Customer Reviews (2)

addendum to above review
Yes, this perhaps the best anthology of surrealist poetry ever compiled. However, Rimbaud is not in it, and is not a surrealist, in any case, altho embraced by Breton through the surrealist time machine. Apollinaire being the only "precursor" appearing here. But also includes Artaud, Arp, and Daumal, who are marginally Surrealists, altho certainly influenced. Arp, of course, along with Tzara here, being of original Dada gang. Benedikt intro. and commentaries are worth the price of admission, if you can find a copy! For some reason, this is an amazingly elusive tome. Good luck.

better than a bathtub of giraffes
And you thought surrealists only painted.Highballs can't compare to Verlaine burning on a streetcar at dusk in Paris; she is in the bath.The most complete anthology of surrealist poetry I've yet encountered.Rimbaud, Artaud, Reverdy, yum yum yum I eat it.Back order back order. Give me more! ... Read more

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Customer Reviews (13)

For an ARchitecture of REality book
The book itself was ok. I actually had it before but needed it again for another class that I didnt realize I needed it for. Unfortunately the item got shipped late and by the time it got to me I had to have had it read already, so I had to buy another one. The seller informed me of the late shipping, and I understand, but it still was no use to me.

Nice
Unlike poetics of bordom this one is short and sweet.Simple concept told with pictures and very little narrative.I read it on a train ride.Thanks.

A perfect little book
Even though this book was written a while ago (by fashions standard) it is completely relevant today.Benedikt nails down what I've been looking for and inarticulately talking about for a while: the "realness" of buildings.I'm tired of flash and fashion and this essay is a call to arms for architects to re-engage fundamental concepts about how our designs relate to space and time.A must read, preferably in masters years...

Literature of Irony
Mr. Benedikt writes with good intentions but a pretentious flare that I feel undermines the very statement he is making with this book.If one is to get from the beginning of an idea to the end of that idea with efficiency and clarity, one should probably do so without excessive quotes, brackets and interstitials like "I think."This call to arms is reduced to an academic brain tease, muddles its point, and probably wastes a lot of black ink.How "real" is that?Covering one side of each bleached-white page with black ink?Excellent points are made, but there is much too much of Mr. Benedikt between each.

Very important
I'm in the middle of an M.ARCH degree right now and this book has been the most influential thing I've read so far. It reminds me why I'm in school and what I'm supposed to be learning how to do. You can make sexy images and wonderful compositions that pretend to be sections and plans, or, you can think about the actual presence of the building. It's the difference between Hadid's work - which is incredibly beautiful on paper and in her paintings and yet often disorienting in real life - and Kahn's work which has fairly boring plans and sections (to me), but is powerful beyond words in actuality. ... Read more

Product Description
A critique of both traditional and modern arguments for and against the existence of God, with a discussion of the nature of good and the problem of evil, proposing that God exists only as human moral activity, that God is practiced: theopraxy.

"...takes God out of the sky of theological debate and places this God in the depths of life." Rt. Rev. John Shelby Spong.

"...an exhilarating spiritual, intellectual, and homiletic experience." Rabbi Avraham Feder

"..a passionate and profound rethinking of the meaning of the divine in human life." John Wall, Prof. of Religion, Rutgers University.

"...a highly imaginative and provocative new conception of God and religious belief."Prof. Robert Kane, author of Free Will.

"Benedikt makes a comprehensive case for his theology, which he calls theopraxy. He does so with deep learning, intellectual honesty, and humane wisdom, and his may be about the best God a full commitment to rationality will allow." Mitchell Silver in Jewish Currents, April/May 2008.
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Customer Reviews (7)

Theopraxy
Michael Benedikt's recent book, God is the Good We Do, is a plea for what he calls theopraxy, which is built around the concept of God as something that just happens when people do good things, rather like a flame just happens when people light a match or a fire. God didn't even exist until evolution produced sentient beings with a conscience. He/she is our responsibility rather than the other way around. She/he is what lights up our lives and makes us feel good when we do good.

It seems to me that this is about as harmless a definition of what used to be called The Almighty as can be imagined. One could argue that ascribing great powers to some almighty being or force in the sky is a buck-passing device that has often created problems for believers, and a more modest approach might work better. Denying that your deity is omnipotent and benevolent certainly solves the problem of evil, for one thing. And if doing good is what morality is all about, what's the difference, from a purely functional perspective, if the end result is for people thinking in moral terms and acting in moral ways?

Of course, it all hinges on how you define âaegoodâ. Benedikt devotes a separate chapter to this which takes off from the following proposition: âaeGood is what we call all free human actions that preserve, honor, and promote all forms and instances of life.â There are caveats, of course, fine print spelling out how you resolve some of the more obvious dilemmas you find when applying this simple rule to the real world. There are weaknesses in this approach; certainly it leaves much to be worked out elsewhere. But at least, it's a starting point for a more expansive exploration of the nature of good behavior in this modern era.

I have to acknowledge that despite some discomfort with the constant repetition of the term âaeGodâ, I enjoyed the book and found it profitable, both as an exercise in the never-ending search for the good, and on a more mundane level for flashes of dry but wise wit. I can recommend it to anyone interested in the issues it raises, even though the reader might not agree with all its content. It is thoughtful and, considering the density of the subject matter, commendably clear and well written.

Carl Coon
Progressive Humanism

God is the good we do
Thank you so much - product arrived in a timely fashion and was just as described.
Couldn't ask for more!

God is in the deed of the beholder
Taking a cue from my landsman Larry Bush, (Waiting for God: The Spiritual Reflections of a Reluctant Atheist), I am, faute de mieux, a nontheist.For lack of a theology which makes sense of the world I've experienced, and the world others have experienced for me, I subscribe to Rabbi Yitz Greenberg's elegiac postmortem: "The Holocaust confronts us with unanswerable questions. But let us agree to one principle: no statement, theological or otherwise, should be made that would not be credible in the presence of the burning children."

I happened upon a review by Mitchell Silver of GOD IS THE GOOD WE DO in an article entitled "The Case Against God" in the March 2008 issue of Jewish Currents.Silver's voice is one I take seriously as I typify the target readership of his(Respecting the Wicked Child: A Philosophy of Secular Jewish Identity and Education). Silver readily concedes: "Benedikt makes a comprehensive case for his theology, which he calls theopraxy. He does so with deep learning, intellectual honesty, and humane wisdom, and his may be about the best God a full commitment to rationality will allow."But, with the other hand: "Benedikt knows full well that that [the God of theopraxy] is not what the overwhelming majority of people mean or have meant when they speak of God." Silver goes on to say: "...Benedikt's God-as-good-deeds is all inspiration and no consolation," and summarily: "As a remedy for the absence of a powerful, caring, benevolent protector, 'do the good you can' -- even if it is the only treatment that has any material therapeutic value at all -- is so overmatched by the disease, the human condition and all of the evils that flesh is heir to, that I hesitate to rail against the metaphysical snake-oil industry. Placebos have their place. Most people would rather feel good than be rational -- or perhaps it may, indeed, be highly rational to keep God, the loving parent, the mother of all placebos, ensconced in heaven."

There is, among the "New Atheists" like Sam Harris, but also here in Silver's review, an approach I call "shooting God in a barrel."This is where a writer freezes the symbols and metaphors for God in their canonical forms, refuses to allow that "God" could (or should) mean anything other, then fires away at them knowing that his childhood bogeyman won't rise and fire back.This, to me, is merely the obverse of the oft-repeated pablum that "there is only one God" which is, actually, half a sentence; the other half is "and that is the God that I worship and you should (and will) too."

Michael Benedikt has taken God out of the God business entirely. There is in GOD IS THE GOOD WE DO no creator, no commander of mitzvot, no punisher of sins or rewarder of conventional morals.The theoprax God is not a being of any kind, nor did this God exist before a human being first performed an altruistic deed.The God of theopraxy comes into being and ceases to be with our enactment or lack of enactment of actions which "preserve, honor and promote all forms and instances of life... except those whose flourishing depends on other forms and instances of life that are roughly equal to, or clearly more evolved than, themselves." [p. 47 passim]

The God of theopraxy is not merely an ethical fiction.God is sensible in the effects on ourselves and others of our acts of beauty, decency, and courage.These effects may be, as Mitchell Silver says, "no sweet Jesus," but what may be obvious to some may be too subtle for others.

GOD IS THE GOOD WE DO may not help a reader become a 'better' Jew or Christian or Muslim in the conventional sense, but it could very well provide a solid hermeneutic approach to appreciating Torah, Bible, or Qu'ran.Some may find themselves able to participate in their religion's liturgies or prescribed actions with a new understanding.Others like myself remain staunchly secular.But for all of us there is poetry and hope in a world created by the God we create -- a God of still small voice, a God which (or who) is as evanescent as our next choice for or against the good -- a God which no man or woman could ever use against another human or sentient being with impunity.

One Theist reviews God Is the Good We Do
In his description of Theopraxy, Michael Benedikt affirms God does exist and therefore counters the claims of atheism. Benedikt also offers an invitation to theists to look into a perspective of God that takes us beyond our traditional convictions and/or assumptions about the nature of God.

Benedikt suggests that God exists not as a creator of the universe, but as created by humanity consciously doing what is good. He compares God's presence to the presence of fire among us. Benedikt notes how fire exists wherever it is kindled or ignited. We experience fire not as a single entity, but as a force dispersed, felt wherever it is made or let to happen. Bendedikt would say that just as those who experience fire do not doubt its existence, those who experience God as the good we do have no doubts about God's existence.

Benedikt lists what he calls the Seven Tenets of the theology of theopraxy.
1. God is not a person or thing or principal or spirit. God is activity of a certain sort: the free doing of good, where by "good" we mean that which preserves, honors, or promotes all forms of life.
2. God is not the Creator. Nor is God all-powerful or omniscient. God is the newest and weakest "force" in the universe, a human production, even as God -good doing- produces humaneness in turn.
3. Freedom is necessary to doing good, and good-doing is necessary to producing more freedom.
4. Science is the friend of true religion, which is faith justified by works.
5. The development of ever fairer and more compassionate laws as well as more broadly life-sustaining social and cultural practices is God's mandate and our task.
6. Long-evolved religions present powerful and highly specific rituals, images, arguments, narratives, and commandments whose prupose is to effect Tenet 5, and can be respected and practiced without significant alteration when they succeed in doing so.
7. Both the idea and substance of God remain open to evolution.

Benedikt presents his take on theopraxy in four parts: Declarations; Explanations; Arguments; and Reflections. He deftly guides us along the tightrope between abstraction (God comes from human consciousness,not vice versa.) and concretization (God is the good we do.) He does for us what all religions ought to do: help us transcend rather than remain transfixed. That tightrope could be called appreciation.

As Benedikt outlines the stark principles of theopraxy, he shows us its direction, but the book as a whole is the journey toward that direction. As the journey's guide, Benedikt respects and honors the readers' sensibilities, from atheists to monotheists. He offers God seekers a lot to think about and ways to think about God that both challenge and inspire.

Some of us think about God. Some of us feel about God. Some of us do both. Michael Benedikt has us do both but invites us to think and feel more than ever and more differently than before. How refreshing for those of us unafraid to explore our own unknowns.

As a reader, I am grateful for the author having taken me beyond the boxes of my own thinking into new boxes of questions. Among the questions I would pose are:

Our experience has been that being is prerequisite to doing. One cannot do before one exists. Theopraxy has human doing as a prerequisite to God's being. How are we to understand this in terms of our experience?

Theopraxy recognizes the real existence of God. Does thinking of God asa real product of humanity doing good facilitate our sense of relationship with God or make it more confused? What is the character of our relationship to what we produce?

Some mystics (Mother Theresa, John of the Crosss, Teresa of Avila and others) report experiencing a "dark night of the soul" when God as a presence seems like a God of absence. How would theopraxy understand that experience?

I would conclude with the consideration that if we have to make images of God, as most of us are inclined to do, then "God is the good we do" is an image that may suffice until a better image comes along or until we no longer need images ane settle for what is rather than what we can image.

Tom Keene is a reitred professor of religious studies with degrees in theology, applied theology and paychology. He lives in San Antonio, Texas.

From an Non-Scholar
For those of us who struggle with some of the contradictions of modern religion, but for whom pure secularism is not a sufficient answer, Benedikt's book clearly articulates possibilities about our lives, our relationships to one another and our relationship to the divine.Traditional religion answers three basic questions that humans have struggled with since the dawn of history - what are the origins of life,how should we live our lives, and what happens to us after we die?Benedikt's book explores the second question, offering an inspired 'operator's manual' for life.At the same time, he leaves the other questions unexplored, preferring to allow the reader to rely on their own religious, secular or scientific explanations. ... Read more

Product Description
Cyberspace has been defined as "an infinite artificial world where humans navigate in information-based space" and as "the ultimate computer-human interface." These original contributions take up the philosophical basis for cyberspace in virtual realities, basic communications principles, ramifications of cyberspace for future workplaces, and more. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

An essential text
an excellent text.Highly referred to by many of the other texts in my ongoing research of Anthropology of Cyberculture.Text was shipped quickly and in condition
as described.I would buy more texts from this seller without a problem. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Kahn and Decon
One of the best essays relating literary deconstruction and architecture, and one of the few i have seen that has such a curious premise- That Louis Kahn was employing many of the methodologies described by derrida and that it is up to us to now discover those methodologies 30 years later. the first 25 pages of the book are a crash course in architectural deconstruction, and those pages alone make the book a must for architecture students, practitioners, and theorists. Also read benedikt's "for an architecture of meaning"- the two books create a strong couple. ... Read more

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How could something as vast, intricate, vivid, and beautiful as the natural world have come about except by the will and "hand" of a supernaturally powerful and intelligent Designer? The Answer - It could not have - lies at the root of one of the best known "proofs" of the existence of God. Certainly, the so-called 'Argument from Design' forms the basis of the modern Intelligent Design (previous Creationist) movement, which, although it accepts evolution, stands opposed to Darwin's theory of "blind" evolution - which is to say, to the idea that evolution occurs without overarching purpose, moral direction, or intervention from God.

Michael Benedikt's book God, Creativity, Evolution: The Argument from Design(ers) seeks to dissolve the disagreement by showing that "design" and "evolution" are one and the same process running at different scales and speeds and seen from different viewpoints. Design is evolution speeded up; evolution is design slowed down. Designing is what evolving looks like when seen from outside; evolving is what designing looks like when seen from the inside. This perspective is rooted in science (in particular the work of Nobelist Gerald Edelman) and in the experience of actual designers -- people like architects, industrial designers, artists, and composers. Although actual designers have been conspicuously silent when it comes to the debate between Intelligent Design and Evolution, perhaps for fear of raising theological-religious hackles and perhaps for lack of feeling qualified, their participation in the discussion is crucial.

The second half of the book is devoted to observations of the beliefs of such great artist-architects as Michelangelo Buonarotti, Frank Lloyd Wright, Le Corbusier, and Louis Kahn, with respect to divinity, nature, and design. (There are also references to Alvar Aalto, Mies van der Rohe, and others.) All are shown to have had deep convictions easily traced to religious, deist, and/or process-theological roots, wherein the evolutionary workings of the world, broadly conceived, and the workings of the human mind in the act of design are seen and understood to be continuous, if not identical, and divine.

Can the spat between Intelligent Design and Evolution finally be dissipated? On some better understanding of the word, is it time for "divinity" once again to enter the discourse of architecture and of design generally? This book says yes to both questions. ... Read more

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This is a unique collection of twentieth-century Spanish dramas. Eight significant plays representing the greatest literary renaissance in Spain. ... Read more