Pantheism
Edited by Andrei Buckareff (Marist College)
About this topic
Summary | Very roughly, all variants of pantheism takes God to be an all-inclusive unity. If we assume ontological naturalism, this means that God is identical with the cosmos. This is not to say that each proper part of the universe is divine. Rather, the entire universe exhibits a range of qualities sufficient to ground our theological discourse. Exactly what the proper fundamental ontology must be for pantheism to be true is a matter of some dispute. While many associate pantheism with an ontological commitment to substance monism, pantheism does not imply any such commitment. A variety of different proposals have been offered both in the history of philosophy and in more recent work in philosophy of religion to account for how the cosmos can exhibit the right features to be described as divine. And there is no shortage of proposals of what qualities must be possessed for any such all-inclusive unity to be genuinely divine and the proper object of some religious attitudes. |
Key works | Pantheistic ideas are present not only in the history of philosophy in the West, but also in movements in many world religions. Focusing on philosophy, some (e.g., Baltzly 2003) have argued that the Stoics should be regarded as pantheists. But Spinoza's Ethics (de Spinoza & Curley 1994:) is regarded by many as providing the first clear and systematic presentation and defense of pantheism. That said, some (e.g., Curley 1969)have denied that Spinoza is best understood as a pantheist (but see Guilherme 2008 for a reply to Curley). After Spinoza, among Anglophone philosophers, some philosophers leading up to today have expressed sympathy for pantheism (e.g., Edward Seth 1894, Josiah Royce 1901, T.L.S. Sprigge 2006, Grace Jantzen 1984, John Leslie 2001, and Peter Forrest 2016). Perhaps one of the most interesting recent developments in the literature on pantheism has been philosophers considering the implications of panpsychism (in particular, cosmopsychism) for pantheism (Goff forthcoming). For an opinionated (and somewhat controversial) book-length survey of pantheism, including its commitments and implications (both theoretical and practical), see Levine 1994. For a recent collection of essays by analytic philosophers of religion on alternative conceptions of the divine, including both defenses and critiques of pantheism, see Buckareff & Nagasawa 2016. |
Introductions | Mander 2016 |
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Related categories
Siblings:
- Monotheism (72)
- Polytheism (38)
- Atheism (439)
- Divine Attributes (2,621 | 63)
- Panentheism (193)
- The Number of Gods, Misc (10)
- Panpsychism (467 | 328)
- Monism (112)
- Panentheism (193)
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