Additional information
by Matthew del Nevo (Author)
This is a self-help book with soul. Soul is not something we have, soul has to do with what we are, with inner quality, not outward expression or success or achievement. Soul is not about getting happiness, but about dwelling in melancholic enjoyment. The way of soul is a middle way between sensualism or materialism (consumerism) on one hand and effete spirituality and religiosity, or abstract modes of reflection including philosophizing and theologizing, on the other. We see soul alive in art and hear it in good music and we sing along with it in our favorite songs. Soul is not spirit or an idea, it is sensibility. Finding harmony has to do with developing sensibility, which we need to be able to distinguish from being religious, having ideas and beliefs, purpose-driven living, self-help techniques, and so on. Soul is deadened by techniques, tech-speak, and method, because soul is tied to creativity and inspiration and the power of now. With this book I hope to open my readers to soul and soulfulness as the primary business of life.
Author Biography
Matthew Del Nevo grew up in Oxford, England. He moved to Israel and worked at the Four Homes of Mercy in Bethany and studied creative writing at the Bezalel Foundation in Jerusalem.
Matthew has a background in social science and in theology. He has been based in Sydney since 1987. He wrote a doctoral dissertation at the University of Sydney on Le Livre des questions (7 vols.) by Egyptian-born French Jewish poet Edmond Jabès.
Matthew is Associate Professor of Philosophy at the Catholic Institute of Sydney, a Pontifical faculty. Matthew's books are mainly to do with soulfulness and harmony in a soulless and noisy age.
Nietzsche wrote and Heidegger commented, "The wasteland grows." T. S. Eliot's Four Quartets point even beyond this acknowledgment. Matthew is interested in the overlap between revelatory philosophy, religion, and literature, and their multiple and mutual reflections among us.
