Creaturely Cosmologies
Creaturely Cosmologies

Author: Brianne Donaldson

Publisher: Lexington Books

Published: 2015-05-05

Total Pages: 177

ISBN-13: 149850180X

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Metaphysics—or the grand narratives about reality that shape a community—has historically been identified as one of the primary oppressive factors in violence against animals, the environment, and other subordinated populations. Yet, this rejection of metaphysics has allowed inadequate worldviews to be smuggled back into secular rights-based systems, and into politics, language, arts, economics, media, and science under the guise of value-free and narrowly human-centric facts that relegate many populations to the margins and exclude them from consideration as active members of the planetary community. Those concerned with systemic violence against creatures and other oppressed populations must overcome this allergy to metaphysics in order to illuminate latent assumptions at work in their own worldviews, and to seek out dynamic, many-sided, and relational narratives about reality that are more adequate to a universe of responsive and creative world-shaping creatures. This text examines two such worldviews—Whitehead’s process-relational thought in the west and the nonviolent Indian tradition of Jainism—alongside theorists such as Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari, Judith Butler, Donna Haraway, Karen Barad, that offer a new perspective on metaphysics as well as the creaturely kin and planetary fellows with whom we co-shape our future.

Literature, Cultural Politics and Counter-Readings
Literature, Cultural Politics and Counter-Readings

Author: Anindya Sekhar Purakayastha

Publisher: Routledge

Published: 2021-06-08

Total Pages: 224

ISBN-13: 1000412806

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This book is an attempt at deconstructive counter-reading or at what Jonathan Dollimore called “creative vandalism” (2018) of existing cultural or literary texts. Deconstruction is a much maligned or a much misunderstood word and for many, it usually bears a pejorative ring. While most would flaunt their familiarity with some of its philosophic jargons, for the majority, it is an area to be dismissed as intellectual obscurity or abstruse ‘high theory’. In fact there is a serious dearth of Derrida scholarship because of our collective aversion to Derrida that emanates from our lack of familiarity or engagement with deconstruction theory or with the philosophy of deconstruction. Norm-deviant reading strategies of deconstruction offer fresh insights and rebellious interpretative possibilities. Please note: Taylor & Francis does not sell or distribute the Hardback in India, Pakistan, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka.

Mind, Value, and Cosmos
Mind, Value, and Cosmos

Author: Andrew M. Davis

Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield

Published: 2020-10-14

Total Pages: 249

ISBN-13: 1793636400

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Mind, Value, and Cosmos: On the Relational Nature of Ultimacy is an investigation into the nature of ultimacy and explanation, particularly as it relates to the status of, and relationship among Mind, Value, and the Cosmos. It draws its stimulus from longstanding “axianoetic” convictions as to the ultimate status of Mind and Value in the western tradition of philosophical theology, and chiefly from the influential modern proposals of A.N. Whitehead, Keith Ward, and John Leslie. What emerges is a relational theory of ultimacy wherein Mind and Value, Possibility and Actuality, God and the World are revealed as “ultimate” only in virtue of their relationality. The ultimacy of relationality—what Whitehead calls “mutual immanence”—uniquely illuminates enduring mysteries surrounding: any and all existence, necessary divine existence, the nature of the possible, and the world as actual. As such, it casts fresh light upon the whence and why of God, the World, and their ultimate presuppositions.

Astrophilosophy, Exotheology, and Cosmic Religion
Astrophilosophy, Exotheology, and Cosmic Religion

Author: Andrew M. Davis

Publisher: Lexington Books

Published: 2024-01-22

Total Pages: 575

ISBN-13: 1666944378

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Astrophilosopy, Exotheology, and Cosmic Religion: Extraterrestrial Life in a Process Universe applies Alfred North Whitehead’s process philosophy and the associated process philosophies of Henri Bergson, Teilhard de Chardin, and others to the interdisciplinary layers of astrobiology, extraterrestrial life, and the impact of discovery. This collection, edited by Andrew M. Davis and Roland Faber, asks questions such as “How have process thinkers imagined universal creative evolution and its implications for philosophies, theologies, and religions beyond earth?” and “How might their claims as to the primacy of organism, temporality, novelty, value, and mind enrich current discussions and debates across disciplines?” As experts in their fields, the contributors are informed by, but not limited to, process conceptualities. The chapters not only advance recent discussions in astrobiology, cosmology, and evolution but also consider a constellation of philosophical topics, from shared extraterrestrial knowledge and values to the possibilities or limitations afforded by A.I. technology, the Fermi Paradox, the Drake Equation, and the increasing need to nurture the cosmic dimensions of theological and religious traditions.

The Routledge Companion to Gender and Animals
The Routledge Companion to Gender and Animals

Author: Chloë Taylor

Publisher: Taylor & Francis

Published: 2024-05-31

Total Pages: 884

ISBN-13: 1040005888

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The Routledge Companion to Gender and Animals is a diverse and intersectional collection which examines human and more-than-human animal relations, as well as the interconnectedness of human and animal oppressions through various lenses. Comprising fifty chapters, the book explores a range of debates and scholarship within important contemporary topics such as companion animals, hunting, agriculture, and animal activist strategies. It also offers timely analyses of zoonotic disease pandemics, mass extinction, and the climate catastrophe, using perspectives including feminist, critical race, anti-colonial, critical disability, and masculinities studies. The Routledge Companion to Gender and Animals is an essential reference for students in gender studies, sexuality studies, human-animal studies, cultural studies, sociology, and environmental studies.

The Cosmic Spirit
The Cosmic Spirit

Author: Roland Faber

Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers

Published: 2021-03-04

Total Pages: 478

ISBN-13: 1725260700

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Are we more than stardust? Is the appearance of the fragile Earth in the vast universe more than an accident? Are we not children of a Spirit that pervades the dust, rejuvenates life, and embraces the ever-evolving universe? Is there a cosmic Spirit that wants us to awaken to a consciousness of universal meaning, sacred purpose, and mutual friendship with all beings? This book answers these questions with a spirituality of the numinous in our relation to the elements of the Earth in the matrix of the multiverse by taking you on a journey through nine paths and nineteen meditations of awakening. Not bound by any religion, but in deep appreciation of the religious and spiritual heritage of human encounters with the divine depth of existence in our selves and in nature, they invite you to become sojourners by engaging the most profound embodiments of the intangible Spirit by which it facilitates its own materialization in the cosmos and our spiritualization of the cosmos. Use--says this Spirit--the stardust that you are to become a spirit-faring species in an eternal journey of the cosmos to realize its ultimate motive of existence--the attraction of love!

Beyond the Bifurcation of Nature
Beyond the Bifurcation of Nature

Author: Dan Dombrowski

Publisher: Cambridge Scholars Publishing

Published: 2014-10-21

Total Pages: 280

ISBN-13: 1443870234

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Environmental destruction, animal abuse, and widespread indifference toward plants and elemental systems demand that a human-centric view of the world be permanently dismantled. But once it is, what functional hierarchies take its place, if any? This volume brings Alfred North Whitehead's process-relational worldview into conversation with deeper empirical perspectives on science and religion, with activist and de/constructive philosophies, with South Asian and indigenous traditions, and with...

Human Anguish and God's Power
Human Anguish and God's Power

Author: David H. Kelsey

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2020-12-17

Total Pages: 451

ISBN-13: 1108871429

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Persons anguished by another's profound suffering are often outraged by well-intentioned efforts to console them which suggest that God 'sent' that horrific suffering to their loved one for a 'purpose' according to a tailor-made 'plan' for just that person. However, the outraged reaction simply deepens the anguish. This book argues that such 'consolation' is theologically problematic because it assumes that unrestricted power is what makes God 'God.' Against that it outlines an account of 'who' and 'what' the Triune God is, framed in terms of God's intrinsic 'glory,' the attractive and perfectly self-expressive self-giving in love that is God's life, and sets limits to the range of things we can say God 'does.' Correlatively it offers an account of different senses in which God is 'sovereign' and 'powerful', one which reflects three ways God relates to all else: to create, to bless eschatologically, and to reconcile, as is scripturally narrated.

Cosmology Without God?
Cosmology Without God?

Author: David Alcalde

Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers

Published: 2019-06-26

Total Pages: 226

ISBN-13: 1532636849

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Is God a superfluous hypothesis for modern cosmology? According to the normal understanding of modern science, the answer should be affirmative because modern science is supposed to be free of metaphysical and theological presuppositions. However, despite its self-proclaimed neutrality regarding metaphysics and theology, modern science is full of metaphysical and theological presuppositions. These can be summarized as a mechanistic understanding of nature, a reduction of God to an external agent in competition with natural processes, and creation to a worldly mechanism. These presuppositions are deficient and untenable, and they remain unconscious for the most part in the dialogue between science and theology, making it intellectually impossible because of the reduced notions of God, nature, and creation assumed. Using the coherent and unreduced image of God and nature provided by the Christian doctrine of creation ex nihilo, Fr. David Alcalde intends to uncover and criticize the incoherent theological assumptions inherent in a concrete branch of modern science, which is modern cosmology. The author points out the presence of these inadequate theological presuppositions in both the theologians who use modern cosmology to offer scientific proof for the existence of God and the atheistic cosmologists who use their science to reject the idea of God.