"This VSI is a multidisciplinary approach to central questions about the nature and existence of the self. It engages millennia-old questions about the self as well as modern research to produce new perspectives on both academic questions about the self and the more immediate practical, everyday puzzles about the self that concern us all"--Publisher's description.

"In Erosion, Terry Tempest Williams's fierce, spirited, and magnificent essays are a howl in the desert. She sizes up the continuing assaults on America's public lands and the erosion of our commitment to the open space of democracy. She asks: "How do we find the strength to not look away from all that is breaking our hearts?" We know the elements of erosion: wind, water, and time. They have shaped the spectacular physical landscape of our nation....

Hofstadter's collection of quirky essays is unified by its primary concern: to examine the way people perceive and think.

Some critical theorists understand the self as constituted by power relations, while others insist upon the self's autonomous capacities for critical reflection and deliberate self-transformation. Up to now, it has all too often been assumed that these two understandings of the self are incompatible. In her bold new book, Amy Allen argues that the capacity for autonomy is rooted in the very power relations that constitute the self. Allen's theoretical...

"The seven archetypes of Artisan, Sage, Server, Priest, Warrior, King, and Scholar have always existed in every society; and everyone belongs to one of these groups. Thousands of people around the world have used this system...to discover their true nature and to find fulfillment"--P. 4 of cover.

Presents the venerable Indian teachings of Vedanta with illustrations and examples that make sense of them to Westerners in particular. This work shows how the profound, yet practical, teachings of Vedanta, one of the main schools of thought in Hinduism, give meaning and understanding to our lives.

Western society is individualised; we feel at ease talking about individuals and we study individual behaviour through psychology and psychoanalysis. Yet anthropology teaches us that an individual approach is only one of many ways of looking at ourselves. In this wide-ranging text Morris explores the origins, doctrines and conceptions of the self in Western, Asian and African societies passing though Greek philosophy, Buddhism, Hinduism, Confuscism,...

A boy wakes up and discovers that everything he had has disappeared except for his hat, so he sets out to find what is lost and ultimately discovers that the most important thing of all is self.

Hofstadter's long-awaited return to the themes of Gödel, Escher, Bach--an original and controversial view of the nature of consciousness and identity. What do we mean when we say "I"? Can a self, a soul, a consciousness, an "I" arise out of mere matter? If it cannot, then how can you or I be here? This book argues that the key to understanding selves and consciousness is a special kind of abstract feedback loop inhabiting our brains. Deep down, a...

"Examines the visual and textual media depicting personal suffering caused by incidents of mass violence in France from 1560 to 1880 that helped to provoke repeated collective traumas, which in turn forged new social identities and fostered the psychological processes of the modern self"--