Description
Book SynopsisThis book models an object-oriented approach to grace. It experimentally ports a traditional Christian understanding of grace out of a top-down, theistic ontology and into a bottom-up, agent-based ontology. A systematic account of Bruno Latour’s experimental, agent-based approach to metaphysics sets the object-oriented stage.
Trade Review"The rapidly developing field of object-oriented philosophy has been crying out for significant work on its relation to philosophy of religion. Adam Miller has provided us with a razor-sharp way into this new world. Built around a reading of Bruno Latour's work, this is more than a focused and lucid exposition. It is also a startling, constructive work of theology, in which grace is translated and democratized as the 'resistant availability' of objects and religion's true work is located in attention to immanence, to ordinariness, to the flesh. Redrawing the boundaries between science and religion, philosophy and theology, this book offers a way beyond humanism without escaping into fantasies of otherworldliness or purity. Provocative and brilliant, Speculative Grace sets an exciting agenda for future philosophical work on the object that is religion." -- -Steven Shakespeare Liverpool Hope University "Adam Miller's book can rightly be described as both a daring experiment in theology, and as a lucid exposition of the thought of the French sociologist of science Bruno Latour. But in being both of these things at once, Speculative Grace is something more: a profound meditation on the cosmos and the multitude of beings that inhabit it. This is a book that stimulates thought, and renews our sense of wonder at what William James called the 'buzzing, blooming confusion' of the world." -- -Steven Shaviro Wayne State University
Table of ContentsForeword by Levi R. Bryant List of Abbreviations 1. Introduction 2. Porting Grace 3. Grace 4. Conspiracy Theories 5. An Experimental Metaphysics 6. Proliferation 7. A Metaphysical Democracy 8. Methodology 9. A Flat Ontology 10. Local Construction 11. The Road to Damascus 12. The Principle of Irreduction 13. Transcendence 14. Dislocated Grace 15. Resistant Availability 16. Agency 17. Translation 18. Representation 19. Epistemology 20. Constructivism 21. Suffering 22. Black Boxes 23. Substances 24. Essences 25. Forms 26. Subjects 27. Reference 28. Truth 29. Hermeneutics 30. Laboratories 31. Science and Religion 32. Belief 33. Iconophilia 34. God 35. Evolution 36. Morals 37. The Two Faces of Grace 38. Spirit 39. Prayer 40. Presence 41. Conclusion Bibliography Index
