In this enlightening and original study on the cultivation of a religious understanding of nature, Leon Niemoczynski applies Charles Sanders Peirce's thought on metaphysics to 'ecstatic naturalism,' the philosophical perspective developed by Robert Corrington. Niemoczynski points to Peirce's phenomenological and metaphysical understanding of possibility-the concept of 'Firstness'-as especially critical to understanding how the divine might be meaningfully encountered in religious experience. He goes on to define his own concept of speculative naturalism, offering a new approach to thinking (...) about nature that joins the essence of pragmatism with the heretical boldness of speculative thought. (shrink)

Ecstatic naturalism believes that a rich conceptualization of nature should emphasize the reality of a basic ontological difference between a ground that is responsible for generating the world and the encompassing yet incarnate processes of the world. The ontological difference mentioned here is a difference between "nature naturing" (natura naturans) and "nature natured" (natura naturata).1 Ecstatic naturalism takes seriously the difference between nature naturing and nature natured because it is a philosophy that recognizes nature's immanent or incarnate processes of semiotic (...) generation as well as the reality of nature's transcendental generative ground (a ground that "natures" via sign processes).2 Thus .. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Mind of Charles Hartshorne: A Critical Examination by Donald Wayne Viney and George W. ShieldsLeon NiemoczynskiThe Mind of Charles Hartshorne: A Critical Examination. Donald Wayne Viney and George W. Shields. Anoka, MN: Process Century Press, 2020. 584 pp. $40.00 cloth.Over the past decade process philosophy has undergone a significant renaissance most notably due to the towering presence of the thought of Alfred North Whitehead in that tradition. (...) Charles Hartshorne by manner of contrast has not had such a towering presence. Part of the reason this is the case is due to a paucity of introductory literature on the thought of Charles Hartshorne—literature that might contribute to a “starter kit” so to speak in mastering Hartshorne’s massive oeuvre. The Mind of Charles Hartshorne: A Critical Examination by Donald Wayne Viney and George W. Shields, both former students of Hartshorne and experts in process philosophy themselves, have authored a welcome contribution to an introductory literature that will most certainly elevate awareness of Hartshorne’s importance to its rightful place alongside that of Whitehead. The book is successful in its aims of “giving a reasonably comprehensive account of Hartshorne’s philosophy with an eye of presenting his best arguments...” (the “correcting what we see as misunderstandings of his views appearing in the critical literature” part may have been best left out) and “updating Hartshorne scholarship” (viii). There are ten chapters in total, appendix essays, the aforementioned bibliography, endnotes, and name and subject indexes.The Preface situates the mind of Charles Hartshorne as spanning the twentieth century and engaging metaphysics even when it was unfashionable to do so. Hartshorne thought about a wide-ranging and diverse range of subjects in both philosophy and science, aesthetics, metaphysics, applied philosophy, and theology. He never questioned modern science or evolution and believed that while metaphysics and empirical science have different methods each ensures its own way to objectivity. One learns that Hartshorne’s process metaphysics is also called “neo-classical” philosophy or speculative philosophy. His thought “gave full weight to the dynamic, relational, processive temporal and creative, affective dimensions of the universe” (vi). Hartshorne was known as much for his “panentheism,” or view that God transcends nature but also may be found immanently within it, as he was for his critique of traditional or scholastic classical theology—especially in his logic of theism where he recreates a modal version of the ontological argument. [End Page 94]Chapter 1, “The Career and Personality of Charles Hartshorne,” discusses just that. What seemed most important to me was the discussion of Hartshorne’s formative background of reading novels and poetry by Emerson, Melville, or Camus as a way of intensely living, his studying under William Ernest Hocking, and his Sheldon Traveling Fellowship where he studied for a time with Husserl and read and reviewed Heidegger. Probably the most important biographical details are that Hartshorne was given the assignment of editing the Peirce papers along with Paul Weiss as a Research Fellow while at Harvard University and he also met and graded for Whitehead, who along with C.S. Peirce, would become the twin pillars of all his thinking as a “Peircean and Whiteheadian” (11). From Peirce, we learn that Hartshorne took “possibility is best conceived of as a continuum with no least member” and from Whitehead, “actuality is discrete and discontinuous (atomistic), composed of momentary flashes of experiences” (11). For Hartshorne process and relativity are metaphysically basic.Chapter 2 begins with Hartshorne’s idea that, “Nature comes to us as constituted by feelings, not as constituted by lifeless, insentient matter” (28). Reality has an affective tone in which there is a layered complexity of feeling and social relation. In other words, contra Locke or Hume, feeling is objectively part of an objective affective continuum and is not nominalistically “painted on bare sense impressions” (46). Such might be described as a doctrine of “panexperientialism”— “the view that the basic constituents of reality are flashes of experience” (46). Experience and feeling stretch in their continuity to meet the bounds of nature. Chapter two continues with a wonderful discussion of Hartshorne’s aesthetics: “beauty is the mean between extremes” (48).Chapter 3 provides a... (shrink)

This book introduces Robert Corrington’s “ecstatic naturalism,” a new perspective in understanding “sacred” nature and naturalism, and explores what can be done with this philosophical thought. This is an excellent resource for scholars of Continental philosophy, philosophy of religion, and American pragmatism.

I am honored, grateful, and of course very pleased to be the guest editor of the articles whose topic is ecstatic naturalism published here in this issue of The American Journal of Theology & Philosophy. Robert Corrington’s ecstatic naturalism has for the better part of several decades been an evolving perspective and indeed carries forward a tradition of philosophical naturalism dating back to they heyday of American naturalisms found within the mid to late twentieth century. To this day Corrington’s ecstatic (...) naturalist perspective has taken the form of ten books and over one hundred articles. (His eleventh book, Deep Pantheism: Toward a New Transcendentalism, will be published by Lexington Books in early.. (shrink)

Creative Experiencing was an unpublished manuscript found among Hartshorne’s papers now deposited at the Center for Process Studies at the Claremont School of Theology. Hartshorne mentions in the manuscript’s preface that he considered the book to be the final part of a trilogy including Creative Synthesis and Philosophic Method (1970) and Wisdom as Moderation (1987). The book was edited and published under the direction of longtime Hartshorne scholars Donald Viney and Jincheol O.“Metaphysics,” Hartshorne writes in the preface, “is the attempt (...) to interpret concrete experience rationally, in terms of the most general principles of valid reasoning” (xi). The first chapter, “Some Formal Criteria of Good .. (shrink)

Nature’s Sublime: An Essay in Aesthetic Naturalism returns to Corrington’s roots in aesthetics as informed by two major influences: German romanticism and idealism, and “psychosemiotics”. The sublime, as it relates to both religion and aesthetics, is the book’s key motif. Those interested in American philosophy and theology, Continental philosophy of religion, German idealism, and romanticist aesthetics will appreciate this book because it takes on a very unique approach to thinking about religion’s relationship to art. Corrington’s introduction outlines four basic dimensions (...) of reality that are at stake while approaching religion through.. (shrink)

In this essay, I explore Justus Buchler’s ordinal naturalism with the goal of establishing how his phenomenological approach extends the range of human inquiry to include the many and varied traits of natural phenomena that are not “simply” the result of sensate experience or material functions. To achieve this goal I critically assess Buchler’s notion of “ontological parity”–the idea that abstract phenomena such as values, relations, ideals, and other mental contents are just as relevant as sense-data when one attempts to (...) provide an adequate description of the world in naturalistic terms. I argue that certain phenomena, subsisting within what Buchler calls the “proceptive domain,” are legitimate objects of knowledge as they are par t of a larger domain of phenomenological analysis: nature more broadly and justly understood. It is my view that in the attempt to describe the natural world Buchler’s ordinal naturalism succeeds where other forms of naturalism fail because his form of naturalism offers a more capacious view of nature that attempts to describe whatever is in any way, not just focus on what is readily apparent to speci?c forms of observation that may privilege one domain of analysis over another. I draw the conclusion that because Buchler’s ordinal naturalism contains within it a working principle of ontological parity, his approach to nature ful?lls the criteria of the phenomenological method, and so I title his ordinal naturalism an ordinal phenomenology (Corrington 1992, 1-6, 9-14). Ultimately it is my aim to bring Buchler’s thought into closer connection with continental phenomenology, as well as to illustrate a more just and open understanding of nature through an analysis of his unique variety of philosophical naturalism. (shrink)

Abstract for The Sacred Depths of Nature (2009) UMI: 3358701.

Process metaphysics has had a more limited impact in Roman Catholic theology than it has had in Protestant theology. In The One, the Many, and the Trinity, Marc Pugliese traces the development of Roman Catholic theology synthesized with process theology as it is found in the thought of Joseph A. Bracken, S. J. As the title indicates, Bracken’s process perspective concerning the Trinity is the main focus of the book. The One, the Many, and the Trinity consists of four chapters (...) wherein Pugliese carefully surveys Bracken’s philosophy, explaining how it incorporates a sweeping array of sources, including classical Greek thought, Thomism, modern philosophy, German idealism, American pragmatism, and .. (shrink)

This book introduces the underlying ideas which have created the constellation of thought commonly referred to as Speculative Realism (SR). In a non-technical style Speculative Realism: An Epitome explores the thought of three contemporary philosophers: Quentin Meillassoux, Ray Brassier, and Iain Hamilton Grant. The book characterizes the milieu in which SR was born and charts how the tendencies of thought created from its birth have diverged into contemporary metaphysics. Readers will gain from the book an understanding how the evolving motion (...) of concepts created by the brief life of SR continue to change speculative philosophy in the contemporary Continental philosophical landscape today. (shrink)

Regarding the state of contemporary metaphysics, as it has been said, “There’s something in the air.” My goal in this essay is to offer some brief reflections on the state of contemporary metaphysics, otherwise called contemporary “ speculative ” philosophy – the “something in the air” – that has resurfaced within the early part of the 21st century. In order to clarify the nature of the new metaphysics in question I proceed by isolating geographically and topically two main tendencies of (...) thought which appear to constitute it: namely continental realism and continental materialism. I argue that clarifying the nature of these tendencies better characterizes what metaphysics means today. With respect to the possible ambiguity of “continental realism” or “continental materialism ” in the 21st century, a consideration of “ speculative realism” seems necessary if only to position my analysis upon a specific conceptual map. From there I offer thoughts as to how contemporary continental realism and materialism may be said to be defined first and foremost by its engagement with a concept identified as “correlationism,” a central feature of the new metaphysics ’ rejection of the sort of philosophy that has come before it. (shrink)

This book introduces Robert Corrington’s “ecstatic naturalism,” a new perspective in understanding “sacred” nature and naturalism, and explores what can be done with this philosophical thought. This is an excellent resource for scholars of Continental philosophy, philosophy of religion, and American pragmatism.

Open Humanities Press, Living Books About Life Series.

Nature can remove us from an obsessive humanism. It can return us to a state of thinking about the world rather than about ourselves. Yet, what is the world “without us?” In this question there seems to be a metaphysical issue at stake: What is the world, really, whether humans or not? Is it possible that hiking (especially in remote environments) may divulge this question’s answer?

This is an interview with the philosopher Iain Hamilton Grant, author of Idealism: The history of a philosophy and Philosophies of Nature After Schelling.

“Speculating God: Speculative Realism and Meillassoux’s Divine Inexistence.” In The Future of Continental Philosophy of Religion. Edited by Clayton Crockett, Keith Putt, and Jeffrey Robbins. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press.

Abstract for The Sacred Depths of Nature (2009) UMI: 3358701.

Abstract for The Sacred Depths of Nature (2009) UMI: 3358701.

What are the possibilities for religious experience in the twenty-first century? While aggressive atheists might respond “None,” in thunder, any good Peircean knows we should not foreclose inquiry. For those who retain a post-orthodox religious temperament in post-modernity, Robert S. Corrington’s evolving account of Ecstatic Naturalism might prove a challenging, engaging framework for a transcendental naturalism. If one can read Emerson and Thoreau and ignore their religious dimension, so be it—attunement is crucial for Corrington, cultivating the habits of thought, the (...) psychosemiosis that enables an engagement with Ecstatic Naturalism and a recovery of the sacred. Those inclined to an experiential, naturalistic... (shrink)

This review of books by Niemoczynski and Robinson considers how semiotic processes of consciousness posited by Pierce yield insights into experiences usually categorized as religious. For Niemoczynski, consciousness experiences iconic representation and then disruptions of it. Conscious responds to such disruptions by means of abduction, and this is the seed of transcendence. Niemoczynski develops these processes with attention to Schelling, Heidegger, Deleuze, Corrington, and Badiou. Turning to Robinson's book, we find a deep inquiry into trinitarian logic that (...) considers early work of Christian philosophers in relation to Peirce's new list of categories: firstness, secondness, and thirdness. While both books appear to seek new frontiers of naturalism, Robinson's work is notable for its engagement with an emerging field of biosemiotics. (shrink)

Everyone's favorite houseguest who never left, Leon Black (played by award-winning comedian JB Smoove on HBO's Curb Your Enthusiasm) drops his wisdom and good-bad advice for the masses. Learn the secrets Larry David has gleaned from the Falstaff of television."--Amazon.

The Hungry Soul is a fascinating exploration of the natural and cultural act of eating. Kass brilliantly reveals how the various aspects of this phenomenon, and the customs, rituals, and taboos surrounding it, relate to universal and profound truths about the human animal and its deepest yearnings. "Kass is a distinguished and graceful writer. . . . It is astonishing to discover how different is our world from that of the animals, even in that which most evidently betrays that we (...) too are animals--our need and desire for food."--Roger Scruton, Times Literary Supplement "Yum."--Miss Manners. (shrink)

It’s constitutive of classical theism that there is a necessarily existent personal god who is also the creator of the universe, where the latter claim includes at least the following three theses: (i) God is wholly distinct from the natural world; (ii) God is the originating or sustaining cause of the natural world; and (iii) God created the natural world ex nihilo, i.e., without the use of pre-existing materials. Call this tripartite component of classical theism the classical view of creation. (...) In this paper, I offer a new argument against classical theism. In particular, I argue that creation ex nihilo is prima facie impossible, and that since the doctrine of creation ex nihilo is constitutive of classical theism, classical theism is false. (shrink)

In this paper we argue that defenders of Frankfurt-style counterexamples to the Principle of Alternative Possibilities do not need to construct a metaphysically possible scenario in which an agent is morally responsible despite lacking the ability to do otherwise. Rather, there is a weaker (but equally legitimate) sense in which Frankfurt-style counterexamples can succeed. All that's needed is the claim that the ability to do otherwise is no part of what grounds moral responsibility, when the agent is indeed morally responsible.

Building on the seminal work of Kit Fine in the 1980s, Leon Horsten here develops a new theory of arbitrary entities. He connects this theory to issues and debates in metaphysics, logic, and contemporary philosophy of mathematics, investigating the relation between specific and arbitrary objects and between specific and arbitrary systems of objects. His book shows how this innovative theory is highly applicable to problems in the philosophy of arithmetic, and explores in particular how arbitrary objects can engage with (...) the nineteenth-century concept of variable mathematical quantities, how they are relevant for debates around mathematical structuralism, and how they can help our understanding of the concept of random variables in statistics. This fully worked through theory will open up new avenues within philosophy of mathematics, bringing in the work of other philosophers such as Saul Kripke, and providing new insights into the development of the foundations of mathematics from the eighteenth century to the present day. (shrink)

In this article ideas from Kit Fine’s theory of arbitrary objects are applied to questions regarding mathematical structuralism. I discuss how sui generis mathematical structures can be viewed as generic systems of mathematical objects, where mathematical objects are conceived of as arbitrary objects in Fine’s sense.

We are walking too quickly down the road to physical and psychological utopia without pausing to assess the potential damage to our humanity from this brave new ...