MAURO BASAURE. — Cher Axel Honneth, au nom du Groupe international d’études sur la Théorie critique1, je voudrais vous remercier cordialement pour cet entretien. La préparation de cet échange a été pour nous l’occasion d’effectuer des lectures sur plusieurs semaines et de mener des discussions communes sur votre approche particulière de l’héritage intellectuel de La..

Glucocorticoids are understood to represent useful biomarkers of stress and can be measured in saliva, hair, and breastmilk. The collection of such biosamples is increasingly included in biobank and cohort studies. While collection is considered “non-invasive” by biomedical researchers (compared to sampling blood), community perspectives may differ. This cross-sectional, qualitative study utilising eight focus groups aimed to determine the feasibility and acceptability of collecting ostensibly “non-invasive” biological samples in Malawi. Breastfeeding women, couples, field workers, and healthcare providers were purposively sampled. (...) Data about prior understandings of, barriers to, and feasibility of “non-invasive” biosampling were analysed. Participants described biomaterials intended for “non-invasive” collection as sometimes highly sensitive, with sampling procedures raising community concerns. Sampling methods framed as physically “non-invasive” within biomedicine can consequently be considered socially “invasive” by prospective sample donors. Biomedical and community framings of “invasiveness’ can therefore diverge, and the former must respond to and be informed by the perspectives of the latter. Further, considerations of collection procedures are shaped by therapeutic misconceptions about the immediate health-related utility of biomedical and public health research. When researchers engage with communities about biosampling, they must ensure they are not furthering therapeutic misconceptions and actively seek to dispel these. (shrink)

BackgroundThere is growing interest in the collection, storage and reuse of biological samples for future research. Storage and future use of biological samples raise ethical concerns and questions about approaches that safeguard the interests of participants. The situation is further complicated in Africa where there is a general lack of governing ethical frameworks that could guide the research community on appropriate approaches for sample storage and use. Furthermore, there is limited empirical data to guide development of such frameworks. A qualitative (...) study to address this gap was conducted with key stakeholders in Malawi to understand their experiences and perspectives regarding storage and usage of samples for future research.MethodsThis study conducted 13 in-depth interviews with ethics committee members, regulators and researchers, and five focus group discussions with community representatives and clinical trial participants in Malawi. Interviews and focus group discussions were audio-recorded, transcribed verbatim, and thematically analysed.ResultsOn the current regulatory guidelines that governs the collection, storage and reuse of samples in Malawi, participants highlighted their different understanding of it, with some indicating that it prohibited the reuse and sharing of samples, while others believed it permitted.Views on the informed consent model used in Malawi, some stakeholders expressed that the current model limited options for sample contributors regarding future use. Researchers supported storing samples for future use in order to maximize their value and reduce research costs. However, they expressed concern over the exportation of samples highlighting that it could lead to misuse and would not support the development of research capacity within Malawi. They recommended use of broad consent or tiered consent and establishment of biobanks to address these concerns.ConclusionsStudy findings highlighted the need for a review of the current regulatory guideline and the development of infrastructure to support the use of stored biological samples for future use among the research community in Malawi. At the moment, there are ethical and practical concerns arising from the collection, storage and secondary use of biological samples make it hard to reconcile scientific progress and the protection of participants. (shrink)

Collaboration on the First Edition of Spacetime Physics began in the mid-1960s when Edwin Taylor took a junior faculty sabbatical at Princeton University where John Wheeler was a professor. The resulting text emphasized the unity of spacetime and those quantities (such as proper time, proper distance, mass) that are invariant, the same for all observers, rather than those quantities (such as space and time separations) that are relative, different for different observers. The book has become a standard introduction to (...) relativity. The Second Edition of Spacetime Physics embodies what the authors have learned during an additional quarter century of teaching and research. They have updated the text to reflect the immense strides in physics during the same period and modernized and increased the number of exercises, for which the First Edition was famous. Enrichment boxes provide expanded coverage of intriguing topics. An enlarged final chapter on general relativity includes new material on gravity waves, black holes, and cosmology. The Second Edition of Spacetime Physics provides a new generation of readers with a deep and simple overview of the principles of relativity. (shrink)

From the publication of _Growing Up Absurd_ in 1960 until his death in 1972, Paul Goodman had the ear of the young radicals of the New Left, pouring forth books and articles on education, technology, decentralization, and of course, the war in Vietnam. Yet Goodman saw himself primarily as an artist rather than a political thinker or sociologist, and many of his books, even during the 1960s, were works of poetry, drama, and fiction. He had also practiced as a psychotherapist (...) and joined with Frederick Perls and Ralph Hefferkine in producing a new synthesis in psychological thought, Gestalt therapy, which has since become an international movement. In an age of specialization, few writers have taken on so braod a range of concerns. _Crazy Hope and Finite Experience_ is the final summing up of the thought and life of a self-described "old-fashioned man of letters." This book brings together for the first time five personal essays, all written near the end of his life, in which Goodman discusses his sense of the world and how he was "in" it, his politics, his spiritual and religious attitude, his sexuality, and his calling as a literary artist. For those already familiar with one or another aspect of his work, Goodman's self-assessment will provide new insight into the credo that underlies his whole career. For those learning about him for the first time, it offers a vivid sense of the man and his perspective. And for psychotherapists - especially Gestalt therapists - the book will fill in the picture of Goodman as a theorist whose work was crucial to the development of a new approach to therapy. (shrink)

Lucretius' Epicurean poem De Rerum Natura made a fundamental and lasting contribution to the language of Latin philosophy. In this book Barnaby Taylor offers an in-depth reconstruction of core features of Epicurean linguistic theory, and a new understanding of Lucretius' linguistic innovation and creativity.

Legal prohibitions on the financial compensation of donors are frequently justified by appealing either to concerns about patient safety or to concerns about the putatively unethical nature of such compensation. But jurisdictions that legally prohibit the financial compensation of donors routinely import plasma that has been collected from financially compensated donors—and they do so knowing its origins. I outline some possible ways in which this puzzle could be resolved and find them all wanting. Focusing on Canada I draw upon public (...) documents to explain how many provinces came to have its apparently puzzling approach to plasma procurement. I then argue that the actions of those who support this approach to plasma procurement are immoral. (shrink)

This thesis argues that the strongest account of moral rights entails that animals and other marginal cases hold rights. The thesis contends that mutual advantage social contract theories offer the strongest account of rights from a security perspective, and that such theories entail rights for animals and marginal cases. Both of these claims are widely contested. Chapter 1 examines the fundamental elements of a social contract theory as developed by Hobbes and Hume. Chapter 2 revises the fundamental elements of contract (...) theory to make them more persuasive, and derives from them an account of rights for animals and marginal cases. Chapter 3 examines the most plausible competing accounts of rights for animals and marginal cases: utilitarianism, neo-Kantianism, and capability theory. Chapter 4 argues that the mutual advantage account of rights is better than the leading competitors from a security perspective. (shrink)

What is cruelty? What makes some people cruel? Under what conditions can cruelty grow? Taylor draws together aspects of psychology, sociology, philosophy, and her own field of neuroscience, illustrated with examples from history and the arts, in this thoughtful exploration of the nature and origins of cruelty, and how we might seek to reduce it.

The age of information, media, and virtuality is transforming every aspect of human experience. Questions that have long haunted the philosophical imagination are becoming urgent practical concerns: Where does the natural end and the artificial begin? Is there a difference between the material and the immaterial? In his new work, Mark C. Taylor extends his ongoing investigation of postmodern worlds by critically examining a wide range of contemporary cultural practices. Nothing defines postmodernism so well as its refusal of depth, (...) its emphasis on appearance and spectacle, its tendency to collapse a three-dimensional world in which image and reality are distinct into a two-dimensional world in which they merge. The postmodern world, Taylor argues, is a world of surfaces, and the postmodern condition is one of profound superficiality. For many cultural commentators, postmodernism's inescapable play of surfaces is cause for despair. Taylor, on the other hand, shows that the disappearance of depth in postmodern culture is actually a liberation repleat with creative possibilities. Taylor introduces readers to a popular culture in which detectives--the postmodern heroes of Paul Auster and Dennis Potter--lift surfaces only to find more surfaces, and in which fashion advertising plays transparency against hiding. Taylor looks at the contemporary preoccupation with body piercing and tattooing, and asks whether these practices actually reveal or conceal. Phrenology and skin diseases, the "religious" architecture of Las Vegas, the limitless spread of computer networks--all are brought within the scope of Taylor's brilliant analysis. Postmodernism, he shows, has given us a new sense of the superficial, one in which the issue is not the absence of meaning but its uncontrollable, ecstatic proliferation. Embodying the very tendencies it analyzes, Hiding is unique. Conceived and developed with well-known designers Michael Rock and Susan Sellars, this work transgresses the boundary that customarily separates graphic design from the story within a text. The product of nearly three decades of reflection and writing, Hiding opens a window on contemporary culture. To follow the remarkable course Taylor charts is to see both our present and past differently and to encounter a future as disorienting as it is alluring. (shrink)

Being a medically qualified patient can be an unpleasant experience for a person who is used to making decisions. For the most part, this applies to the vast majority of doctors and other healthcare professionals. Becoming passive and surrendering the decision-making process to others is alien to the medical culture we were taught. However, when as a hospitalised medically qualified patient, one sees fellow patients in difficulty, or deteriorating clinically, unnoticed by medical staff, the question of whether it is ethical (...) to intervene arises. I report my views on this as a largely passive, but still actively thinking patient. (shrink)

With fundamentalists dominating the headlines and scientists arguing about the biological and neurological basis of faith, religion is the topic of the day. But religion, Mark C. Taylor shows, is more complicated than either its defenders or critics think and, indeed, is much more influential than any of us realize. Our world, Taylor maintains, is shaped by religion even when it is least obvious. Faith and value, he insists, are unavoidable and inextricably interrelated for believers and nonbelievers alike. (...) Using scientific theories of dynamical systems and complex adaptive networks for cultural and theological analysis, After God redefines religion for our contemporary age. Taylor begins by asking a critical question: What is religion? He then proceeds to explain how Protestant ideas in particular undergird the character and structure of our global information society—the Reformation, Taylor argues, was an information and communications revolution that effectively prepared the way for the media revolution at the end of the twentieth century. Taylor’s breathtaking account of religious ideas allows us to understand for the first time that contemporary notions of atheism and the secular are already implicit in classical Christology and Trinitarian theology. Weaving together theoretical analysis and historical interpretation, Taylor demonstrates the codependence and coevolution of traditional religious beliefs and practices with modern literature, art, architecture, information technologies, media, financial markets, and theoretical biology. After God concludes with prescriptions for new ways of thinking and acting. If we are to negotiate the perils of the twenty-first century, Taylor contends, we must refigure the symbolic networks that inform our policies and guide our actions. A religion without God creates the possibility of an ethics without absolutes that leads to the promotion of creativity and life in an ever more fragile world. The first comprehensive theology of culture since the pioneering work of Paul Tillich, After God is a radical reconceptualization of religion and Taylor’s most pathbreaking work yet, bringing together various strands of theological argument and cultural analysis four decades in the making. (shrink)

In this book, Taylor argues that the traditional dissemination of moral values is now insufficient and inadequate. This deficiency requires a dramatic shift of the burden of this activity from the religious institutions to the public schools. Thus, Taylor proposes both a curriculum and a methodology for public moral education.

Author discusses the problem of certainty in the universe and how far science can go in explaining all of human experience.

In the fall of 2005, Mark C. Taylor, the controversial public intellectual and widely respected scholar, suddenly fell critically ill. For two days a team of forty doctors, many of whom thought he would not live, fought to save him. Taylor would eventually recover, but only to face a new threat: surgery for cancer. "These experiences have changed me in ways I am still struggling to understand," Taylor writes in this absorbing memoir. "After the past year, I (...) am persuaded that I have done enough fieldwork to write a book that combines philosophical and theological reflection with autobiographical narrative. Writing is not only possible but actually seems necessary." _Field Notes from Elsewhere_ is Taylor's unforgettable, inverted journey from death to life. Each of his memoir's fifty-two chapters and accompanying photographs recounts a morning-to-evening experience with sickness and convalescence, mingling humor and hope with a deep exploration of human frailty and, conversely, resilience. When we confront the end of life, Taylor explains, the axis of the lived world shifts, and everything must be reevaluated. As Taylor sorts through his remembrances, much that once seemed familiar becomes strange, paradoxical, and contradictory. He reads his experience with and against ghosts from his past, recasting the meaning of mortality, sacrifice, solitude, and abandonment, along with a host of other issues, in light of modern ways of dying. "You never come back from elsewhere," Taylor concludes, "because elsewhere always comes back with you.". (shrink)

Mark C. Taylor recounts a poignant love affair not with a person but with a place that, paradoxically, cannot be easily localized. For many years, Taylor has lived in the Berkshire Mountains, where he writes and creates land art and sculpture. In a world of mobile screens and virtual realities, where speed is the measure of success and place is disappearing, his work slows down thought and brings life back to earth to give readers time to ponder the (...) importance of place before it slips away. Taylor extends reflection beyond the page and returns with new insights about what is hiding in plain sight all around us. Weaving together words, objects, and images, his artful work enacts what it describes. Things long familiar suddenly appear strange, and the strange, unexpected, and unprogrammed unsettle readers in surprising ways. This timely meditation gives pause in the midst of harried lives and turns attention toward what we usually overlook: night, silence, touch, grace, ghosts, water, earth, stones, bones, idleness, infinity, slowness, and contentment. Recovering Place is a unique work that lingers long after the book is closed. (shrink)

In this system, the properties of space were believed to be in accord with the geometry of Euclid ; and one might have expected that the correctness of the ...

In this 1970 introduction to philosophy Mr Taylor concentrates on two central topics - explanation and meaning. He takes the argument far enough to acquaint the reader first-hand with the methods and approach of analytical philosophy, and yet because of the scope of these two topics he is able to introduce many of the traditional philosophical problems in epistemology, metaphysics, ethics, aesthetics, and logic. By this approach he avoids the dangers both of superficiality and of undue technicality. Philosophers are (...) concerned to analyse and describe certain concepts and modes of argument, not to establish facts or conclusions of any sort that can be tested by formal demonstration or controlled observation; their findings cannot be conveniently categorized or graded into a comprehensive and progressive course of studies. Mr Taylor meets this difficulty with his extended discussions of specific topics and questions which have implications over the whole subject. (shrink)

Historically, it has been presumed that being an experienced researcher was enough in itself to guarantee effective supervision. This has always been a dubious presumption, and it has become an untenable one in the light of global developments in the doctorate itself and in the candidate population which have transformed demands upon expectations of supervisors. This handbook will assist both new and experienced supervisors to respond to these changes. Divided into six parts the book looks at the following issues: * (...) Changing contexts of doctoral supervision * Recruiting, selecting and working with doctoral candidates * Supporting the research project * Supporting candidates of all nationalities and academic backgrounds * Supporting completion of projects and examination * Evaluation and dissemination of practice. A Handbook for Doctoral Supervisors focuses on the practical needs of supervisors, draws examples from a wide range of countries and uses self-interrogation as a means of encouraging readers to reflect upon their practice, making it an essential read for anyone involved in doctoral supervision. (shrink)

At the age of sixty, Cory Taylor was dying of melanoma-related brain cancer. With her illness no longer treatable, she began at the start of 2016 to write about her experiences and, in an extraordinary creative surge, wrote what would become Dying: A Memoir. This is a brief and clear-eyed account of what dying taught Cory: amid the tangle of her feelings, she reflects on the patterns of her life, and remembers the lives and deaths of her parents. She (...) tells us why she would like to be able to choose the circumstances of her own death.Dying is about the vulnerability and strength, courage and humility, anger and acceptance that it takes to live a good life and say goodbye to it in peace. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Mensonge MélodramatiqueTriangular Desire in Sense and SensibilityMatthew Taylor (bio)The Passions are perfectly unknown to her; she rejects even a speaking acquaintance with that stormy Sisterhood; even to the Feelings she vouchsafes no more than an occasional graceful but distant recognition; too frequent converse with them would ruffle the smooth elegance of her progress. Her business is not half so much with the human heart as with the human (...) eyes, mouth, hands and feet; what sees keenly, speaks aptly, moves flexibly, it suits her to study, but what throbs fast and full, though hidden, what the blood rushes through, what is the unseen seat of Life and the sentient target of Death—this Miss Austen ignores.—Charlotte Brontë1"Oh! mama, how spiritless, how tame was Edward's manner in reading to us last night! I felt for my sister most severely. Yet she bore it with so much composure, she seemed scarcely to notice it. I could hardly keep my seat. To hear those beautiful lines which have frequently almost driven me wild, pronounced with such impenetrable calmness, such dreadful indifference!" [End Page 189]—Marianne in Sense and Sensibility2Charlotte Brontë had probably not read Sense and Sensibility (SS) before making her famous indictment of Jane Austen above, otherwise she would have found herself prophetically, and mercilessly, parodied through the character of Marianne Dashwood.3 Marianne's critique of Edward above matches Brontë's denunciation with uncanny precision. Marianne, the "stormy sister" of the novel, carries on in the same vein through most of it. What she proclaims as passionate sensibility comes off instead as, at varying times, snooty, self-indulgent, exhibitionist, and histrionic. Marianne even assumes the role of Brontë's "sentient target of Death" not long after she is cruelly jilted by Willoughby, when she wanders listlessly outdoors in the damp. It is not unlike Jane Eyre's numb wanderings when she flees Thornfield and Rochester. This "acting out" by Marianne comes close to killing her.Marianne's romantic "sensibility" contrasts with her sister Elinor's "sense." Yet, of course, readers of SS will come to know that Elinor can feel just as deeply and passionately as Marianne; she just has to conceal it. Elinor can suffer as much, too, only without the luxury of wearing it on dew-drenched sleeves. Thus, we have the thematic frame of the novel, suggested in the title. As Austen's first published novel, SS is brilliant, mature, and confident. One weakness seems to be a Brontëan one, the melodramatic coincidence in the plot that connects Colonel Brandon's secret life of compassion to Willoughby's secret sins. Otherwise, SS sits very well alongside Austen's other five masterpieces.4From the perspective of René Girard's mimetic theory, mimesis comes out with a bang in SS.5 Not only is Marianne a principal character in Austen's first canonical novel, but her romantic sensibility is thematized in the title.6 "Sensibility" for Marianne is feeling, unmediated desire expressed in unrestrained language and impulsive action. Yet Marianne's actions are anything but unmediated, and they are compulsive rather than impulsive. Even when she finally overcomes the worst symptoms under the influence of Elinor, and even though we do develop genuine sympathy for her, Marianne never comes to any deep self-knowledge. Marianne perfectly encapsulates Girard's mensonge romantique, or "romantic lie."Implying that Marianne is a liar is not a comfortable stance, and not just because we may be fond of her, but because she is open and sincere—to a fault. Yet just because Marianne is honest about her feelings, it does not follow that she is accurate about them. In fact, this is often a problem in interpreting Marianne: Her self-characterization is accepted uncritically.7 From that basis, she is framed, somewhat understandably, as representing one side of a moral debate about sensibility.8 Austen is seen as being for it, or against it, or working out some sort of accommodation. Austen is further assessed as having done [End Page 190] so well, or badly, or indifferently, as the case may be. Then Austen is seen as conforming to cultural standards, or challenging... (shrink)

¡PRESENTE! investigates the many answers to a seemingly simple question: What does it mean to be present? Performance studies scholar Diana Taylor answers that question by offering an expansive explication of presence as both ethical command and performative knowledge production. Taking the histories of state violence, colonialism, and imperialism as her starting point, Taylor situates being ¡Presente! as an embodied and performed practice of standing alongside those harmed by historical and ongoing violence. Noting that Present/e is simultaneously single (...) and plural in English and Spanish, and drawing on Jean Luc Nancy's formulation of being singular plural, Taylor asks how presence is imbricated in questions of subject formation and collectivity. She begins with reframing the racialization of Latin Americans as a coming into presence through colonial conquest-a presence not as subjects but as subjugated objects-and asks what was made absent through this racialized process. For Taylor, the epistemicide of Indigenous, Native, and African ways of knowing stands at the center of this process of presence and absence. To counter this ongoing epistemicide, Taylor situates ¡Presente! as a performative and decolonial mode of knowledge production that decenters European Enlightenment traditions and seriously takes up Native, Indigenous, and African ways of knowledge and temporality. Grounded in performance studies, this book links knowledge to action as a doing practice, or what Taylor calls a "peripatetic strategy" that emphasis movement in learning. This book offers an expansive theory of ¡Presente! in various locations and situations: the original colonial conquest of Columbus and the Spanish; the May 1968 student protests; a study in Zapatistan autonomy; the 43 disappeared students of Ayotzinapa; queer histories of Mexico; and the former torture centers of the Pinochet dictatorship. Throughout these varied locations, Taylor weaves a methodology, theory, and practice of ¡Presente!. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of performance studies, Latin American studies, American studies, critical ethnic studies, colonial, decolonial, and postcolonial studies, and queer theory. (shrink)

The Arabic philosophical tradition played an important role in the formation of theological, philosophical and scientific thought in medieval Europe subsequent to the translations from Arabic into Latin in the 12th and 13th centuries. The influence of that Arabic classical rationalist tradition in works by al-Farabi, Avicenna, Averroes and the Liber de causis is evident in the thought of Thomas Aquinas, though the breadth and depth of that influence is often insufficiently noted and explained by scholars of Aquinas. This course (...) focuses on the metaphysics, epistemology and psychology of Aquinas in the development of his philosophical conceptions of soul and intellect in the context of his use of sources in Aristotle and works by philosophers of the Arabic tradition, particularly Avicenna and Averroes. Readings are selected from writings from each of the four major periods of his career starting with his first major work, the Commentary on the Sentences. The course was planned to be taught at Marquette, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven and the Universidad Panamericana as a hybrid course. That is, it was taught using online tools and resources and also in the classroom with face-to-face meetings once per week. And it was taught at Marquette, KU Leuven and the Universidad Panamericana simultaneously. On Thursdays students met online with video and audio for questions and discussion with Profs. Taylor, Robiglio and López-Farjeat and the student groups in Milwaukee, Leuven and Mexico City live. (shrink)

Beginning with his mancounters and exploring their temporality, materiality, and spatiality, the author explains in vivid detail how gaming as a gendered practice becomes possible. The author is interested in (and does really well) grounding gaming as gendered practice. Specifically, the author looks at gaming sites, humans and non-humans, infrastructures, power relations and the conditions that enables gaming a social activity. He is looking at the material conditions that make possible the phenomenological experiences and mobilities of certain kinds of subjects. (...) He connects home to gaming sites to colleges to clouds to gaming conventions and accomplishes this as a talented story-teller, which I appreciate as a scholar, reader, and teacher... Gender and the Grounds of Gaming is brilliant work, to begin with." - Ergin Bulut, author of A Precarious Game: The Illusion of Dream Jobs in the Video Game Industry Places provided for digital game play like remote gaming setups, campus computer labs, esports arenas, and convention centers, the overall cultures of video game play, spectatorship, and production are characterized by stark gender disparities. Despite new franchises, platforms, and initiatives expanding games beyond their conventional audience of young, cis-het white men, gaming still feels off limits or unsafe for many. Gender and the Grounds of Gaming explores the physical places, any physical context in which games are played or observed, where games are played and how they contribute to the persistence of gaming's problematic gender politics. Through a series of case studies that document the gender dynamics of the various sites where video games literally take and make place, author Nicholas Taylor unpacks questions about how place matters to digital play, how issues in gaming cultures and politics are perpetuated through particular arrangements of bodies, technologies, spaces, and infrastructures. In charting the connections between place, masculinities, and play, Gender and the Grounds of Gaming makes space for marginalized perspectives, practices, and populations in gaming cultures. (shrink)

This presents several texts dealing with the philosophic view of The Gods and their providential relationship with manifestation. It includes, - Sallust, On The Gods and the World; The Pythagoric Sentences of Demophilus; Taurus, On the Eternity of the World; The Thema Mundi of Julius Firmicus Maternus; The Emperor Julian's Oration to the Mother of the Gods; and To the Sovereign Sun; Synesius' On Providence; and two essays by Taylor, On the Mythology of the Greeks; and On the Theology (...) of the Greeks. An indispensable and accessible introduction to Greek theology. (shrink)

At the core of Swedenborg’s thought is the understanding that our purpose in this life is to progress spiritually—to learn, to grow, to do good works, and, ultimately, to allow as much of God’s love as possible to enter into us and manifest through us. Scattered throughout his works are descriptions of our mind and how it relates to both the physical and spiritual worlds. In this book, Taylor pulls these loose threads together and weaves them into a simple, (...) coherent whole, presenting Swedenborg’s teachings as a system that anyone can follow. Taylor describes the external or natural mind as primarily concerned with material things, and the inner mind, in its essence, as love. As we elevate our thoughts toward higher and higher types of love and wisdom, we draw closer to God and begin the process of regeneration, or rebirth as spiritual beings. This is the first time in many decades that a book has been published on Swedenborg’s philosophy of the mind. Taylor’s straightforward commentary gives readers a rare insight into this crucial aspect of Swedenborg’s theology. (shrink)