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This unique collection of studies reveals the spiritual source common to the Occidental as well as the Islamic cultures. In seeking out the shared intuitions of Occidental and Islamic spirit, the book yields a rare panorama of human cultural inheritance.

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A world ever more extensively interlinked is calling out for serving human interests broader and more compelling than those inspiring our technological welfare. The interface between cultures - at the moment especially between the Occident and Islam - presents challenges to mutual understandings and calls for restoring the resources of our human beings forgotten in the struggle of competition and rivalry at the vital spheres of existence. In the evolutionary progress of the living beings the strictly vital concerns, emotions, attributes become sublimed and elevated to the spiritual sphere at which human beings encounter each other and share. Studies presented here bring forth sublimity, generosity, forgiveness, beauty, and are exalting the quest after ciphers and symbols which lead to our sharing the common deepest stream of fraternal reality.

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Acknowledgements

PROLOGUE: Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka

SECTION I:

THE AESTHETICS OF ISLAMIC ETHICS

William Chittick

ON GENEROSITY EAST AND WEST: THE BEAUTY OF COMPARISON

Patricia Trutty-Coohill

THE OCCIDENTAL EPIC AS COMPARED TO THE ISLAMIC EPIC

Jack Steele

CROSSING THE SPATIOTEMPORAL DIMENSION OF HUMAN CULTURE

MORAL SENSE OF JUSTICE IN THE FABLE OF THE RINGDOVE

Detlev Quintern

MUSTAFA SAID AND JULIEN SOREL: DIVIDED SKIES, COMMON HORIZONS

Mahmoud Jaran

THE SUBLIME IN IZET SARAJLIC AND JACQUES PREVERT

Lejla Marijam

SECTION II:

BEAUTY AND ITS PROJECTION IN CHRISTIAN AND ISLAMIC TRADITION

Habip Turker

A POETRY OF MYSTICISM: SOLOMON IBN GABIROL, MAULANA JALAUDDIN RUMI, AND RANIER MARIA RILKE

Bruce Ross

SELF, OTHER AND NOTHINGNESS IN WESTERN PHILOSOPHY AND IN ISLAMIC MYSTICISM

Chryssi Sidiropoulou

LA NUIT DU TEMPS. SUR UN POEME DE JOAN VINYOLI

Jad Hatem

SECTION III:

CHRISTIAN AND ISLAMIC ROOTS OF A HOLISTIC RHETORIC

Nazif Muhtaroglu

AL-BIRUNI´S ´ONE AND MANY´: SAYING THE SAME IN DIFFERENT WAYS

A.L. Samian

BREEZE OF TAGORE, RUMI AND LALON, IN POETIC EXPRESSIONS: SAYING THE SAME

Mustafa Zaman Abbasi

WOMEN AND THE VEGETABLE KINGDOM: LOVE METAPHORS IN CHRISTIAN AND ISLAMIC MEDIEVAL POETICS

Claudio G. Antoni

TO SEE A WORLD

Karatson Gabor

NATURE, SPIRIT, AND THE CONVERGENCE OF CHRISTIAN AND ISLAMIC ECOPOETRY, OR, HOW OUR POETS CAN HELP US REDISCOVER OUR SPIRITUAL CONNECTION TO THE EARTH AND EACH OTHER

Clint Jones

SECTION IV: IN OUR POETS´ OWN WORDS

LA CHAIR LUCIDE

Jad Hatem

POETIC EXPRESSIONS IN SUFI LANGUAGE (BASED ON AL-NIFFARY´S "KITAB AL-MAWAQIF")

Ruzana Pskhu

TUNING FORKS OF THE SOUL

Christine McNeill-Matteson

THE SONG OF "THE PROMISED ONE"

Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka

INDEX OF NAMES

CONFERENCE PROGRAM

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Anna-Teresa Tymieniecka is a Polish-born American philosopher, one of the most important and continuously active contemporary phenomenologists, founder and president of "The World Phenomenology Institute".

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