Abstract: In the intervening period between our previous issue's going to press in February 2020 and its publication that summer, the COVID-19 pandemic inflicted more disruption upon everyday life than most of us had ever seen. Now, as this double issue goes to press in the fall of 2020, the potential for further disruption remains undiminished. As of this writing, it is impossible to predict with any specificity the outcomes of the moment's crises—in politics, in public health, in racial justice, and in economics—but what is clear is that these crises raise important questions about the functioning of our democracy and the basic ability of our society to evaluate information, communicate across factions, maintain civic ... Read More PubDate: 2021-05-03T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: My commitment to a religious idealism that emphasizes struggle and tragedy, accepts liberationist criticism, and espouses democratic socialist politics shapes what I take from Hegel and Paul Tillich. Hegel is both alien to me and distinctly the thinker with whom I am never done. Karl Marx and Søren Kierkegaard scored against Hegel by emphasizing the situation of the knower, but both were one-sided compared to Hegel. Emmanuel Levinas scored against Hegel by railing against the constraints of ontology and upholding the priority of the ethical, but antiontology is still a form of ontology, mirroring what it repudiates, with no basis for claiming to know anything. Levinas repeated Kierkegaard's experience of mirroring ... Read More PubDate: 2021-05-03T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: The two concluding chapters of Josiah Royce's The Problem of Christianity (henceforth PC) pose significant interpretive challenges. The final chapter, "Summary and Conclusion," sets forward Charles S. Peirce's theory of scientific inquiry. Although Royce had earlier explained Peirce's theory of signs and interpretation, he had not examined Peirce's theory of scientific inquiry in detail, making its appearance in the summary and conclusion of the book peculiar. Moreover, it is not wholly evident how a theory of scientific inquiry is supposed to address the problem with which the second part of the book sets out, viz., how Christianity can possess a "more than human meaning and foundation" given that such ... Read More PubDate: 2021-05-03T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: The question that is front and center at the outset of William James's great work The Varieties of Religious Experience is What is religion'1 He opens his discussion of this question in the second lecture, "Circumscription of the Topic," with the observation that the field of religion is so "wide" and the definitions of it so varied that it would be "foolish" to try to find a single definition that formulates its essence. Even if, instead, we look for a defining characteristic of religion within the self or mind, we find the same disagreement among authors "in the psychologies and in the philosophies of religion": "One man allies it to the feeling of dependence; one makes it a derivative from fear; others connect ... Read More PubDate: 2021-05-03T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: In The Quantum of Explanation: Whitehead's Radical Empiricism, Randy Auxier and Gary Herstein have produced an exceptional study that I believe is one of the most important books about Whitehead's philosophy to have appeared in the past fifty years.1 Fifteen or twenty years ago interest in Whitehead's thought appeared to be waning. Now process philosophy has made a remarkable comeback and is also of growing interest among scholars other than philosophers and theologians. The Quantum of Explanation makes a timely contribution to this situation because it is written with an integrative perspective that is relevant to diverse fields of inquiry and because it offers clarification pertaining to several long-standing ... Read More PubDate: 2021-05-03T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: Jeffrey Stout's recent essay, "Public Reason and Dialectical Pragmatism" (2018), argues that theories of public reason in the tradition of Enlightenment rationalism, including its expression in the work of John Rawls, must be made over in an altogether more public fashion.1 That is, these theories must abandon the private machinations of philosophical minds and come to embrace the messy forums of public debate. There, as the rightful inheritance of democratic publics instead of the exclusive province of erudite philosophers, public reasoning—as a progressive process—becomes an indispensable resource for the continual reconstruction of a liberal and deliberative democracy. Democracy, in Stout's view, is perpetually ... Read More PubDate: 2021-05-03T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: On the eve of the 2016 election, which ushered in the Trump era, an article by Alan Jacobs in Harper's Magazine lamented the decline of the Christian public intellectual and noted the need for such figures today—what Jacobs describes as the "'Where Is Our Reinhold Niebuhr'' Problem." Jacobs has in mind the Christian social and political thinkers of the early and mid-twentieth century, such as Niebuhr, T. S. Eliot, C. S. Lewis, "and their fellow travelers," who were willing to challenge the prevailing social order of the time. He characterizes Christian public intellectuals—what others might call public theologians—as follows: "They should be intellectuals who speak the language of other intellectuals, including the ... Read More PubDate: 2021-05-03T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: Any attempt to rise to the climate challenge will be fruitless unless it is understood as part of a much wider battle of worldviews, a process of rebuilding and reinventing the very idea of the collective, the communal, the commons, the civil, and the civic after so many decades of attack and neglect. Because what is overwhelming about the climate challenge is that it requires breaking so many rules at once.Columnist and editor Naomi Klein calls our attention to the urgent need for a radical reenvisioning of entrenched worldviews or conceptions of reality in our time of direly threatening climate change and pending ecological disaster around the globe. We need, in other words, to question our most basic assumptions ... Read More PubDate: 2021-05-03T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: What is the nature and scope of aesthetic sensibility and thought' Answers to this question have varied greatly over the centuries. In recent decades, however, there have been few attempts to describe the nature and scope of aesthetics within the ambiance of a far-reaching context that takes account of contemporary developments in relevant disciplines. My intention in this essay is to sketch out the contours of such a comprehensive theory.Toward that end I will first offer a brief impressionistic account of the varied ways aesthetic qualities of experience have been treated during the unfolding of Western thought. In Plato's Symposium, the loving attention devoted to facets of beauty interprets them as but varied ... Read More PubDate: 2021-05-03T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: Richard Kenneth Atkins is associate professor of philosophy at Boston College and executive director of the Charles S. Peirce Society. Working in the areas of pragmatism and American philosophy, he is the author of Charles S. Peirce's Phenomenology (Oxford University Press, 2018) and Peirce and the Conduct of Life (Cambridge University Press, 2016), among other books and articles.David E. Conner is a graduate of the Iliff School of Theology (M.Div., Th.D.) and has studied Whitehead's philosophy with John Cobb. He is the author of several articles and book chapters and is the coeditor with Demian Wheeler of Conceiving an Alternative: Philosophical Resources for an Ecological Civilization (Process Century Press ... Read More PubDate: 2021-05-03T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: Upon first glance, readers might not think there is much new to be found in the most recent book from Wesley Wildman. After all, seven of the nine chapters contained between its covers began as essays previously published. However, this volume is also the sixth of six in his Religious Philosophy series (though not the last to appear), so clearly the author is making something of its contents. Indeed, there is much that is worthwhile to be found within. Taken together with the new material, this collection of essays immediately reveals the depths of Wildman's pragmatic commitments. The chapters do not build upon one another like links in a chain or floors in a building from the foundation to the executive suites. ... Read More PubDate: 2021-05-03T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: Containing ten original essays by leading philosophers and scholars of religion, this volume is an important resource for anyone interested in the complex, evolving relationship between pragmatism and philosophical naturalism, especially as this bears upon the study and practice of religion. Matthew Bagger's general introduction and his introductions to each section are important contributions in their own right, providing the historical and contextual background needed to weave the volume's disparate essays into a coherent whole. After briefly summarizing each essay, this review provides a critical response to the eclipse of "representationalism" announced in the volume's subtitle.Part 1 explores the naturalisms ... Read More PubDate: 2021-05-03T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: In The Emergence of the American University (University of Chicago Press, 1965), Laurence Veysey argued that by the end of the nineteenth century, four rival conceptions about the purpose of higher education were already in contention: (1) it should develop moral and mental discipline, (2) it should prepare students for employment and participation in a democratic culture, (3) it should be a place for research, and (4) it should support liberal culture. Veysey went on to note that the focus on moral discipline was already waning in the early years of the twentieth century. Yet varieties of all four conceptions persist in the ongoing contestation about the purpose and value of higher education, and each makes an ... Read More PubDate: 2021-05-03T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: In this book, Robert Neville brings together twenty essays that articulate and support his understanding of religion as "human engagement of ultimacy" (1). Most of the essays were originally prepared during the same period in which he wrote his three-volume Philosophical Theology (SUNY Press, 2013–15); accordingly, many of the early chapters can serve as introductions to the latter work. In later chapters, Neville sharpens his view of religion in conversation with various friendly rivals, including philosophical theologians (e.g., David Griffin and Joseph Bracken) and pragmatists (e.g., Richard Rorty and Nancy Frankenberry). Most of the essays were originally prepared as talks for diverse audiences; as a result ... Read More PubDate: 2021-05-03T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: This volume grew out of a conference held in 2016 at the Claremont School of Theology, while the conference itself grew out of "innovative conversations between philosophers, Erin Manning and Brian Massumi, and process philosophers, Roland Faber and Michael Halewood" (ix). Its title in effect conjoins a Whiteheadian conception of propositions and a Jamesian understanding of "things." ("What really exists is," James insists, "not things made but things in the making."1 The facet of propositions upon which the organizers and participants focus is the one thrust into the foreground by Whitehead's characterization of them as "lure[s] for feeling" (ix, 5). As such, a proposition is set forth on behalf of "a collectivity ... Read More PubDate: 2021-05-03T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: It is with sincere appreciation that I commend this edited collection to readers of the AJTP. The collection meets the task of promoting lively discussion that addresses the interface between theology and philosophy, especially as shaped by empiricist, naturalist, process, and pragmatist traditions. As the most recent volume in the series Toward Ecological Civilization, it delivers papers from the Tenth International Whitehead Conference and Ninth International Forum on Ecological Civilization, held in Claremont, California, June 2015, thereby delivering on a second focus for the AJTP: the development of liberal religious thought in America.The authors gathered in this collection take seriously the earnest and ... Read More PubDate: 2021-05-03T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: Behind the playful title of this book there is a serious theory about the origin of religions, as well as an argument concerning their usefulness and the truth claims they make. Anyone familiar with Shults's work will recognize this book as a companion to his Theology after the Birth of God—and, to a lesser extent, Iconoclastic Theology: Gilles Deleuze and the Secretion of Atheism—repeating the basic argument but adding an avalanche of more recent research, engaging some different interlocutors (e.g., Celia Dean-Drummond and Robert Neville), and outlining the virtues of computer modeling as an avenue of inquiry.1 The first and last chapters detail the core of Shults's theory and the evidence for it; the inner ten ... Read More PubDate: 2021-05-03T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: Some process philosophers—David Ray Griffin chief among them—held that Whitehead offered a vision of the world that is both postmodern and constructive. Specifically, he viewed the reformed theology of process thought as essential to its constructive efficacy. With this collection of essays, George Allan has articulated a cogent case against this position. That is, Whitehead's system does offer a postmodern and constructive vision of the world—but precisely at the expense of a process theology. In his account, a postmodern and constructive process philosophy means a radically contingent temporality that is fundamentally incompatible with any permanent mode of being. All the theological functions within Whitehead's ... Read More PubDate: 2021-05-03T00:00:00-05:00
Abstract: In the January 2020 issue of this journal (41, no. 1:98–102), Rory Misiewicz penned an excellent review of Brandon Daniel-Hughes's book. His one complaint is that Daniel-Hughes appeals to my theory that the Ultimate is "entirely indeterminate and absolute nothingness that contextualizes all things." This he claims to be inconsistent with Peirce. I do not want to defend Daniel-Hughes's use of my idea, although I surely congratulate him. I do want to correct Misiewicz's understanding of it, however.My idea is that all thought is determinate, at least in part, and is therefore consequent to its creation. I give long, convoluted, but utterly persuasive arguments that the existence of any determinate things is the ... Read More PubDate: 2021-05-03T00:00:00-05:00
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