Once Upon a Time in the West: Essays on the Politics of Thought and Imagination

Politics & Social Sciences

Zwicky, Jan

Philosophy

McGill-Queen's University Press

Western civilization is over. So begins Jan Zwicky’s trenchant exploration of the root of global cultural and ecological collapse: a way of thinking that is also linked to some of the West’s most noted achievements.The Renaissance merged imperial enterprise with Islamic algebra and recently recovered Greek mathematics to precipitate mechanized industry and resource extraction; these in turn made possible the growth of capitalism, the military-industrial complex, and Big Technology. Despite its self-image as objective, Zwicky argues, the West’s style of thought is not politically neutral, but intensely anthropocentric. It has led those who adopt it to regard the more-than-human world as nothing more than timber licences and drilling sites, where value is not recognized unless it is monetized. Oblivious to context and blind to big-picture thinking, it analyzes, mechanizes, digitizes, and systematizes, while rejecting empathy and compassion as distorting influences. Lyric comprehension, in Zwicky’s view, offers an alternative to this way of thinking, and she provides a wide range of examples. Once upon a Time in the West documents how a narrow epistemological style has left Western thought blind to critical features of reality, and how the terrifying consequences of that blinkered vision are now beginning to unfold.

Alkibiades' Love: Essays in Philosophy

Alkibiades, a central character in Plato's Symposium, claims that philosophy touches him to the quick. When Socrates speaks, he's often moved to tears and realizes he must change his life. In Alkibiades' Love, Jan Zwicky demonstrates that this image of philosophy is not anachronistic, but remains the living heart of the discipline. Philosophy can indeed matter to our lives, but for it to do so, we must reconceive the methods that, since the Enlightenment, have dominated its self-image in the West. In these meticulously researched essays, Zwicky argues that analytic and poststructuralist philosophy are not simply fashions in academic discourse, but are manifestations of the technocracy which they sustain and promote. The alternative she develops, by showing it in action, is lyric philosophy - an integrated mode of understanding whose foundations lie in the way we comprehend music and metaphor. Written in lucid and powerful prose, Alkibiades' Love will interest a broad readership, from students of ancient Greek philosophy to ecologists seeking a coherent foundation for their work. Zwicky offers deep and original readings of Freud, Plato, and Simone Weil, and resuscitates Max Wertheimer's work, linking it to our comprehension of mathematics, metaphor, and ecological structures. Zwicky has been hailed as one of the most important and original thinkers of our time. Alkibiades' Love illuminates and extends her groundbreaking work while providing an accessible introduction for those coming to her thought for the first time.

The Experience of Meaning

The aim of this book is a recovery of interest in the experience of meaning. Jan Zwicky defends the claim that we experience meaning in the apprehension of wholes and their internal structural relations, providing examples of such insight in mathematics and physics, literature, music, and Plato's ancient theory of forms. Taken together, these essays constitute a powerful indictment of the aggressive reductionism and the reliance on calculative modes of thought that dominate our present conception of understanding. The Experience of Meaning proposes a more just epistemology, arguing for a new grammar of thought, a new way of understanding the relationship of human intelligence to the world. Engaging with philosophy, psychology, literature, fine arts, music, and environmental studies in a profound way, The Experience of Meaning will interest any reader who ponders the question of meaning and its relation to true human expression.

"The Long Walk carries a lifetime's force of meaning. A deeply beautiful book." Anne Michaels
 In The Long Walk, Jan Zwicky bears witness to environmental and cultural cataclysm. Both prophetic and acutely personal, these poems extend her previous meditations on colonial barbarism and ecocide, on spiritual catastrophe and transformation. The voice now penetrates the steepest darknesses; it possesses extraordinary reach and density. Zwicky is one of North America's finest poets, and in this book she gives us her most profound work to date.

The Long Walk (Oskana Poetry and Poetics, 2)

Literature & Fiction

Literary

University of Regina Press

In this powerful little book, two leading intellectuals illuminate the truth about where our environmental crisis is taking us. Writing from an island on Canada’s Northwest coast, Robert Bringhurst and Jan Zwicky weigh in on the death of the planet versus the death of the individual. For Zwicky, awareness and humility are the foundation of the equanimity with which Socrates faced his death: he makes a good model when facing the death of the planet, as well as facing our own mortality. Bringhurst urges readers to tune their minds to the wild. The wild has healed the world before, and it is the only thing that stands any chance of healing the world now – though it is unlikely to save Homo sapiens in the process.

Learning to Die: Wisdom in the Age of Climate Crisis

Bringhurst, Robert

A collection of ten Renaissance Italian poems, complemented by contemporary English versions and photographs. This volume provides a unique visual and literary context for Italian poet Vittoria Colonna's classical, spiritual themes.

Vittoria Colonna: Selections from the Rime Spirituali with Photographs of Josep Maria Subirachs' Passion Façade

Arts & Photography

Photography & Video

Porcupine's Quill

Complex, intricately textured and polyphonic, this sequence of five long poems enacts the fulfilment of poetry and philosophy in one another. "In Schiller's terms, it is the elegiac longing for unity of soul and world, here expressed in some of the most beautiful poetry of 1986." -- Ronald B. Hatch, University of Toronto Quarterly

Wittgenstein Elegies

Poetry

Brick Books

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Books by Zwicky, Jan

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by Zwicky, Jan. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Once Upon a Time in the West: Essays on the Politics of Thought and Imagination

Once Upon a Time in the West: Essays on the Politics of Thought and Imagination

Alkibiades' Love: Essays in Philosophy

Alkibiades' Love: Essays in Philosophy

The Experience of Meaning

The Experience of Meaning

The Long Walk (Oskana Poetry and Poetics, 2)

Learning to Die: Wisdom in the Age of Climate Crisis

Vittoria Colonna: Selections from the Rime Spirituali with Photographs of Josep Maria Subirachs' Passion Façade

Wittgenstein Elegies