Life giving resources. Faithfully delivered.
FREE delivery on orders over £10
Serving over 2 million Christians in the UK
with Bibles, Books and Church Supplies
Our Buy-Now-Pay-Later accounts used
by over 4,000 UK Churches & Schools
Excellent 4.8 out of 5

Trustpilot

You now have 0 of this item in your basket

Asceticism of the Mind: Forms of Attention and Self-Transformation in Late Antique Monasticism

[Paperback]

by Inbar Graiver

Book Format
Paperback
Publisher
PIMS
Published
November 2021
Weight
409g

Read full description

Click to expand

Today's Price

£50.39

Free UK Delivery

Out of stock.

Buying for a school or church? Upgrade to a FREE Eden Advance Account

Enter the product quantity

Asceticism of the Mind: Forms of Attention and Self-Transformation in Late Antique Monasticism

Today's Price £50.39

Frequently Bought Together

Asceticism of the Mind: Forms of Attention and Self-Transformation in Late Antique Monasticism

by Inbar Graiver

Paperback

Decline of African American Theology

by Thabiti M. Anyabwile

Paperback

Add both to basket for £66.69

Product Description

Asceticism is founded on the possibility that human beings can profoundly transform themselves through training and discipline. In particular, asceticism in the Eastern monastic tradition is based on the assumption that individuals are not slaves to the habitual and automatic but can be improved by ascetic practice and, with the cooperation of divine grace, transform their entire character and cultivate special powers and skills. Asceticism of the Mind explores the strategies that enabled Christian ascetics in the Egyptian, Gazan, and Sinaitic monastic traditions of late antiquity to cultivate a new form of existence. At the book's center is a particular model of ascetic discipline that involves a systematic effort to train the mind and purify attention. Drawing on contemporary cognitive and neuroscientific research, this study underscores the beneficial potential and self-formative role of the monastic system of mental training, thereby confuting older views that emphasized the negative and repressive aspects of asceticism. At the same time, it sheds new light on the challenges that Christian ascetics encountered in their attempts to transform themselves, thereby lending insight into aspects of their daily lives that would otherwise remain inaccessible. Asceticism of the Mind brings rigorously historical and cognitive perspectives into conjunction across a range of themes, and in so doing opens up new ways of exploring asceticism and Christian monasticism. By working across the traditional divide between the humanities and the cognitive sciences, it offers new possibilities for a constructive dialogue across these fields.