Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881) and T. S. Eliot (1888-1965) were icons of their age, literary giants who dominated the British cultural landscape of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Yet both were cosmopolitan outsiders who lived in London as expatriates but remained products of their biographical histories Carlyle as the working class Scotsman and Eliot the transplanted New England patrician. Carlyle quickly earned himself a reputation as the "Chelsea Sage" of the Victorian Era, the cultural prophet whose creative and critical works, informal salon gatherings, and oracular personality generated an unprecedented following among both the intellectuals and masses. His opinion and company were sought out by almost every major luminary of his century, including John Stuart Mill, Charles Dickens, and Ralph Waldo Emerson. And his social and political insights, like his aesthetic and philosophical views, touched on wide-ranging subjects from Romatic poetry and German history to parliamentary reform and slavery abolition. Similarly, T. S. Eliot's reputation as a writer and social observer enjoyed mythic status as he became the preeminent twentieth-century critic of the English-speaking world. In his verse masterpiece The Waste Land, spiritual drama Murder in the Cathedral, Christian social initiatives with Moot, and editorial leadership at The Criterion, Eliot conversed with the principal figures and movements of his time, from Charles Maurras and the struggles against communism to G. K. Chesterton and disputes over Anglican reform. Ultimately, however, both men may be seen as moderns whose sensitivities inclined them to encounter the monumental historical changes of their day with a unique historical perspective and an informed cultural conservatism. Democratization, industrialization, urbanization, and population growth were signs of changing times, signs demanding a new vision and mode of expression to integrate and process rapidly transforming realities. And Carlyle and Eliot address these by establishing a spiritual response to modernity's loss of faith in transcendent authority. Their conceptions of self, society, and God are communicated, in other words, through a literary form that engages the conditions of modernity through the language, categories, and symbols of the Western humanistic and Christian traditions. And because their cultural and theoretical judgments fall on that historical continuum between the pre-modern and postmodern, their lives and works are particularly relevant as case studies that can tell us much about the historical progression of European intellectual and cultural history into the twenty-first century.

Thomas Carlyle (1795-1881) and T. S. Eliot (1888-1965) were icons of their age, literary giants who dominated the British cultural landscape of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Yet both were cosmopolitan outsiders who lived in London as expatriates but remained products of their biographical historiesCarlyle as the working class Scotsman and Eliot the transplanted New England patrician. Carlyle quickly earned himself a reputation as the Chelsea Sage of the Victorian Era, the cultural prophet whose creative and critical works, informal salon gatherings, and oracular personality generated an unprecedented following among both the intellectuals and masses. His opinion and company were sought out by almost every major luminary of his century, including John Stuart Mill, Charles Dickens, and Ralph Waldo Emerson. And his social and political insights, like his aesthetic and philosophical views, touched on wide-ranging subjects from Romatic poetry and German history to parliamentary reform and slavery abolition. Similarly, T. S. Eliots reputation as a writer and social observer enjoyed mythic status as he became the preeminent twentieth-century critic of the English-speaking world. In his verse masterpiece The Waste Land, spiritual drama Murder in the Cathedral, Christian social initiatives with Moot, and editorial leadership at The Criterion, Eliot conversed with the principal figures and movements of his time, from Charles Maurras and the struggles against communism to G. K. Chesterton and disputes over Anglican reform. Ultimately, however, both men may be seen as moderns whose sensitivities inclined them to encounter the monumental historical changes of their day with a unique historical perspective and an informed cultural conservatism. Democratization, industrialization, urbanization, and population growth were signs of changing times, signs demanding a new vision and mode of expression to integrate and process rapidly transforming realities. And Carlyle and Eliot address these by establishing a spiritual response to modernitys loss of faith in transcendent authority. Their conceptions of self, society, and God are communicated, in other words, through a literary form that engages the conditions of modernity through the language, categories, and symbols of the Western humanistic and Christian traditions. And because their cultural and theoretical judgments fall on that historical continuum between the pre-modern and postmodern, their lives and works are particularly relevant as case studies that can tell us much about the historical progression of European intellectual and cultural history into the twenty-first century.

Ageing, meaning and social structure is a unique book advancing critical discourse in gerontology and makes a major contribution to understanding key social and ethical dilemmas facing ageing societies. It confronts and integrates approaches that have been relatively isolated from each other, and interrelates two major streams of thought within critical gerontology: analyses of structural issues in the context of political economy and humanistic perspectives on issues of existential meaning. The chapters, from a wide range of contributors, focus on major issues in ageing such as autonomy, agency, frailty, lifestyle, social isolation, dementia and professional challenges in social work and participatory research. This volume should be valuable reading for scholars and graduate students in gerontology and humanistic studies, as well as for policy makers and practitioners working in the field of ageing.

This book offers an original look at the developing quest for self-realization that inspired the Russian Cultural Renaissance at the turn of the twentieth century, also called the Silver Age, from its origins in Vladimir Solov'ev's theory of Divine Humanity to its present day manifestations. This work should appeal to scholars interested in Russian Orthodoxy, Russian philosophy, contemporary philosophy, and religious studies. Cultural Renaissance at the turn of the twentieth century, also called the Silver Age, from its fin-de-siecle inception until the present day. Following the historical periods under consideration, the study breaks into three parts: the first is concerned with the quest for transcendence in Vladimir Solov'ev's theory of Divine Humanity; the second considers the way in which Solov'ev's Silver Age philosophical and poetic followers utilized and developed his ideas about self-realization; finally, the third considers contemporary discussions regarding the possibility of transcendence and self-realization. This book goes beyond mere historical-philosophical curiosity: it is an attempt to understand the idea of self-realization in a global context.

In the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries secular French scholars started re-engaging with religious ideas, particularly mystical ones. Mysticism in the French Tradition introduces key philosophical undercurrents and trajectories in French thought that underpin and arise from this engagement, as well as considering earlier French contributions to the development of mysticism. Filling a gap in the literature, the book offers critical reflections on French scholarship in terms of its engagement with its mystical and apophatic dimensions. A multiplicity of factors converge to shape these encounters with mystical theology: feminist, devotional and philosophical treatments as well as literary, historical, and artistic approaches. The essays draw these into conversation. Bringing together an international and interdisciplinary range of contributions from both new and established scholars, this book provides access to the melting pot out of which the mystical tradition in France erupted in the twenty-first century, and from which it continues to challenge theology today.

The prestige of the Enlightenment has declined in recent years. Many consider its thinking abstract, its art and poetry uninspiring, and the assertion that it introduced a new age of freedom and progress after centuries of darkness and superstition presumptuous. In this book, an eminent scholar of modern culture shows that the Enlightenment was a more complex phenomenon than most of its detractors and advocates assume. It includes rationalist as well as antirationalist tendencies, a critique of traditional morality and religion as well as an attempt to establish them on new foundations, even the beginning of a moral renewal and a spiritual revival. The Enlightenment’s critique of tradition was a necessary consequence of the fundamental modern principle that we humans are solely responsible for the course of history. Hence we can accept no belief, no authority, no institutions that are not in some way justified. This foundation, for better or for worse, determined the course of the following centuries. Despite contemporary reactions against it, the Enlightenment continues to shape our own time and still distinguishes Western culture from any other.