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.

American naturalists all agree that traditional theism, with its belief in a supernatural personal god who is absolutely transcendent to nature, is inconsistent with the view that nature is all that there is. Yet despite the rejection of the traditional God of theism, some naturalists have found pantheism, with its belief in a divinity thoroughly immanent to nature, congenial. Nonetheless, no philosophically rigorous and systematic juxtaposition of the metaphysical and ethical commitments of pantheism with those of naturalism has been undertaken. (...) This essay seeks to fill that gap by investigating the viability of pantheism from the perspective of the ordinal naturalism of Justus Buchler. Several reasons can be .. (shrink)

In the brief autobiographical remarks found in the preface of Stuart Rosenbaum’s Pragmatism and the Reflective Life, we discover that Rosenbaum began his philosophical career in the tradition of analytic philosophy. It is precisely this background in the analytic tradition that gives weight to the powerful criticisms he levels against that tradition as he wends his way through his new-found love, American pragmatism. He informs us that American pragmatism has taught him to appreciate far more of human experience than is (...) tolerated in the analytic tradition and in Anglo-European philosophy in general. He believes that it is the American pragmatist tradition that has exhibited a holistic picture of human experience .. (shrink)