Abstract The views of eleven writers who develop a naturalized spirituality, from Baruch Spinoza and George Santayana to Sam Harris, André Comte-Sponville, Ursula Goodenough, and Sharon Welch and others are presented. Then the writer's own theory is developed. This is a pluralistic notion of sacredness, an adjective referring to unmanipulable events of overriding importance. The difficulties in using traditional religious words, such as God and spiritual are addressed.

Although its roots go back at least to Spinoza, religious naturalism is once again becoming a self–conscious option in religious thinking. This article seeks to (1) provide a generic notion of religious naturalism, (2) sketch my own “minimalist” variety of religious naturalism, and (3) view the science–religion dialogue from both of these perspectives. This last will include reflection on the nature of scientific practices, the contributions of religious traditions to moral reflection, and Ursula Goodenough's “religiopoiesis.”.

I thought that I knew Adam Smith. Apparently not! "The political economy of the USA today is based on a laissez-faire interpretation of his Wealth of Nations," which, according to John E. Hill, "grossly distorts Smith's ideas." Furthermore, "correctly interpreting" Smith's thought would lead to greater happiness in all capitalistic political economic systems". The general slant of this book is that gross misinterpretations of Smith's theory of market capitalism have been used to justify the destruction of the moral standards on (...) which market capitalism depends. In other words, market capitalism requires a moral infrastructure or foundation, which has been eroded by Smith's recent... (shrink)

This is an excellent book on Santayana. It establishes Lovely as a Santayana scholar, ranking him with the likes of Lachs, Levinson, and Woodward. He has a thorough command of both the primary sources and secondary literature. Since many American naturalists writing on religion have either a liberal Protestant or a liberal Jewish background, Santayana’s Roman Catholic background provides a needed balance. Santayana, like many great American philosophers, helps point the way to a truly postmodern appreciation of religion. The first (...) chapter considers Santayana’s paradoxical relationship to Catholicism. His outlook was nontheistic yet included a Catholic cultural sensibility, theological .. (shrink)

The aim of this book is to demonstrate that American Indians have a world-view that is consistent, intelligible, and legitimate. It is a deft and self-aware exemplification of the task of cross-cultural comparison. The overall strategy in the argument is to employ a modified version of Nelson Goodman’s notion of world-making and then construct a simplified model of the American Indian worldview. Norton-Smith accomplishes this difficult task and in the process modifies Goodman in a realist direction, making a strong case (...) that the Native view deserves intellectual respect. The writing is accessible and shows a deft and helpful interplay between abstract language and concrete illustrative .. (shrink)

Paul Rasor’s thoughtful book attempts to show how liberal religion can regain its prophetic role in America. A key theme is that religious liberals must be clear about the religious principles that support and guide their basic social-justice work. This is not easy for religious liberals, because of their commitment to religious freedom. For Rasor, liberal religion seeks to be in tune with modern knowledge and culture and has a commitment to free religious inquiry. Religious liberals are found in all (...) religious traditions. Religious liberals are not identical with but overlap the religious left, that is, religious people who hold progressive political and social views. Examining three recent surveys, he .. (shrink)

W. Creighton Peden is known for his organizational skill in founding and guiding The Highlands Institute for American Religious and Philosophical Thought. He is also known for founding this journal, with Larry Axel and friends. In addition, he wrote some fourteen books and co-edited or coauthored nine volumes plus several articles in American liberal theology. Many of these books are the first major studies of their subjects. Also, he was the founder of the Journal of Social Philosophy, which he edited (...) for fourteen years.The strengths of Peden’s scholarship, in my judgment, are threefold. First, he has collected major and minor writings of his.. (shrink)

Seldom have I read a book so scholarly and yet so delightful. It takes us to view major concepts of both God and the good life of philosophical and religious writers of the world from the Bible, Plato, and Aristotle to philosophers of India and China. Besides the usual figures, there are studies of Augustine, Maimonides, al-Farabi, and al-Ghazali. As a bonus, Lobel also touches on recent figures such as Iris Murdoch, Alfred North Whitehead, Alasdair MacIntyre, and Charles Taylor. While (...) I am not competent to judge the accuracy of the author’s treatment of Maimonides, the Muslims, and Murdoch, I found the rest of her analyses to be accurate. She has previously... (shrink)

Stone maps the force, vivacity, and stories within our most mundane matter, stone. For too long stone has served as an unexamined metaphor for the "really real": blunt factuality, nature's curt rebuke. Yet, medieval writers knew that stones drop with fire from the sky, emerge through the subterranean lovemaking of the elements, tumble along riverbeds from Eden, partner with the masons who build worlds with them. Such motion suggests an ecological enmeshment and an almost creaturely mineral life.Although (...) geological time can leave us reeling, Jeffrey Jerome Cohen argues that stone's endurance is also an invitation to apprehend the world in other than human terms. Never truly inert, stone poses a profound challenge to modernity's disenchantments. Its agency undermines the human desire to be separate from the environment, a bifurcation that renders nature "out there," a mere resource for recreation, consumption, and exploitation.Written with great verve and elegance, this pioneering work is notable not only for interweaving the medieval and the modern but also as a major contribution to ecotheory. Comprising chapters organized by concept --"Geophilia," "Time," "Force," and "Soul"--Cohen seamlessly brings together a wide range of topics including stone's potential to transport humans into nonanthropocentric scales of place and time, the "petrification" of certain cultures, the messages fossils bear, the architecture of Bordeaux and Montparnasse, Yucca Mountain and nuclear waste disposal, the ability of stone to communicate across millennia in structures like Stonehenge, and debates over whether stones reproduce and have souls.Showing that what is often assumed to be the most lifeless of substances is, in its own time, restless and forever in motion, Stone fittingly concludes by taking us to Iceland--a land that, writes the author, "reminds us that stone like water is alive, that stone like water is transient.". (shrink)

Stone hurts—and not simply because rocks so easily become missiles. The lithic offers a blunt challenge to our belief that humans matter. Homo sapiens are a species perhaps 200,000 years old. Homo erectus and Homo habilis, two of our earliest ancestors, go back perhaps 2.5 million years. That seems a substantial span. If you were to count one number per second and never pause to sleep or eat, it would take about twelve days to reach one million. Two-and-a-half million (...) is a month filled with incessant counting. Stone was the Earth's first solid. Geologists have identified bedrock that has endured at least 4.3 billion years. Some zircon crystals are older still. Every migrant continent harbors rocks of at least... (shrink)

Argues that educators should help students piece together authentic narratives about themselves and about society, and not to focus so much on teaching students to process information.

Living in the Borderland addresses the evolution of Western consciousness and describes the emergence of the "Borderland," a spectrum of reality that is beyond the rational yet is palpable to an increasing number of individuals. Building on Jungian theory, Jerome Bernstein argues that a greater openness to transrational reality experienced by Borderland personalities allows new possibilities for understanding and healing confounding clinical and developmental enigmas." "Living in the Borderland challenges the standard clinical model, which views normality as an absence (...) of pathology and which equates normality with the rational. Jerome S. Bernstein describes how psychotherapy itself often contributes to the alienation of Borderland personalities by misperceiving the difference between the pathological and the sacred. The case studies included illustrate the potential this has for causing serious psychic and emotional damage to the patient." "This challenge to the orthodoxies and complacencies of western medicine's concept of pathology will interest Jungian Analysts, Psychotherapists, Psychiatrists and other physicians, as well as educators of children. (shrink)

However one conceives of the relation between a sign and its significate, referring is a communicative act in which a speaker must intentionally direct the attention of an interlocutor to some object, event, or state of affairs that the speaker has in mind. This article examines the ontogenesis and phylogenesis of acts of referring, with special concern for the possible nature of sign-significate relationships. Findings from developments psychology indicate that a group of abilities and skills underlie the ability to refer. (...) Infants follow the gaze of others to objects of attention, and enjoy joint attention with others. Interactions with caregivers in routines well known to the child enable her to achieve joint attention with the adult on a particular ingredient in the routine. In this way, the ability to refer develops from certain "language games ", interactions that combine goal-seeking and joint attention. (shrink)

Until now, however, little has been devoted to the results of various abortion policy changes. Legge examines the effects of abortion policy changes on maternal and infant health in the United States, Great Britain, and Eastern Europe.

At least five sets of ethical standards influence business people's decisions: general cultural, company, personal, situational, and industry standards. Each has an official or espoused form encoded in written documents such as policy statements and codes of ethics and an unofficial form that develops as people use the espoused standards. (We call these unofficial standards values in action.) To determine whether the high-technology industry deserves its reputation for moral laxness, a pilot questionnaire was designed. It asked employees to rate the (...) acceptability in the workplace of ethical behaviors relating to safety, third parties, and cheating the company. The findings show that employees in high-and low-technology industries uphold espoused values of safety. Relations with third parties are influenced by the existence of company codes of ethics, especially in small companies. Actions involving cheating the company need to be investigated further. (shrink)