TY  - BOOK
AU  - Eire,Carlos
TI  - A Very Brief History of Eternity
SN  - 9780691152509
AV  - BT913 
U1  - 236/.21 22
PY  - 2009///]
CY  - Princeton, NJ : 
PB  - Princeton University Press, 
KW  - Civilization, Western
KW  - Eternity
KW  - History of doctrines
KW  - Philosophy
KW  - General
KW  - Religion
KW  - Christian Theology
KW  - Eschatology
KW  - HISTORY / General
KW  - bisacsh
N1  - Frontmatter --; Contents --; Illustrations --; Acknowledgments --; I. Big Bang, Big Sleep, Big Problem --; II. Eternity Conceived --; III. Eternity Overflowing --; IV. Eternity Reformed --; V. From Eternity to Five-Year Plans --; VI. Not Here, Not Now, Not Ever --; Appendix: Common Conceptions of Eternity --; Notes --; Eternity: A Basic Bibliography --; Index; restricted access; Issued also in print
N2  - What is eternity? Is it anything other than a purely abstract concept, totally unrelated to our lives? A mere hope? A frightfully uncertain horizon? Or is it a certainty, shared by priest and scientist alike, and an essential element in all human relations? In A Very Brief History of Eternity, Carlos Eire, the historian and National Book Award-winning author of Waiting for Snow in Havana, has written a brilliant history of eternity in Western culture. Tracing the idea from ancient times to the present, Eire examines the rise and fall of five different conceptions of eternity, exploring how they developed and how they have helped shape individual and collective self-understanding. A book about lived beliefs and their relationship to social and political realities, A Very Brief History of Eternity is also about unbelief, and the tangled and often rancorous relation between faith and reason. Its subject is the largest subject of all, one that has taxed minds great and small for centuries, and will forever be of human interest, intellectually, spiritually, and viscerally
UR  - https://doi.org/10.1515/9781400831876
UR  - https://www.degruyter.com/cover/covers/9781400831876.jpg
ER  -