The Platonic Tradition, Nature Spirituality and the Environment
A special issue of Religions (ISSN 2077-1444). This special issue belongs to the section "Religions and Theologies".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (12 April 2024) | Viewed by 13780
Special Issue Editor
Special Issue Information
Dear Colleagues,
Platonism, understood broadly as a form of ontological realism, offers a framework for understanding nature that can incorporate a range of religious traditions and individual spiritualities. As such, it offers a context in which to crucially reconceptualise nature and the place of humans with regard to the environmental crisis.
Within the broad context of Platonism as a metaphysical–religious orientation, a range of historical, contemporary, and constructive possibilities present themselves as offering religious and spiritual alternatives to a wholly naturalistic and anthropocentric conceptualisation of nature. This opens up possibilities for conceptualising the environment as a place of encounter, learning, wonder, theurgy, and theophany. Under this rubric, a vast range of papers are welcome:
Papers that explore historical conceptualisations of nature by any number of individual religious thinkers, groups, or sub-traditions within the Platonic tradition are welcome. Such papers could consider topics such as anima mundi, panpsychism, pantheism, theurgy, theophany, participation, the Gaia hypothesis, and so on. The thought of numerous religious and spiritual figures viewed through the lens of ecology, sustainability, human and non-human relations, presents a productive avenue. Papers could also focus on those who have sought to deploy aspects of the Platonic tradition in a modern religious or spiritual context as an alternative to mechanistic worldviews or the reduction of divine presence to that of vestige.
Papers could also explore the traditional characterisations, tendencies and critiques of the Platonic tradition in relation to nature and ecology. This could incorporate characterisations of the tradition that consider it to be fundamentally environmentally friendly, offering an alternative to subject-centred epistemologies. It may also include criticisms of the tradition, particularly those concerning dualism and contemptus mundi, often characterised by extreme forms of asceticism or doctrines that devalue creation.
Finally, papers that explore the religious and spiritual dimensions of Platonism as a resource for the re-conceptualisation of nature are also encouraged in this edition. Such papers could explore contemporary instances of Platonic thought in any range of religious traditions or present-day thinkers. They could also include particular applications of the tradition to contemporary environmental challenges. Lastly, papers could also productively explore the possibilities of Platonism as a ground for interreligious and intercultural environmental dialogue.
Dr. Alexander J. B. Hampton
Guest Editor
Manuscript Submission Information
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Keywords
- nature
- environmental crisis
- religion
- spirituality
- Platonism
- realism
- human/nonhuman relations
- environmental ethics
- environmental philosophy
- metaphysics
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