Suffering and Evil in Nature : Comparative Responses From Ecstatic Naturalism and Healing Cultures

Suffering and Evil in Nature: Comparative Responses from Ecstatic Naturalism and Healing Cultures, edited by Joseph E. Harroff and Jea Sophia Oh, provides many unique experiments in thinking through the implications of ecstatic naturalism. This collection of essays directly addresses the importance of values sustaining cultures of healing and offers a variety of perspectives inducing radical hope requisite for cultivating moral and political imaginings of democracy-to-come as a regulative ideal. Through its invocation of “healing cultures,” the collection foregrounds the significance of the active, gerundive, and processual nature of ecstatic naturalism as a creative horizon for realizing values of intersubjective flourishing, while also highlighting the significance of culture as an always unfinished project of making discursive, interpretive and ethical space open for the subaltern and voiceless. Each contribution gives voice to the tensions and contradictions felt by living participants in emergent communities of interpretation—namely those who risk replacing authoritarian tendencies and fascist prejudices with a faith in future-oriented archetypes of healing to make possible truth and reconciliation between oppressor and oppressed, victimizers and victims of violence and trauma. These essays then let loose the radical hope of healing from suffering in a ceaseless community of communication within a horizon of creative democratic interpretation. Cover Half Title Title Page Copyright Page Contents Foreword Acknowledgments Introduction Chapter Themes Notes References I: A Deep Opening of Nothingness Chapter 1: Providence and Providingness: On Platonic and Ecstatic Naturalist Good, Evil, and Infinity Introduction The Triple Providence of Middle Platonism The Lower Providence of Neoplatonism Additional Considerations for Ecstatic Naturalism Notes References Chapter 2: The Experience of Values and the Possibility of Ordinal Phenomenology in Corrington’s Deep Pantheism Introduction The Stated Problem The Problem with Ordinal Phenomenology Underway A Pragmatic Jumping-Off Point? The Phenomenological Metaphors of Nature and the Implicitness of the Person Unraveling Ordinal Phenomenology The Place of the Personal Becomes the Impersonal Conclusion Notes References Chapter 3: Dwelling with the Deep Ones: Lovecraftian Horror and the Selving Process Introduction Totalizing Nothingness Lovecraft’s Dark Dreams Wonder and Glory Notes References II: Facing Suffering and Violence Chapter 4: On Being Sunk? Introduction On Being a Problem The Sunken Place as Conceptual Metaphor Hegelian Versunken and Alchemical Blackness Weaponizing Discourse or Natural Grace: Getting Out as an Ecstatically Indirect Narrative Practice of Freedom Notes References Chapter 5: Racism, Religious Education, and Transformation Introduction The Other Side of the World: China as an Uprising East Asian Country The Communication with Heterogeneity: The Narrative of The Greatest Showman The Condition of the Self for Human Development Designing the Transformation of Human Self in the Ecology of Religious Education Conclusion Notes References Chapter 6: A Phenomenological Study of Feminist Political Consciousness Introduction System versus Self Feminism and the Abyss: Armoring and Dis-armoring Consciousness Raising Conclusion Notes References III: Ecological World Horizons Chapter 7: Recapturing World-Loyalty: A Relational Response to Ecological Violence A warning: The story that follows does not have a happy ending yet Notes References Chapter 8: Fecundity and Healing of the Great Mother: Reading Corrington’s Nature and Nothingness via Yin-Yang Thinking Introduction The Holes in Nature: The Subaltern Totalizing Nothingness: The Extremity of Yang Naturing Nothingness: The Arrival of Yin Encompassing Nothingness: The Supreme Ultimate (Tai-Chi, 太極) Conclusion: Healing Eros of the Great Mother Notes References IV: Nurturing Nature and Posthumanism Chapter 9: Evil as Human Resistance to the Indifferent Force of the Primal Nature: On Storytelling Animals Introduction Empty Signifier The Posthuman Evil? Being-Human as Storytelling The Power of Storytelling against Biochemistry Evil Is Not the Answer, So the Story Begins Conclusion Notes References Chapter 10: The Posthuman and an Advaya Dialectic of Sacrifice Introduction The Becoming-Human of Machine Homeostasis: Between Homeo and Allo Advaya Dialectic: From Eternity to Time Homeostasis and an Advaya Dialectic of Sacrifice Conclusion: Foreboding Intimations in a Posthuman Era of Dialectical Movements Notes References Chapter 11: Education for the Symbiosis of Humans and Machines in a Posthuman Age Introduction: Arrival of a Posthuman Age Living with Machines From Individual Survival to Social Structing Inconvenience as Power: Changing Noun into Verb Conclusion: Living Together Symbiotically Notes References V: (A)theodicy through the Anthropocene Chapter 12: Selving in a Dangerous World: William James, Buddhism, and Ecstatic Naturalism Introduction: Rugged Individualism That Mixture of Unity and Diversity Many Ones and Many Pluralities Conclusion: Intimacy Notes References Chapter 13: Redemptive Suffering with Tianming 天命: An Ecstatically Naturalist Reading of Sacred Selving in Confucian Ethics Introduction Translingual Tunings Pragmatism and Non-Foundational Theodicy Confucian Religiosity and Ecstatic Naturalism: Keeping the Conversation Going Mengzi on a Tian-chiseled Moral Body Conclusion Notes References Chapter 14: We Have Met the Enemy, and He Is Us: The Nature of Evil and the Evil of Nature in the Anthropocene Introduction Nature and Humans Emerson’s “Fate”: The Necessity of Evil William James: The Reality of Evil Emergence of the Anthropocene Conclusion Notes References Index About the Contributors Foreword Editors Chapter Contributors "This edited collection represents an ongoing conversation for bringing healing cultures into suffering and evil. The pluralistic perspectives emerge from the creativity of this unique community of interpreters"-- Provided by publisher