The attraction and repulsion between the Roman Catholic Church and modernity in Europe between 1750 and 2000 Emiel Lamberts (1941), professor emeritus of contemporary history at KU Leuven, is an international expert in the political and religious history of Europe in the 19th and 20th centuries. His work and the central themes in his research are the starting point in World Views and Worldly Wisdom. No less than eighteen leading international researchers put different aspects of his work in the spotlight. A recurring theme, however, is the attraction and repulsion between the Roman Catholic Church and modernity in Europe between 1750 and 2000. The ambivalent relationship with modernity is therefore the leitmotiv of the first part of this volume, whereas the second part focuses on the repositioning of the Church and the tensions between religion, ideology and politics. In this way the volume reflects Lamberts’s fascination for the history of political institutions as well as his research on Christian democracy. The contributions address – in a comparative way and from a transatlantic viewpoint – this broad period of time in history, which gave rise to different social movements and different models of society in Belgium and elsewhere. Contributors Winfried Becker (Universität Passau), Bruno Béthouart (Université du Littoral Côte d’Opale), Hans Blom (Universiteit van Amsterdam), Alfredo Canavero (Università degli Studi di Milano), Philippe Chenaux (Pontificia Università Lateranense, Roma), Andrea Ciampani (LUMSA, Roma), Jo Deferme (KU Leuven), Jan De Maeyer (KADOC KU Leuven), Henk De Smaele (Universiteit Antwerpen), Carine Dujardin (KADOC KU Leuven), Jean-Dominique Durand (Université Lyon 3), Michael Gehler (Jean Monnet Chair, Universität Hildesheim - Institut für Neuzeit- und Zeitgeschichtsforschung, Wien), Susana Monreal (Universidad Católica del Uruguay), Patrick Pasture (KU Leuven), Patrick M.W. Taveirne (The Chinese University of Hong Kong), Peter Van Kemseke (Europese Commissie, KU Leuven), Vincent Viaene (Attaché bij het Huis van Koning Filip), Els Witte (Vrije Universiteit Brussel)

"[This] magnificent critical survey, with its inherent respect for both the 'Westt's mainstream high culture' and the 'radically changing world' of the 1990s, offers a new breakthrough for lay and scholarly readers alike....Allows readers to grasp the big picture of Western culture for the first time." SAN FRANCISCO CHRONICLE Here are the great minds of Western civilization and their pivotal ideas, from Plato to Hegel, from Augustine to Nietzsche, from Copernicus to Freud. Richard Tarnas performs the near-miracle of describing profound philosophical concepts simply but without simplifying them. Ten years in the making and already hailed as a classic, THE PASSION OF THE WESERN MIND is truly a complete liberal education in a single volume.

This flagship dictionary is the last word in reference for advanced learners, college students and teachers, and businesspeople. It has served as the standard work of bilingual reference for more than 60 years. The fully revised Harrap’s French and English College Dictionary provides thorough, up-to-date coverage of all areas of vocabulary, including more than 305,000 references, 555,000 translations, and thousands of new words and expressions. Also featured are: More than 400 longer entries, with menus for easier navigation Comprehensive French and English grammars linked to the dictionary text A wealth of technical language, Internet terms, slang, and colloquial usage Hundreds of tinted usage notes to help avoid translation pitfalls A four-color illustrated supplement covering 400 essential French and English idioms

"The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic marks the most significant, singular global disruption since World War II, with health, economic, political, and security implications that will ripple for years to come." -Global Trends 2040 (2021) Global Trends 2040-A More Contested World (2021), released by the US National Intelligence Council, is the latest report in its series of reports starting in 1997 about megatrends and the world's future. This report, strongly influenced by the COVID-19 pandemic, paints a bleak picture of the future and describes a contested, fragmented and turbulent world. It specifically discusses the four main trends that will shape tomorrow's world: - Demographics-by 2040, 1.4 billion people will be added mostly in Africa and South Asia. - Economics-increased government debt and concentrated economic power will escalate problems for the poor and middleclass. - Climate-a hotter world will increase water, food, and health insecurity. - Technology-the emergence of new technologies could both solve and cause problems for human life. Students of trends, policymakers, entrepreneurs, academics, journalists and anyone eager for a glimpse into the next decades, will find this report, with colored graphs, essential reading.

A page-turning novel that is also an exploration of the great philosophical concepts of Western thought, Jostein Gaarder's Sophie's World has fired the imagination of readers all over the world, with more than twenty million copies in print. One day fourteen-year-old Sophie Amundsen comes home from school to find in her mailbox two notes, with one question on each: "Who are you?" and "Where does the world come from?" From that irresistible beginning, Sophie becomes obsessed with questions that take her far beyond what she knows of her Norwegian village. Through those letters, she enrolls in a kind of correspondence course, covering Socrates to Sartre, with a mysterious philosopher, while receiving letters addressed to another girl. Who is Hilde? And why does her mail keep turning up? To unravel this riddle, Sophie must use the philosophy she is learning—but the truth turns out to be far more complicated than she could have imagined.

Examining a wide array of ancient writings, Brent Nongbri dispels the commonly held idea that there is such a thing as ancient religion. Nongbri shows how misleading it is to speak as though religion was a concept native to pre-modern cultures.

Christine de Pizan's Livre de la Cité des Dames (1405) is justly renowned for its full-scale assault on the misogynist stereotypes which dominated the culture of the Middle Ages. Rosalind Brown-Grant locates the Cité in the context of Christine's defence of women as it developed over a number of years and through a range of different texts. Arguing that Christine tailored her critique of misogyny according to the genre in which she was writing and the audience she was addressing, this study shows that Christine's case for women nonetheless had an underlying unity in its insistence on the moral, if not the social, equality of the sexes. Whilst Christine may not have been a radical in modern feminist terms, she was able to draw upon the cultural resources of her day in order to construct an intellectual authority for herself that challenged the prevailing orthodoxy of the day.