Deep Pantheism: Toward a New Transcendentalism

About the Book

This book is a study in a new form of religious naturalism called “Deep Pantheism,” which has roots in American Transcendentalism, but also in phenomenology and Asian thought. It argues that the great divide within nature is that between nature naturing and nature natured, the former term defined as “Nature creating itself out of itself alone,” while the latter term defined as “The innumerable orders of the World.” Explorations are made of the connections among the unconscious of nature, the archetypes, and the various layers of the human psyche. The Selving process is analyzed using the work of C.G.Jung and Otto Rank. Evolution and involution are compared as they relate to the Encompassing, and the priority of art over most forms of religion is argued for.

Table of Contents:

Introduction: Classical and Ordinal Phenomenology

Chapter One: Nature Naturing and Nature Natured

Chapter Two: Ordinal Psychoanalysis and the Selving Process

Chapter Three: Religion and Art—From Revelation to the Sublime

Chapter Four: Archetypes, Evolution, and Betweenness

Chapter Five: Involution and the Encompassing

Postscript: A New Transcendentalism

About the Author :
Robert S. Corrington is Henry Anson Buttz Professor of Philosophical Theology at Drew University.

Review :
Deep Pantheism: Toward a New Transcendentalism is one of the most creative works to appear in philosophical theology in quite some time. The author of the text, Robert S.Corrington, is a philosopher of singular genius and ingenuity. Deep Pantheism is Corrington’s most compelling and significant theological contribution to date. Bringing process thought, psychoanalysis, phenomenology, and ecotheology together while attempting to move beyond the limits of all of them, Corrington proposes a model for relating to nature as 'all there is' while avoiding the reductive tendencies that characterize many versions of naturalism. Claiming to offer a 'new transcendentalism' in the spirit of Emerson’s appropriation of a Spinozistic conception of nature as both 'natured' and, perhaps more important, 'naturing,' the author advocates moving beyond theism in all its forms, and beyond any notion of creation ex nihilo that might operate therein, to attend to the process of 'selving,' by which humanity is opened in its very being to the depth of nature and the possibilities for reconceiving divinity within this depth. This book stands as a constructive proposal for phenomenology, psychoanalysis, and religion. Even if one is not convinced by the arguments, the sheer originality of the proposal and the innovation of the application make it worth careful attention. That said, the book is likely to be of most interest to those working in progressive strands of ecotheology. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates through faculty. Deep Pantheism:Toward a New Transcendentalismis one of the most creative works to appear in philosophical theology in quite some time. The author of the text, Robert S. Corrington, is a philosopher of singular genius and ingenuity. . . . I consider Deep PantheismCorrington’s most compelling and significant theological contribution to date. The religious and spiritual vision it presents is radical and unorthodox yet arresting, nontribal, and philosophically complex. I cannot recommend the book strongly enough, especially for anyone interested in exploring nonreductive forms of naturalism or moving beyond supernatural theism and quasi-naturalistic theologies such as panentheism. Creatively expanding and integrating the ideas of Schopenhauer, Peirce, Jung, Jaspers and numerous others, Robert Corrington has fashioned a spiritual vision as powerful as it is inclusive. Outlining a pantheism which is nonetheless a dynamic and relational pluralism in the manner of William James, Corrington’s latest work culminates in a postscript in which his new Transcendentalism is compared with that of Emerson. This is a daring and rich contribution to contemporary theology. Robert Corrington has brought his evolving vision of “ecstatic naturalism” or “deep pantheism” to an impressive new level of insightful exposition and development in the pages of this book. Appreciatively, critically, and innovatively, he draws on diverse thinkers such as the continental philosophers Schopenhauer, Schelling, Husserl, Heidegger, and Jaspers, the American philosophers Peirce, James, Santayana, and Dewey, the post-Freudian psychoanalytic theorists Jung, Rank, Reich, and Kohut, and the Indian philosopher Aurobindo. His vision is complex and many-sided, and its principal focus is on sources of inspiration and empowerment—as well as of staggering sublimity—that lie fully and finally within nature itself in its twofold character of nature naturing and nature natured. Corrington is not satisfied with the surface manifestations of splendor and beauty in the outward face of nature, important as these are. He plumbs nature’s unruly depths of ongoing creation and destruction and finds within these depths, and especially at the roiling fissure between nature naturing and nature natured, a revelatory and transformative power that transcends the tendency to tribal antagonisms so often typical of past and present religious outlooks and practices. This is the book we have been waiting for Robert Corrington to write. It is the culmination of his long exploration of the entanglement between the innumerable orders of nature and its unconscious depths. The philosophical acuity and phenomenological attentiveness on display here are breathtaking; it is ecstatic naturalism at its most profound. This book is the greatest of gifts from a unique mind, a gift hand-made in hardship, wrapped with care, and received with reverence.