January 2012
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Humanities & Social SciencesOctober 2018How the World Thinks
A Global History of Philosophy
by Julian Baggini
In this groundbreaking global overview of philosophy, Julian Baggini travels the world to provide a wide-ranging map of human thought.One of the great unexplained wonders of human history is that written philosophy flowered entirely separately in China, India and Ancient Greece at more or less the same time. These early philosophies have had a profound impact on the development of distinctive cultures in different parts of the world. What we call 'philosophy' in the West is not even half the story.Julian Baggini sets out to expand our horizons in How the World Thinks, exploring the philosophies of Japan, India, China and the Muslim world, as well as the lesser-known oral traditions of Africa and Australia's first peoples. Interviewing thinkers from around the globe, Baggini asks questions such as: why is the West is more individualistic than the East? What makes secularism a less powerful force in the Islamic world than in Europe? And how has China resisted pressures for greater political freedom?Offering deep insights into how different regions operate, and paying as much attention to commonalities as to differences, Baggini shows that by gaining greater knowledge of how others think we take the first step to a greater understanding of ourselves.
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Humanities & Social SciencesOctober 2020The Godless Gospel
Was Jesus a Great Moral Teacher?
by Julian Baggini
Even if we don’t believe that Jesus was the son of God, we tend to think he was a great moral teacher. But was he? And how closely do idealised values such as our love of the family, helping the needy, and the importance of kindness, match Jesus’s original tenets? Julian Baggini challenges our assumptions about Christian values – and about Jesus – by focusing on Jesus’s teachings in the Gospels, stripping away the religious elements such as the accounts of miracles or the resurrection of Christ. Reading closely this new ‘godless’ Gospel, included as an appendix, Baggini asks how we should understand Jesus’s attitude to the renunciation of the self, to politics, or to sexuality, as expressed in Jesus’s often elusive words. An atheist from a Catholic background, Baggini introduces us to a more radical Jesus than popular culture depicts. And as he journeys deeper into Jesus’s worldview, and grapples with Jesus’s sometimes contradictory messages, against his scepticism he finds that Jesus’s words amount to a purposeful and powerful philosophy, which has much to teach us today.
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Humanities & Social SciencesRevolutionary
Who was Jesus? Why does he Still Matter?
by Tom Holland
'Two thousand and twenty years after the birth of Christ, we remain the children of the Christian revolution: the most disruptive, the most influential and the most enduring revolution in history.'Tom HollandIt is often observed that no historical figure has had a greater impact on the world than Jesus Christ. Why is that? And what difference does his impact make to the world today?It is also often said that Jesus was a 'revolutionary', and numerous books have appeared in recent years claiming just that - from the wild and sensational to the serious and respectable.This book, written by influential authors reflecting a diversity of expertise and points of view, considers the claims that continue to be made about Jesus, whether by believers or nonbelievers.Contributors:Julian BagginiPhilosopher, journalist and co-founder of The Philosophers' Magazine. Author of The Godless Gospel: Was Jesus a Great Moral Teacher? (Granta 2020).Terry EagletonDistinguished Professor of English Literature, Lancaster University. Author of Radical Sacrifice (Yale 2018).Robin GillEmeritus Professor of Applied Theology, University of Kent. Editor of the journal Theology and of The Cambridge Companion to Christian Ethics (CUP 2011).Amy-Jill LevineUniversity Professor of New Testament and Jewish Studies and Mary Jane Werthan Professor of Jewish Studies, Vanderbilt Divinity School and College of Arts and Science. Author of The Misunderstood Jew: The Church and the Scandal of the Jewish Jesus (HarperOne 2006).Tarif KhalidiProfessor of Islamic and Arabic Studies, American University of Beirut; formerly Professor of Arabic and a fellow of King's College, Cambridge. Translator of The Qur'an (Penguin Classics 2013),and author The Muslim Jesus (Harvard 2003).Nick SpencerSenior Fellow, Theos, London Author of The Evolution of the West (SPCK 2016).Joan E. TaylorProfessor of Christian Origins and Second Temple Judaism, King's College London. Author of What Did Jesus Look Like? (Bloomsbury 2018).Rowan WilliamsMaster of Magdalene College, Cambridge and 104th Archbishop of Canterbury (2002-12). Author of God With Us: The meaning of the cross and resurrection - then and now (SPCK 2017).A. N. WilsonNovelist, journalist and broadcaster. Author of The Book of the People: How to read the Bible (Atlantic 2015).
