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| Pantheologies: Gods, Worlds, Monsters
ISBN: 9780231548342
Platform/Publisher: JSTOR / Columbia University Press
Digital rights: Users: unlimited; Printing: chapter; Download: chapter
Subjects: Pantheism; Religion -- Philosophy;
This nuanced history from Wesleyan religion professor Rubenstein exposes how scientists and philosophers have, for centuries, used pantheism as an outer limit of the thinkable. Her key argument centers on how pantheism uncomfortably blurs spiritual distinctions as a kind of queerness. In particular, it calls into question the ostensibly rational, masculine superiority of intellect over matter-and God over the world. She opens with a close reading of Spinoza and his critics, explaining that his perspectival monism views nature as expressions of God. She next considers the role matter plays in pantheist claims and how medieval and contemporary scholars challenged notions of inert, blank substance-including recent philosophical work on vibrant and interconnected matter. Returning to Spinoza's assumptions, she meticulously deconstructs arguments about a single, gridlike world in favor of a world dominated by a creative multiplicity, then closes with debates over Einstein's invoking of Spinoza's God to show how conservative theological aversion to pantheism has continued well past the 19th century. Scholars of the philosophy of science and religion will find complex analyses that reshape the assumptions within both fields in this impressive work. (Nov.) c Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Rubenstein Mary-Jane :
Mary-Jane Rubenstein is professor of religion; feminist, gender, and sexuality studies; and science in society at Wesleyan University. She is the author of Strange Wonder: The Closure of Metaphysics and the Opening of Awe (Columbia, 2009) and Worlds Without End: The Many Lives of the Multiverse (Columbia, 2014) and the coeditor of Entangled Worlds: Religion, Science, and New Materialisms (with Catherine Keller, 2017).Mary-Jane Rubenstein is professor of religion; feminist, gender, and sexuality studies; and science in society at Wesleyan University. She is the author of Strange Wonder: The Closure of Metaphysics and the Opening of Awe (Columbia, 2009) and Worlds Without End: The Many Lives of the Multiverse (Columbia, 2014) and the coeditor of Entangled Worlds: Religion, Science, and New Materialisms (with Catherine Keller, 2017). |
