Jan Olof Bengtsson

Making the Decision to Be Free

Harper Collins, 1995   Amazon

Front and Back Flaps:

One of the foremost inspirational leaders of our time and the author of the bestselling Real Magic and the classic Your Erroneous Zones encourages readers to look inside themselves for sustenance and to move to a new level of self-awareness where they are free to experience the joys of spiritual living.

In Your Sacred Self, Dr. Wayne W. Dyer, whose previous books have touched the lives of millions, teaches readers how to tap into the power of their higher selves and live each of their days, regardless of what they are doing, with a greater sense of peace and fulfillment.

Developing the sacred self, Dr. Dyer explains, brings an understanding of our place in the world and a sense of satisfaction in ourselves and others. In Your Sacred Self, Dr. Dyer offers a three-step program that helps readers establish a spiritually oriented, rather than an ego-oriented, approach to life. Step by step Dr. Dyer shows us how to progress from emotional awareness to psychological insight to spiritual alternatives in order to change one’s experience of life from the need to acquire to a sense of abundance, from a sense of oneself as sinful and inferior to a sense of oneself as divine, from a need to achieve and acquire to an awareness that detachment and letting go bring freedom.

Your Sacred Self is an inspiring, hopeful, illuminating guide that can help everyone live a happier, richer, more meaningful life.

Back Cover:

“Wayne Dyer is one of America’s foremost teachers of transformational wisdom. In Your Sacred Self, he continues to guide us toward spiritual liberation.”  Marianne Williamson

“Wayne Dyer takes us on a sacred journey where the spirit triumphs over the ego. This book will serve as an extremely valuable guide to all those who seek the exultation of the spiritual experience and who value total freedom as the ultimate goal of life.”  Deepak Chopra

“I was mesmerized by the beauty and wisdom in Your Sacred Self. Wayne Dyer has written a book that is as meaningful, spiritually on-target, and engrossing as any I’ve ever read in my life. This is sure to go on that very small shelf reserved for classic works.”  Louise L. Hay

“In Wayne Dyer’s newest book he has given us the final ‘to do’, and that is to get outside of ourselves and stop selfishness by getting into other people and making them worthwhile. The sacred quest to that final freedom is the most important thing we’ll ever do in our lives.”  Pat Riley

“Wayne Dyer’s inspiring new book is a treasure of love and spiritual wisdom.”  Barbara De Angelis

About the Author:

Wikipedia

JOB’s Comment:

The Wayne Dyer Phenomenon

Dialogos, 2016 (gå köp)

Totalitarian Temptations in Free Societies

Encounter Books, 2016 (go buy at encounterbooks.com)

Publisher’s Presentation:

Ryszard Legutko lived and suffered under communism for decades – and he fought with the Polish anti-communist movement to abolish it. Having lived for two decades under a liberal democracy, however, he has discovered that these two political systems have a lot more in common than one might think. They both stem from the same historical roots in early modernity, and accept similar presuppositions about history, society, religion, politics, culture, and human nature.

In The Demon in Democracy, Legutko explores the shared objectives between these two political systems, and explains how liberal democracy has over time lurched towards the same goals as communism, albeit without Soviet style brutalality.

Both systems, says Legutko, reduce human nature to that of the common man, who is led to believe himself liberated from the obligations of the past. Both the communist man and the liberal democratic man refuse to admit that there exists anything of value outside the political systems to which they pledged their loyalty. And both systems refuse to undertake any critical examination of their ideological prejudices.

About the Author:

Ryszard Legutko is a professor of philosophy at Jagellonian University in Krakow, Poland, specializing in ancient philosophy and political theory. His most recent book is on the philosophy of Socrates. He has served as the Minister of Education, Secretary of State in the Chancellery of the late President Lech Kaczynski, and Deputy Speaker of the Senate and is active in the anti-communist movement in Poland. He is currently a Member of the European Parliament, Deputy Chairman of the Parliamentary Group of European Conservatives and Reformists, and a member of the Foreign Affairs Committee.

Rider, 1970 (1952)

Back Cover:

Dr Brunton, whose works are best-sellers in a dozen languages, was born in London in 1898.

During a successful career in journalism, he developed an interest in comparative religion, mysticism and philosophy. He has travelled extensively in the Orient, living among yogis, mystics and holy men. He is one of the few students of the East who have the ability to illuminate his understanding for the reader.

This book concentrates upon the plight of mankind today, and upon the possibilities of a solution to the problems that beset the world. Dr Brunton admits that the advances made in technology and science, the results of which now threaten our very existence, are inevitable and even necessary. But, as he explains, it is because these advances have been made regardless of the true needs of humanity that their goodness has turned to evil.

In his approach to these great issues Dr Brunton traces the concept of God from that of primitive superstition to the most elaborately philosophical, and then describes what his own mystical experience have taught him about the true nature of God and about man’s relationship to it. Now he believes it is a matter of the greatest urgency that we should transcend mere intellectualism by an awakening of our power of intuition, because this is the voice of the Soul or Overself, and the essential link between God and man. We must submit to this voice if we are to save ourselves from chaos and destruction.

Edinburgh University Press, 2000

Back Cover:

“An original project, both in its conception and execution. The authors have risen magnificently to the challenge…(they) write as acknowledged experts in the field; but while they draw on their own previous work, they extend and deepen it by asking many new questions.”  Peter Nicholson, University of York

“A first-rate contribution to contemporary scholarship on the British Idealists…What makes the book especially valuable is the attempt to relate the work of the British Idealists to concerns in contemporary political philosophy or to major figures in modern philosophy outside the Idealist movement.”  Professor William Sweet, St Francis Xavier University, Canada

British Idealism – influenced by the character of German Idealist thought at the end of the eighteenth century, developed by Kant, Fichte and Hegel – began to establish its roots during the middle of the nineteenth century and rapidly became the dominant British philosophy. It began to be challenged at the turn of the century by philosophers including Bertrand Russell and by the end of the First World War it was on the retreat, although its philosophical reverberations are still evident. Testimony to this fact is the considerable renaissance in all aspects of Idealist studies, and particularly in the works of its most recent twentieth-century exponents Michael Oakeshott and R.G. Collingwood.

This book offers an introduction to British Idealism through a study of each of the seven key thinkers – T. H. Green, Bernard Bosanquet, F. H. Bradley, Henry Jones, David Ritchie, R. G. Collingwood and Michael Oakeshott. It explores the background religious, political, moral, ideological and economic themes which underpin the work of the thinkers and shows the relevance of their philosophy – with the emphasis on social cohesiveness and the relationship between individual and collective responsibility – to current politics.

Written by two of the leading experts in the field, this is a valuable text that will introduce the theory of British Idealism to a broad range of readers.

Contents:

Introduction

1.  T. H. Green: Citizenship as Political and Metaphysical

2.  F. H. Bradley: Ethical Idealism and Hedonism

3.  Bernard Bosanquet: The Sociology of Philosophy and the Philosophy of Sociology

4.  David Ritchie: Evolution and the Limits of Rights

5.  Henry Jones: Beyond Socialism and Liberalism

6.  R. G. Collingwood: The Enemy Within and the Crisis of Civilization

7.  Michael Oakeshott: The Non-Economic Character of Civil Association

About the Authors:

David Boucher is Professor of Political Theory at Cardiff University. Andrew Vincent is Professor of Political Theory at the University of Sheffield.

Wie der Westen Syrien ins Chaos stürzte

C. H. Beck, 2017

Kurzbeschreibung:

Wo liegen die Wurzeln der syrischen Katastrophe? Das gängige Bild sieht die Schuld einseitig bei Assad und seinen Verbündeten, insbesondere Russland. Dass auch der Westen einen erheblichen Anteil an Mitschuld trägt, ist kaum zu hören oder zu lesen. Michael Lüders erzählt den fehlenden Teil der Geschichte, der alles in einem anderen Licht erscheinen lässt.

Anhand von freigegebenen Geheimdienstdokumenten und geleakten Emails von Entscheidungsträgern zeigt er, wie und warum die USA und ihre Verbündeten seit Beginn der Revolte ausgerechnet Dschihadisten mit Waffen beliefern – in einem Umfang wie seit dem Ende des Vietnamkrieges nicht mehr. Dadurch haben sie die innersyrische Gewalt ebenso befeuert wie auch den Stellvertreterkrieg zwischen den USA und Russland. Eindringlich beschreibt Lüders, wie insbesondere Washington schon seit langem nur auf eine günstige Gelegenheit wartete, das Assad-Regime zu stürzen. Dabei behandelt er auch frühere amerikanische Putschversuche in Syrien in den 1940er und 1950er Jahren, die fehlschlugen und erklären, warum sich Damaskus der Sowjetunion zuwandte. Die Kehrseite dieser Politik des Regimewechsels erlebt gegenwärtig vor allem Europa: mit der Flüchtlingskrise und einer erhöhten Terrorgefahr durch radikale Islamisten.

Über den Autor:

Michael Lüders war lange Jahre Nahost-Korrespondent der Hamburger Wochenzeitung Die Zeit und kennt alle Länder der Region aus eigener Anschauung. Als Islamexperte ist er häufiger Gast in Hörfunk und Fernsehen.

The Career of a Concept

Northern Illinois University Press, 2015

Publisher’s Description:

What does it mean to label someone a fascist? Today, it is equated with denouncing him or her as a Nazi. But as intellectual historian Paul E. Gottfried writes in this provocative yet even-handed study, the term’s meaning has evolved over the years. Gottfried examines the semantic twists and turns the term has endured since the 1930s and traces the word’s polemical function within the context of present ideological struggles. Like “conservatism,” “liberalism,” and other words whose meanings have changed with time, “fascism” has been used arbitrarily over the years and now stands for a host of iniquities that progressives, multiculturalists, and libertarians oppose, even if they offer no single, coherent account of the historic evil they condemn.

Certain factors have contributed to the term’s imprecise usage, Gottfried writes, including the equation of all fascisms with Nazism and Hitler, as well as the rise of a post-Marxist left that expresses predominantly cultural opposition to bourgeois society and its Christian and/or national components. Those who stand in the way of social change are dismissed as “fascist,” he contends, an epithet that is no longer associated with state corporatism and other features of fascism that were once essential but are now widely ignored. Gottfried outlines the specific historical meaning of the term and argues that it should not be used indiscriminately to describe those who hold unpopular opinions. His important study will appeal to political scientists, intellectual historians, and general readers interested in politics and history.

Reviews:

“Gottfried brings vast erudition and interpretive nuance to the subject of fascism. This book is a significant contribution to the fields of political thought and European history.”  Jeff Taylor, Dordt College

“Gottfried’s study is particular, nuanced, and multifaceted…a model for the type of work that can earn the right a hearing from more attentive audiences.”  The American Conservative

“Fascism is a meticulously researched primer on the true history of one of the world’s worst ideologies. Upon finishing the book, readers will emerge with a firmer understanding of history, philosophy, and the ways in which words shape culture and reality.”  Jay Lehr, The Heartland Institute

“Fascism is a book of remarkable scholarship and sensitivity regarding some exceedingly complex ideas. Gottfried’s navigation of the ins and outs of the interwar ideological quarrels in Italy and France is especially masterful.”  Robert Weissberg, University of Illinois Urbana–Champaign

About the Author:

Paul E. Gottfried is the retired Horace Raffensperger Professor of Humanities at Elizabethtown College and a Guggenheim recipient. He is the author of numerous books, including The Search for Historical Meaning (NIU Press, 2010) and, most recently, Leo Strauss and the Conservative Movement in America.