S. Giora Shoham

The publication of The Mytho-Empiricism of Gnosticism is to be saluted. Shoham sheds light on religious and philosophical-religious traditions - Gnosticism, Kabbala and existentialism - for which, as stated by the book's subtitle, The Centre Does Not Hold. The result is one of those rare books in which the newness of the view is accompanied by penetrating insights into the already familiar. The Gnostic traditions, examined in their great historical variability, reveal some surprising similarities. Born in a profound situation of crisis, from the destruction of the Second Temple up to the destruction of the European Jews during World War II, they have demonstrated their capacity to strike root. Gnostic traditions, with their capability of feeding a twofold politics of desire, are explained by the author in the context of two great Greek mythical models - the Sisyphean and the Tantalic....In reality, the mythogenes, in the penetrating psychoanalytical rereading offered by Shlomo Shoham, represent - imaginatively - life's fundamental phases: commencing with the trauma of birth; passing on to the constitution of a separate self via separation from the maternal bosom; to a phase where complex mechanisms of desire-repulse are formed, which will thereafter accompany the infant throughout his or her life. But it is not only individuals who engage in desire-repulse formations and dichotomy. It is the author's penetrating insight that demonstrates how a religious history may be retraced through the study of the great mythogenes.

Triumph of the Vanquished

The Mytho-empiricism of Gnosticism

שלמה גיורא שוהם

הסוציולוגיה של האבסורד

Paul Knepper

How will criminal justice react to terrorism? In this book, some hard questions are asked about how terrorism is organized, supported, and financed, and what this will mean for the security of nations and international systems. Topics include the International Criminal Court, suicidal terrorism, counter-terrorism, the use of the Internet by terrorist organizations, and a profile of American terrorist Timothy McVeigh. This volume is essential to understanding the political climate of the new millennium.

Terrorism and the International Community

Francis Rosenstiel

Anita Tamari

Man, State, and Society in Question : Contributions to the George Orwell Colloquy, 1984: Myths and Realities, Organised by the Council of Europe in Collaboration with the European Foundation for Sciences, Arts, and Culture, Strasbourg, 1984

And He Loved Big Brother

These psychological dynamics are presented by way of the developmental and relationship experiences we have with the outside world - alternations between conflict and a striving to revert back to earlier developmental phases. At any given moment of our lives there is a gap between our desires for participation and our subjectively defined distance from our participatory aims. This gap is denoted the Tantalus Ratio, after the Olympian demigod. Transcendental longings and quests are explored in their actual structuring of the human personality. This new Theory of Personality also explores the mytho-empirical manifestation of the normative sacrifice of the young, denoted as the Isaac Syndrome. The author pays homage to Albert Camus' The Myth of Sisyphus by recognising the absurd drudgeries of man's existence, the maddening routines, the pointlessness of being, the silence of god, and the cruelty of man to man. Examples from literature and myth demonstrate that if man can find a creative modus vivendi with his pitiful stone burden, then the vicissitudes of existence can become punctuated with meaning, satisfaction and even happiness. Like Camus, the author concludes that it is only t

A Scaffolding for an Ontological Personality Theory

The Myth of Tantalus

S. Giora Shoham

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