Bøger af Michael Steinberg

Sherlock Holmes is one of those iconic characters who have become so imbedded in our culture that he transcends space and time. Sir Arthur Conan Doyle and the currently popular series, Sherlock, have tried to kill off the famous character. So what is it about this colorful, egocentric, brilliant, conceited man that engages the imagination? Sherlock Holmes: Bird Dragging a Broken Wing explores one possible reason why Holmes can be "killed" over and over and still survive - along with his arch nemesis, Moriarty - to become the subject of yet another story. Be prepared to be amazed and awed, to delve into strange cultures, to meet characters almost as colorful and amazing as Holmes himself in this story about Sherlock Holmes. The author has boldly incorporated iconic figures from other tales, as well, weaving the fabric of a "never-when" world that will intrigue and entice, while titillating the imagination. Suspend disbelief as you enter a slightly anachronistic world in that moment between the sinking of the Titanic and before prohibition. Enter an era that was so brief in history, that if you blinked while reading your history text you would have missed it. Read, and learn the amazing number of futures that can be packed into a single moment.

In the culture of the modern West, we see ourselves as thinking subjects, defined by our conscious thought, autonomous and separate from each other and the world we survey. Current research in neurology and cognitive science shows that this picture is false. We think with our bodies, and in interaction with others, and our thought is never completed. The Fiction of a Thinkable World is a wide-ranging exploration of the meaning of this insight for our understanding of history, ethics, and politicsAmbitious but never overwhelming, carrying its immense learning lightly, The Fiction of a Thinkable World shows how the Western conception of the human subject came to be formed historically, how it contrasts with that of Eastern thought, and how it provides the basic justification for the institutions of liberal capitalism. The fiction of a world separated from each of us as we are separated from each other, from which we make our choices in solitary thought, is enacted by the voter in the voting booth and the consumer at the supermarket shelf. The structure of daily experience in capitalist society reinforces the fictions of the Western intellectual tradition, stunt human creativity, and create the illusion that the capitalist order is natural and unsurpassable.Steinberg's critique of the intellectual world of Western capitalism at the same time illuminates the paths that have been closed off in that world. It draws on Chinese ethics to show how our actions can be brought in accord with the world as it is, in its ever-changing interaction and mutual transformation, and sketches a radical political perspective that sheds the illusions of the Western model. Beautifully conceived and written, The Fiction of a Thinkable World provides new ways of thinking and opens new horizons.

This book is unique in its focus on bodily experience as an independent source of knowledge and insight, an important aspect of recent discoveries in neurology and psychology. By rethinking what it is to be human and what role self-consciousness plays, it finds striking points of intersection between science and religion and challenges readers to rediscover their spiritual connections to the physical world. Combining scientific rigor with the spiritual quest, A New Biology of Religion: Spiritual Practice and the Life of the Body reframes the science-religion debate. This profound work examines how all things are connected-both scientifically and spiritually-and shows how religious practices mirror the biological processes of life.

The modern world claims to inherit the values of the Enlightenment. Enlightenment Interrupted suggests a different genealogy. Instead of carrying on the Enlightenment it grew out of its suppression and forgetting, a founding act of bad faith and willed blindness that has haunted our world from its birth. In this groundbreaking analysis Michael Steinberg restores German Idealism to its rightful place as the culmination of the Enlightenment critique. Its great achievement was to move beyond the self-world dichotomy at the heart of Western thought. In the work of Fichte, especially, the recognition that all human life is the product of collective human activity had revolutionary implications. After 1815, however, in the aftermath of a quarter century of revolution, philosophers and politicians alike swept such challenges under the carpet. Modernity was thus founded in reaction. Lucidly written and accessible to non-specialists, Enlightenment Interrupted places the Idealists in the contexts of Romanticism, the brief contemporary openness to non-Western thought, and the political and social experimentation of the French Revolution. What followed was not a development of those tendencies but a retreat to the opposition of self and world and a drastic reduction in intellectual and social possibilities. This is one source of the collective impotence that sees the twenty-first century in a lockstep march to disaster

This study provides a fresh look at the debate between science and religion that documents how the experiences produced by spiritual practice are surprisingly consistent with the findings of modern biology, despite the difficulty in reconciling scientific theories and religious dogma.

Articulate and impassioned, sophisticated but never esoteric, Steinberg and Rothe offer invigorating reflections on music that will delight both the beginning and the seasoned listener.

Michael Steinberg follows his warmly received The Symphony: A Listener's Guide and The Concerto: A Listener's Guide, with Choral Masterworks: A Listener's Guide, a book of descriptive-analytical essays on the great masterpieces in the supremely inspiring repertoire for chorus and orchestra.

Discarding once and for all the discredited Cartesian dichotomy of mind and body, Steinberg considers the consequences of current research in neurology and cognitive science that show that people think with their bodies and in interaction with others. He considers the ways that the structures of daily experience in capitalist societies reinforce th

In The Symphony, renowned critic Michael Steinberg offers music lovers a monumental guide to this most celebrated of musical forms, with perceptive commentaries on some 118 works by 36 major composers.

A companion to his The Symphony: A Listener's Guide , Steinberg's new book covers the orchestral concerto repertoire from Bach to the present and featuring all instruments.