Feeling Our Feelings
:
What Philosophers Think and People Know
Eva Brann
Retail: $35.00. BACKLIST SALE PRICE $28.00
In Feeling Our Feelings, Eva Brann considers what the great philosophers on the passions and feelings have thought and written about them. She examines the relevant work of Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, Aquinas, Descartes, Spinoza, Adam Smith, Hume, Kierkegaard, and Heidegger, and also includes a chapter on contemporary studies on the brain. Feeling Our Feelings provides a comprehensive look at this pervasive and elusive topic.
"Feeling our feelings" comes from the words a little boy called Zeke said to me some thirty years ago when he was four. I was swinging him in a park in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and not doing it right. "Swing me higher," he said, "I want to feel my feelings." The phrase stuck with me; you might say it festered in my mind; it agitated questions: Why do we all want to feel our feelings, so generally that people "not in touch" with them are thought to be in need of therapy? What feeling was swinging high inducing? Was it an exultation of the body or an exhilaration of the soul? When he wanted to be feeling his feelings, was there a difference between the general feeling, the mere consciousness of being affected, and his particular feelings, the distinguishable affects?—as, when you sing a song, there is a difference between the singing done and the song sung—or is there? —Eva Brann, from her Preface
"A dazzling wealth of stimulating reflection and wise insight. To read Feeling Our Feelings is to relive one’s own early moments of intellectual awakening, with the all the advantages of age and experience. Eva Brann proves to be a most steady and enlightening guide on an inquiry into the relation between life and thought that few have pursued so thoroughly." —Susan Shell, Department of Political Science, Boston College
Eva Brann is a member of the senior faculty at St. John’s College in Annapolis, Maryland, where she has taught for fifty years. Brann holds an M.A. in Classics and a Ph.D. in Archaeology from Yale University. She is a 2005 recipient of the National Humanities Medal.
The Envisioned LifeEdited by Peter Kalkavage and Eric SalemAlso available in hardcover
Trade Paper,
383 pp.,
$24.95 |
To mark Eva Brann's fiftieth year on the faculty of St. John's College in Annapolis, Maryland, twenty-three of her colleagues, friends, and former students have contributed essays, poems, and art to The Envisioned Life. They celebrate Eva’s "passion for learning and her deep love of books, her breadth of knowledge and interests, her boundless energy, her mastery of the spoken and . . . [read more] |
The Envisioned LifeEdited by Peter Kalkavage and Eric SalemAlso available in paperback
Hardcover,
383 pp.,
$39.95 |
To mark Eva Brann's fiftieth year on the faculty of St. John's College in Annapolis, Maryland, twenty-three of her colleagues, friends, and former students have contributed essays, poems, and art to The Envisioned Life. They celebrate Eva’s "passion for learning and her deep love of books, her breadth of knowledge and interests, her boundless energy, her mastery of the spoken and . . . [read more] |
Fat WednesdayJohn Verdi
Trade Paper,
296 pp.,
$22.95 |
"Experiencing a change of aspect is characterized by our recognition that something has altered and nothing has altered." —from Fat Wednesday In Fat Wednesday, John Verdi probes how the inexplicable connections of words can help us understand the ever-changing connections of things that we actually see in everyday experience. In his pre . . . [read more] |
Homage to AmericansEva Brann
Trade Paper,
280 pp.,
$19.95 |
In Homage to Americans, her latest collection of essays and lectures, Eva Brann explores the roots and essence of our American ways. In "Mile-High Meditations," her flight's late departure from the Denver airport prompts a consideration of her manner of waiting (i.e., "being"). As she looks around, she notes (and compares to her own) the ways her fellow t . . . [read more] |
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378 pp.,
$24.95 |
In this collection of essays, Eva Brann talks with readers about the conversations Socrates has with his fellow Athenians. She shows how Plato's dialogues and the timeless matters they address remain important to us today. From introductory pieces on the Republic, the Phaedo, and the Sophist, to an account of the less well known Charmides, each essay starts w . . . [read more] |
Homeric MomentsEva BrannAlso available in hardcover
Trade Paper,
326 pp.,
$19.95 |
Fifty years of reading Homer — both alone and with students — prepared Eva Brann to bring the Odyssey and the Iliad back to life for today's readers. In Homeric Moments, she brilliantly conveys the unique delights of Homer's epics as she focuses on the crucial scenes, or moments, that mark the high points of the narratives: Penelope and Odysseus, faithful . . . [read more] |
Open Secrets / Inward ProspectsEva Brann
Hardcover,
435 pp.,
$24.95 |
In her latest book, Eva Brann has collected observations and aphorisms written over more than thirty years. Open Secrets / Inward Prospects divides in a rough but ready way into two sorts: observations about our external world well known to all but not always openly told, and sightings of internal vistas and omens, wherein she looks at herself as a sample soul. Often the aphori . . . [read more] |