Beyond Fate (Massey Lectures) (CBC Massey Lecture)
by Margaret Visser
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Description
In spite of modern ideals and achievements in the area of freedom and choice, people today are often afflicted with a sense that they cannot change things for the better. They feel helpless, constrained, caught -- in a word, fatalistic. Beyond Fate, Margaret Visser's 2002 CBC Massey Lectures, examines why. This timely and important book investigates what fate means, and where the propensity to believe in it and accept it comes from. Visser takes an ancient metaphor -- ubiquitous, show more influential, perhaps unavoidable -- where time is "seen" and spoken of as though it were space; she examines how this way of picturing reality can be a useful tool to think with -- or, on the other hand, may lead us into disastrous misunderstandings. There are ways out. But first, by observing how fatalism manifests itself in our daily lives, in everything from table manners and shopping to sport, we understand our profound attachment to fate, so that we can consider its role in our lives and our cultures. show lessTags
Recommendations
Member Recommendations
thebookpile The contrast between honour/shame versus forgiveness/guilt made me think Jacobs' two moral syndromes.
Member Reviews
This is an excellent book. I enjoyed the application of an academic intellect toward understanding the boundaries that set our fate: honour and shame, boredom and embarrassment. I appreciated Visser's consideration of our Western (Christian) heritage, which attempts to escape fate through mercy and forgiveness. However, the last page brings it all together: we have a choice to remain bound to fate or to choose freedom instead by embracing love.
A deeply thought provoking book. I agreed with about 90% of it. And the arguments contrasting fate and freedom are well thought out. Not necessarily for the faint of heart.
These lectures are great. They're made even better if you have the chance to listen to the audio version before reading the book. That way you won't be able to read the text without hearing Margaret Visser's unique delivery.
what an outrageous accent!
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Author Information
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Margaret Visser is the author of three previous books: "Much Depends on Dinner", "Rituals of Dinner", & "The Way We Are". She lives in Barcelona. (Bowker Author Biography)
Series
Belongs to Publisher Series
CBC Massey Lectures (2002)
Common Knowledge
- Original publication date
- 2002
- Epigraph
- ... in my nighlty visions the mysterious precept, "Upward, not
Northward," haunts me like a soul-devouring Sphinx.
-- Edwin Abbott Abbott, Flatland - Dedication
- for Megan and Miriam
- First words
- One of the proudest achievements of modernity is its investment in freedom of every kind, personal, moral, and economic.
- Last words
- (Click to show. Warning: May contain spoilers.)If we understand it, judge its usefulness, take note of its limitations, we can move beyond fate -- if such be our desire and our will.
Classifications
Statistics
- Members
- 134
- Popularity
- 243,168
- Reviews
- 4
- Rating
- (3.65)
- Languages
- English
- Media
- Paper, Audiobook, Ebook
- ISBNs
- 3
- ASINs
- 3
