The Library of religion and culture

This volume contains four versions of the lecture notes taken by Kant's students in his university courses in ethics given regularly over a period of some thirty years. The notes are very comprehensive and expound not only Kant's views on ethics but many of his opinions on life and human nature as well. Much of this material has never before been translated into English. As in other volumes in the series, there are copious linguistic and explanatory notes and a glossary of key terms.

Schleiermacher's addresses on religion to the cultured critics of his time comprise one of those rare works of literature that masterfully initiate an epoch but long continue to realize an influence far transcending their original effect. They comprise a masterpiece not only of personal testimony but of intelligent witness to that which is most lasting and fundamental, though often most elusive and difficult to achieve, in human life and culture. Religion presumable constitutes the most important set of relationships that can be cultivated in a person. Yet religion is often the most readily misunderstood and maligned. Schleiermacher's aim in these addresses is to penetrate the excrescences and the corruptions of so-called religion to reach its vital heart so as to clarify what religion essentially is, to suggest how it is to be found, to consider how it may be cultivated, and perhaps also to stimulate a responding chord of sensitively and devotion among his hearers. He is not trying to put something over on anyone. In tolerant, open-hearted response to familiar attitudes he is simply replying, again and again: "Is the situation really what you say? Consider this!" Or: "Yes, you are entirely correct, but that is not religion. You are looking in the wrong place." Or: "You are moving in the right direction but in the wrong way."

Organizing data from cultures the world over, Eliade lays out the basic patterns of initiation: group puberty rites, entrance into secret cults, shamanic instruction, individual visions, and heroic rites of passage. The vast information, assembled so beautifully, transcends usual scholarship. Eliade always affirms the greater experience in all initiations - the indissoluble tie between humans and the cosmos of Gods, spirits, animals ancestors, and nature. The absence of initiation in our culture has left modern men and women often isolated from each other, from the invisible powers beyond, and from the myths that sustain daily life. The primal soul desire for symbolic rituals pushes youth into substitutes for initiatory experience: gangs, suicide, car crashes, teenage pregnancy, street drugs. These "symptoms" show the unquenchable urge for existential transformation and the need for elders, mentors, and rituals. This book is about crossing - from confusion to knowledge, from innocence to experienced elder.