From Ecclesiastes to Simone Weil: Varieties of Philosophical Spirituality

From Ecclesiastes to Simone Weil: Varieties of Philosophical Spirituality reads major philosophers from the Western philosophical canon and beyond for the spirituality implicit in their metaphysics, epistemology, ethics, aesthetics, and logic. Ernest Rubinstein revives for the modern reader the spiritual import of philosophy as an area of inquiry and study. Spirituality is understood as a lived orientation towards the sacred. The sacred is characterized as the source of all being and human wellbeing. Philosophy is presented as an avenue of approach to the sacred alternative to the western religious traditions. Philosophers treated include Plato, Descartes, Spinoza, Kant, Hegel, Kierkegaard, Emerson, William James, Bertrand Russell, and Simone Weil.

Table of Contents:
Contents Acknowledgments Preface Chapter 1. Introduction: Philosophy as Religion Chapter 2. Ecclesiastes Chapter 3. Plato Chapter 4. Lucretius and Marcus Aurelius Chapter 5. Descartes Chapter 6. Spinoza Chapter 7. Kant Chapter 8. Novalis Chapter 9. Hegel: Phenomenology of Spirit Chapter 10. Kierkegaard Chapter 11. Emerson Chapter 12. William James Chapter 13. Bertrand Russell Chapter 14. Simone Weil Chapter 15. Conclusion: Philosophical Sensibility as Philosophical Spirituality Bibliography About the Author

About the Author :
Ernest Rubinstein is adjunct assistant professor of humanities at the New York University School of Continuing and Professional Studies and associate librarian emeritus at Drew University.

Review :
With a novel take on 14 philosophers, Rubinstein reintroduces a historical conception of philosophy as wrestling with the spiritual and thus becoming therapy, at least for the philosophers themselves. Recognizing that philosophy has, over the centuries, fractured into many quarreling silos of thought, this book attempts to find the common source of spirituality that philosophy has always had at its core. By defining spiritualityin terms of 'a non-exclusive humanism,' Rubinstein is able to broaden the concept to include ontological or epistemological transcendence. This allows for inclusion of Bertrand Russell’s aesthetics, as well as the almost existential musings of the tacitly earthly Ecclesiastes. . . .Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above. Dr. Rubenstein is obviously someone who has read exhaustively and pondered deeply on the fourteen authors (as well as their times and intellectual ‘neighbors’) he presents to us and savoured and deepened his grasp of the ‘flavor’, tendency, and tensions within each one; he offers us the benefit of his scholarship, flashes of insight, and scintillating powers of expression in mature, rounded and concentrated essays.... This is the work of a lifetime and an impressive, generous gift that will serve as a lasting monument to its author. It could well serve as a base textin a course on ‘Western Philosophy and the Sacred’, enticing each student to go perhaps more deeply than they initially intended into the thought of each thinker, grateful for the assistance and stimulated to make connections and cross-over comparisons of their own. This is the best kind of pedagogical device: richly informative, gracefully expressed and modestly self-effacing, provocative and fertilizing of the student’s own engagement with and further construction upon and beyond what they have been given. We are deeply in Dr. Rubenstein’s debt.... This book you will keep deep in your library; it is one of the last ones you will give away.