthropologist, amateur economist and globetrotter, he draws on the humanities, popular culture and his own experiences to help readers explore their own place in history"--

Self and World is an exploration of the nature of self-awareness. Quassim Cassam challenges the widespread and influential view that we cannot be introspectively aware of ourselves as objects in the world. In opposition to the views of many empiricist and idealist philosophers, including Hume, Kant, and Wittgenstein, he argues that the self is not systematically elusive from the perspective of self-consciousness, and that consciousness of our thoughts and experiences requires a sense of our thinking, experiencing selves as shaped, located, and solid physical objects in a world of such objects. Awareness of oneself as a physical object involves forms of bodily self-awareness whose importance has seldom been properly acknowledged in philosophical accounts of the self and self-awareness. The conception of self-awareness defended in this book helps to undermine the idealist thesis that the self does not belong to the world, and also the claim that the existence of subjects or persons is only a derivative feature of reality. In the final part of the book, Cassam argues that the existence of persons is a substantial fact about the world, and that it is not possible to give a complete description of reality without claiming that persons exist. This clear, original, and challenging treatment of one of the deepest of intellectual problems will demand the attention of all philosophers and cognitive scientists who are concerned with the self.

In the tradition of Quantum Healing and Guns, Germs and Steel, Philip Shepherd's New Self, New World makes an intellectual inquiry into how we might restore freedom, creativity, and a sense of presence in the moment by rejecting several fundamental myths about being human New Self, New World challenges the primary story of what it means to be human, the random and materialistic lifestyle that author Philip Shepherd calls our “shattered reality.” This reality encourages us to live in our heads, self-absorbed in our own anxieties. Drawing on diverse sources and inspiration, New Self, New World reveals that our state of head-consciousness falsely teaches us to see the body as something we possess and to try to take care of it without ever really learning how to inhabit it. Shepherd articulates his vision of a world in which each of us enjoys a direct, unmediated experience of being alive. He petitions against the futile pursuit of the “known self” and instead reveals the simple grace of just being present. In compelling prose, Shepherd asks us to surrender to the reality of “what is” that enables us to reunite with our own being. Each chapter is accompanied by exercises meant to bring Shepherd’s vision into daily life, what the author calls a practice that “facilitates the voluntary sabotage of long-standing patterns.” New Self, New World is at once a philosophical primer, a spiritual handbook, and a roaming inquiry into human history.

Presents a synoptic survey of human life in its personal, social, and mythical dimensions, drawing from a variety of sources. McIntosh asserts that no major aspect of human life can be adequately understood except in the context of the whole; thus, understanding the self, others, and the world requires an intermingling of conscious and unconscious levels of thought and awareness. Annotation copyright by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

_________________ THE TOP TEN BESTSELLER 'Unusually practical, non-patronising and authentic. Think Marie Kondo for the mind' Sunday Times Wellness pioneers Nadia Narain and Katia Narain Phillips have spent decades helping others to feel their best. But it took them a bit longer to learn to care for themselves. Here they share the small, achievable steps they picked up on a lifetime’s journey towards self-care, and how you can apply them to your life, wherever you are. Right now, you may be deep in the waves of life, being tossed around. Learning self-care is like building your own life boat, plank by plank. Once you’ve got your boat, you’ll still be rocked by the same waves, but you’ll have a feeling of safety, and a stability that means you can pick other people up on your way.

The facts of John Milton's life are well documented, but what of the person Milton—the man whose poetic and prose works have been deeply influential and are still the subject of opposing readings? John Shawcross's "different" biography depicts the man against a psychological backdrop that brings into relief who he was—in his works and from his works. While the theories of Freud, Lacan, Kohut, and others underlie this pursuit of Milton's "self," Jung and some of his followers provide the basic understanding by which Shawcross places Milton in the panorama of history. His explorations of the psychological underpinnings of Milton's decision to become a poet, of the homoerotic dimensions of his personality, and of his relationships with father and mother demonstrate the extent to which psychobiography proves itself invaluable as a means to appreciate this complex writer and his complex writings. This biography combines the traditional chronological narrative with a technique akin to that of fiction, "a mixture of times and a triggering of remembrances from various time frames without time differentiations." Such an approach offers a view of Milton "not only in being but in process of being." Shawcross's examination of two current concerns, gender attitudes and political ideologies, ranges Milton's work against the self he exhibits. Specialists and nonspecialists alike will find in this magisterial biography a wealth of new insight into one of the greatest of English poets.