Aprendizajes que inspiran

Mit dem drohenden Verschwinden der Tiere steht weit mehr auf dem Spiel, als es die naturwissenschaftlichen Diskurse andeuten: Es geht nicht allein um eine Krise versiegender Rohstoffe oder um den Verlust ?kologischer Einflussfaktoren, sondern um eine existentielle Ersch?tterung, die das Verh?ltnis zwischen Menschen und (anderen) Tieren in grunds?tzlicher Weise betrifft. Die Autorin beleuchtet daher die tieferliegenden theologischen und metaphysischen Gr?nde jener Angst vor einer Welt, die f?r die Wirklichkeit der Tiere keinen realen wie gedanklichen Ort mehr hat: Woher r?hrt das Unbehagen angesichts einer Tierindustrie, die den milliardenfachen Tod von Tieren zum gnadenlos durchexerzierten Normalfall gemacht hat? Welche Folgen hatte die radikale Pro-fanisierung von Tieren, die in der antiken Welt noch nahezu gottgleichen Status innehatten? Was also fehlt, wenn uns die Tiere fehlen?

Solitude has always had an ambivalent status: the capacity to enjoy being alone can make sociability bearable, but those predisposed to solitude are often viewed with suspicion or pity.

Drawing on a wide array of literary and historical sources, David Vincent explores how people have conducted themselves in the absence of company over the last three centuries. He argues that the ambivalent nature of solitude became a prominent concern in the modern era. For intellectuals in the romantic age, solitude gave respite to citizens living in ever more complex modern societies. But while the search for solitude was seen as a symptom of modern life, it was also viewed as a dangerous pathology: a perceived renunciation of the world, which could lead to psychological disorder and anti-social behaviour.

Vincent explores the successive attempts of religious authorities and political institutions to manage solitude, taking readers from the monastery to the prisoner’s cell, and explains how western society’s increasing secularism, urbanization and prosperity led to the development of new solitary pastimes at the same time as it made traditional forms of solitary communion, with God and with a pristine nature, impossible. At the dawn of the digital age, solitude has taken on new meanings, as physical isolation and intense sociability have become possible as never before. With the advent of a so-called loneliness epidemic, a proper historical understanding of the natural human desire to disengage from the world is more important than ever.

The first full-length account of its subject, A History of Solitude will appeal to a wide general readership.

Why is our sense of smell so under-appreciated? We tend to think of smell as a vestigial remnant of our pre-human past, doomed to gradual extinction, and we go to great lengths to eliminate smells from our environment, suppressing body odour, bad breath and other smells. Living in a relatively odour-free environment has numbed us to the importance that smells have always had in human history and culture.

In this major new book Robert Muchembled restores smell to its rightful place as one of our most important senses and examines the transformation of smells in the West from the Renaissance to the beginning of the 19th century. He shows that in earlier centuries, the air in towns and cities was often saturated with nauseating emissions and dangerous pollution. Having little choice but to see and smell faeces and urine on a daily basis, people showed little revulsion; until the 1620s, literature and poetry delighted in excreta which now disgust us. The smell of excrement and body odours were formative aspects of eroticism and sexuality, for the social elite and the popular classes alike. At the same time, medicine explained outbreaks of plague by Satan's poisonous breath corrupting the air. Amber, musk and civet came to be seen as vital bulwarks against the devil's breath: scents were worn like armour against the plague. The disappearance of the plague after 1720 and the sharp decline in fear of the devil meant there was no longer any point in using perfumes to fight the forces of evil, paving the way for the olfactory revolution of the 18th century when softer, sweeter perfumes, often with floral and fruity scents, came into fashion, reflecting new norms of femininity and a gentler vision of nature. 

This rich cultural history of an under-appreciated sense will be appeal to a wide readership.

El manipulador es astuto en el uso del lenguaje y procura despojar de recursos al manipulado. Este libro estimula el sentido cr?tico para pensar con precisi?n y buscar lo verdadero a toda costa.

Die ?sterliche Verwandlung will mit allen Sinnen gefeiert werden. Gerade in der liturgischen Intensivzeit von Aschermittwoch bis Pfingsten wollen Menschen ihre konkreten Lebenserfahrungen betend und feiernd in das Geheimnis von Wachsen und Neuwerden, Sterben und Auferstehen, Sehnsucht und Erf?llung einbringen. Dieser Band enth?lt ausgearbeitete Gottesdienste mit einer Vielzahl von Elementen, die auch einzeln verwendet werden k?nnen. Die F?lle von Texten, Gebeten, Anregungen, Symbolen und Anschauungsmaterialien erm?glicht, die Gottesdienste im Osterfestkreis meditativ und kreativ zu feiern. Dabei legt der Autor Wert auf eine verstehbare und geschlechtergerechte Sprache.