In 1747 Paris, Sophie falls in love with married philosopher Denis Diderot, who is collaborating with authors to create an encyclopedia of all human knowledge, a project that threatens to undermine both the monarchy and the church--as well as Sophie?s right to freedom, love, and happiness.

With specific techniques for more than 30 types of kisses, this updated and revised edition shows readers how to transform their kissing technique, pucker up with passion, and master "The Art of Kissing" today. Line drawings.

Ironically, the philosophy of love has long been neglected by philosophers, so-called “lovers of wisdom,” who would seemingly need to understand how one best becomes a lover. In Kierkegaard and the Philosophy of Love, Michael Strawser shows that the philosophy of love lies at the heart of Kierkegaard’s writings, as he argues that the central issue of Kierkegaard’s authorship can and should be understood more broadly as the task of becoming a lover. Strawser starts by identifying the questions (How should I love the other? Is self-love possible? How can I love God?) and themes (love’s immediacy, intentionality, unity, and eternity) that are central to the philosophy of love, and he develops a rich context that includes analyses of the conceptions of love found in Plato, Spinoza, and Hegel, as well as prominent contemporary thinkers. Strawser provides an original and wide-ranging analysis of Kierkegaard’s writings—from the early The Concept of Irony and Edifying Discourses to the late The Moment, while maintaining the prominence of Works of Love— to demonstrate how Kierkegaard’s writings on love are relevant to the emerging study of the philosophy of love today. The most unique perspective of this work, however, is Strawser’s argument that Kierkegaard’s writings on love are most fruitfully understood within the context of a phenomenology of love. In interpreting Kierkegaard as a phenomenologist of love, Strawser claims that it is not Husserl and Heidegger that we should look to for a connection in the first instance, but rather Max Scheler, Dietrich von Hildebrand, Emmanuel Levinas, and most importantly, Jean-Luc Marion, who for the most part center their thinking on the phenomenological nature of love. Based on an analysis of the works of these thinkers together with Kierkegaard’s writings, Strawser argues that Kierkegaard presents readers with a first phenomenology of love, a point of view that serves as a unifying perspective throughout this work while also pointing to areas for future scholarship. Overall, this work brings seemingly divergent perspectives into a unity brought about through a focus on love—which is, after all, a unifying force.

After decades of marginalization in the secularized twentieth-century academy, moral education has enjoyed a recent resurgence in American higher education, with the establishment of more than 100 ethics centers and programs on campuses across the country. Yet the idea that the university has a civic responsibility to teach its undergraduate students ethics and morality has been met with skepticism, suspicion, and even outright rejection from both inside and outside the academy. In this collection, renowned scholars of philosophy, politics, and religion debate the role of ethics in the university, investigating whether universities should proactively cultivate morality and ethics, what teaching ethics entails, and what moral education should accomplish. The essays quickly open up to broader questions regarding the very purpose of a university education in modern society. Editors Elizabeth Kiss and J. Peter Euben survey the history of ethics in higher education, then engage with provocative recent writings by Stanley Fish in which he argues that universities should not be involved in moral education. Stanley Hauerwas responds, offering a theological perspective on the university’s purpose. Contributors look at the place of politics in moral education; suggest that increasingly diverse, multicultural student bodies are resources for the teaching of ethics; and show how the debate over civic education in public grade-schools provides valuable lessons for higher education. Others reflect on the virtues and character traits that a moral education should foster in students—such as honesty, tolerance, and integrity—and the ways that ethical training formally and informally happens on campuses today, from the classroom to the basketball court. Debating Moral Education is a critical contribution to the ongoing discussion of the role and evolution of ethics education in the modern liberal arts university. Contributors. Lawrence Blum, Romand Coles, J. Peter Euben, Stanley Fish, Michael Allen Gillespie, Ruth W. Grant, Stanley Hauerwas, David A. Hoekema, Elizabeth Kiss, Patchen Markell, Susan Jane McWilliams, Wilson Carey McWilliams, J. Donald Moon, James Bernard Murphy, Noah Pickus, Julie A. Reuben, George Shulman, Elizabeth V. Spelman

The lines of Michael Fishbane’s book trace the spiritual face of Judaism in one of its many appearances. Fishbane explores the quest for spiritual perfection in early rabbinic sources and in Jewish philosophy and mysticism. The "kiss of God," a symbol for union with God, and the ritual practices—meditation and performance—connected with it are presented. The book identifies a persistent passion for religious perfection, expressed as the love of God unto death itself. The masters of the tradition cultivated this ideal in all periods, in diverse genres, and in different modes. Rabbinic law and midrash, medieval philosophy and mysticism, public and private ritual all contributed to its development. Rooted in the understanding that the spiritual life requires discipline, the sages set up different ladders of ascension. For some, the Law itself was the means of spiritual growth; for others, more private practices were built upon its foundation. But all agreed that the purification of desire and the perfection of the soul offered the hope of personal salvation. None denied the historical redemption of the nation.

The kiss is the image that, perhaps more than any other, encompasses the beauty and poetry of love. Every love is required to maintain the kiss, to make it last. When they kiss, lovers carve out their hiding holes, finding their peace from war. When they kiss, the noise of the world is silenced, its laws broken, time is stolen from its normal continuity. They fall together in their distinct, embraced tongues. The kiss joins the tongue that declares love with the body of the lover. And the extinction of the kiss and, most importantly, of the desire to kiss one’s beloved announces the demise of love. In this short book, Massimo Recalcati – one of Italy’s leading intellectuals and bestselling authors – offers seven brief lessons on the mystery and miracle of love, from the serendipity of the first encounter to its end or its continuation over time, as mysterious and miraculous as the first encounter itself.

Philosophical Praxis, launched by the author in 1981, ushers in a new academic philosophy as an alternative to current therapeutic practices, offering unique insights into the compelling origin and development of a renaissance of philosophy.