Description
Book SynopsisMary-Jane Rubenstein provides a conceptual genealogy of pantheisms. What makes pantheism “monstrous”—at once repellent and seductive—is that it scrambles the raced and gendered distinctions that Western philosophy and theology insist on drawing between activity and passivity, spirit and matter, animacy and inanimacy, and creator and created.
Trade Review. . . Rubenstein’s writing is delightfully witty and often poetic in a way which can uniquely maintain its many strands. -- Alison Renna Yale University, New Haven, CT, USA * Worldviews *
Rubenstein’s critical readings are cogent and deft. The book is both erudite and adventurous. -- Beatrice Marovich * Journal of the American Academy of Religion *
Rubenstein's examination of pantheism renders a comprehensive and pluralistic view of the cosmos that will interest readers curious about the intersection of religion and philosophy. * Library Journal *
Given the rise of scholarship in 'new materialism' and renewed focus on immanence, this book is an important addition to the literature. . . Recommended. * Choice *
Mary-Jane Rubenstein’s book,
Pantheologies, is an essential addition to any science and religion class or graduate studies class in philosophy of religion or theology. It gives a solid overview of Baruch Spinoza, Giordano Bruno, and Albert Einstein, introduces many new animist viewpoints, and examines the metaphysics of numerous indigenous religions. -- Darren Iammarino * Nova Religio *
Pantheologies is an elegant and lively tour of pantheism and of the racialized gender panics it has prompted in Euro-American thought. I leave the book with the sense that the goat-god Pan is still roaming around, disrupting the either/ors of Western metaphysics and presenting a cosmos both more amazing and more discomfiting. Rubenstein has written an excellent book. -- Jane Bennett, author of
Vibrant Matter: A Political Ecology of ThingsIn
Pantheologies, Mary-Jane Rubenstein answers the old problem of the One and the Many by offering a resolute triumph of the Many over the One. Give Rubenstein a One—any one—and she will make a Many out of it. I applaud this temperament, as William James called it, and the intuition that it generates and reflects. Multiplicity, thy name is woman. Rubenstein will save us every time from the totalitarian tendencies of certain regions of process philosophy, from the Teutonic idealisms of post-Hegelian theologies, even from the totalizing forms of monistic pantheisms. -- Nancy Frankenberry, editor of
The Faith of Scientists: In Their Own WordsIt is not out of charity or historicism that Mary-Jane Rubenstein channels this maligned, misunderstood, and mangled legacy. No, there is something in the
pan of theism that our Anthropocene mess of a species (its atheists and its theologians included) needs. Now. Mesmerized by the brilliant weave of
Pantheologies’ irresistible irony, gorgeous prose, and holographic erudition, readers will be hooked by a mystery too suspenseful in its plotline and too urgent in its intersections to set aside. -- Catherine Keller, author of
Political Theology of the Earth: Our Planetary Emergency and the Struggle for a New PublicPantheologies should be of interest to religious studies scholars, philosophers, scientists, and theologically curious political activists alike, by virtue of its broad intellectual scope, engaging rhetoric, and urgent ethical reflection. * Reading Religion *
Table of ContentsAcknowledgments
Preface
Introduction: The Matter with Pantheism
Panic1. Pan
Panterruption2. Hyle
Panfusion3. Cosmos
Pancarnation4. Theos
PandemoniumNotes
Bibliography
Index
