A Philosophy of Sacred Nature: Prospects for Ecstatic Naturalism 0739199676, 9780739199671

Table of contents :
Contents
Acknowledgments
Prospects for Ecstatic Naturalism
Chapter One: Reflections on the Philosophy of Robert S. Corrington
Chapter Two: Ecstatic Naturalism
Chapter Three: Ecstatic Naturalism and the Sacred
Chapter Four: The Spirit of Robert S. Corrington’s Ecstatic Naturalism
Chapter Five: Nature’s Primal Self
Chapter Six: Corrington’s “Natural Self” as the “Subject of Truth”
Chapter Seven: Ecstatic Naturalism in American Psychological Biography
Chapter Eight: Robert Corrington’s Ecstatic Naturalism and the Social Construction of Reality
Chapter Nine: Nature’s Spontaneity and Intentionality
Chapter Ten: Ecology Re-naturalized
Chapter Eleven: Ecstatic Nature and Earthly Abyss
Chapter Twelve: Cleaving the Light
Chapter Thirteen: Unruly Gods
Chapter Fourteen: The Categorial Schema
Selected Bibliography of Robert S. Corrington
Index
About the Contributors

Citation preview

A Philosophy of Sacred Nature

A Philosophy of Sacred Nature Prospects for Ecstatic Naturalism Edited By Leon Niemoczynski and Nam T. Nguyen

LEXINGTON BOOKS Lanham • Boulder • New York • London

Published by Lexington Books An imprint of The Rowman & Littlefield Publishing Group, Inc. 4501 Forbes Boulevard, Suite 200, Lanham, Maryland 20706 www.rowman.com Unit A, Whitacre Mews, 26-34 Stannary Street, London SE11 4AB Copyright © 2015 by Lexington Books All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the publisher, except by a reviewer who may quote passages in a review. British Library Cataloguing in Publication Information Available Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data A philosophy of sacred nature : prospects for ecstatic naturalism / edited by Leon Niemoczynski and Nam T. Nguyen. pages cm Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-7391-9966-4 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-0-7391-9967-1 (electronic) 1. Philosophy of nature. 2. Naturalism. 3. Corrington, Robert S., 1950– I. Niemoczynski, Leon J., 1977– II. Nguyen, Nam T., 1959– BD581.P467 2014 146—dc23 2014035076 TM The paper used in this publication meets the minimum requirements of American National Standard for Information Sciences Permanence of Paper for Printed Library Materials, ANSI/NISO Z39.48-1992.

Printed in the United States of America

Contents

Acknowledgments Prospects for Ecstatic Naturalism: An Introduction Leon Niemoczynski and Nam T. Nguyen 1

Reflections on the Philosophy of Robert S. Corrington Robert Cummings Neville 2 Ecstatic Naturalism Robert S. Corrington 3 Ecstatic Naturalism and the Sacred Martin O. Yalcin 4 The Spirit of Robert S. Corrington’s Ecstatic Naturalism Wade A. Mitchell 5 Nature’s Primal Self: A Critique of Peirce’s Semiotic Self and Jaspers’ Existenz Nam T. Nguyen 6 Corrington’s “Natural Self” as the “Subject of Truth”: Toward an Ecstatic Political Theology Iljoon Park 7 Ecstatic Naturalism in American Psychological Biography Joseph M. Kramp 8 Robert Corrington’s Ecstatic Naturalism and the Social Construction of Reality Wesley J. Wildman 9 Nature’s Spontaneity and Intentionality: Ecocracy, Doing Non-Doing Principle of Donghak [Eastern Learning], and Ecstatic Naturalism Jea Sophia Oh 10 Ecology Re-naturalized Leon Niemoczynski 11 Ecstatic Nature and Earthly Abyss: An Ecofeminist Journey to the Icelandic Volcano Sigríður Gudmarsdottir 12 Cleaving the Light: The Necessity of Metaphysics Guy Woodward v

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13 Unruly Gods: Schellingian Approaches to Theology in Robert Corrington and Philip Clayton Austin J. Roberts 14 The Categorial Schema Robert S. Corrington Selected Bibliography of Robert S. Corrington Index About the Contributors

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Acknowledgments

Leon Niemoczynski and Nam T. Nguyen would both like to thank the authors of the essays included in this volume for their patience throughout the course of this project. We would also like to thank Robert S. Corrington, for without his philosophy, mentorship, and guidance, this book would not have been possible. And finally, the co-editors would like to acknowledge each other for agreeing to the project and seeing it through until the end. We hope that the readers of this book enjoy the book and can appreciate, like we do, the hard work that went into it. We are proud of everyone involved.

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Prospects for Ecstatic Naturalism An Introduction Leon Niemoczynski and Nam T. Nguyen

Ecstatic naturalism is a philosophical-theological perspective developed by the American philosopher and theologian Robert S. Corrington (b. 1950). Ecstatic naturalism, a still-evolving perspective, has been developed throughout the course of Corrington’s one hundred plus articles and now ten published books (Corrington’s latest book at the time of this writing was Nature’s Sublime: An Essay in Aesthetic Naturalism). 1 Described in its most general terms, ecstatic naturalism is a hybrid of Continental phenomenology and American pragmatism that seeks to recognize nature’s self-transforming, self-transcendent potential, or “ek-stasis.” Unlike most naturalisms in the American tradition, Corrington’s ecstatic naturalism seeks to commit to thinking about the sacred as a wholly “real” category in the natural world. Corrington modifies the Husserlian tradition of phenomenology by developing an “ordinal” phenomenological approach, shaped by his teacher, Justus Buchler (19141991). He modifies the tradition of American pragmatism (Peirce, James, and Dewey) by reconfiguring a unique combination of semiotics, ontological pluralism, and evolutionary theory that utilizes both hermeneutics and pyschoanalysis. The result is an entirely new perspective that is amenable to both metaphysical theology and philosophical naturalism. For Corrington, nature’s self-transformative power of ecstasis is best captured by the concept of natura naturans (“nature naturing”), a concept that has appeared earlier in the history of philosophy in the writings of medieval philosophers such as Averroes and John Scotus Erigena, modern philosophers such as Spinoza, and in German idealists and romantics such as Schelling, Novalis, Kleist, and Tieck. Arguably the term could apply as well to the nineteenth-century German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer through his concept of “The Will.” Essentially nature naturing can be defined as nature’s self-generative dynamic and creative ground, or more poetically as Corrington puts it, nature naturing is “the crucible of nature’s eternal abyss.” 2 Nature naturing represents novelty, potential, power, birthing ground, generativity, un-prethinkability, mystery, abyss, or “groundless ground” [Abgrund, Urgrund] as well as ix

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transcendental creativity, depth, process, and creative momentum. From nature naturing natura naturata (“nature natured”) is created, representing the “orders of the world,” or the “immanent world,” or “whatever is [in the world in] whatever way it is.” 3 As Corrington states, “nature naturing . . . is composed of . . . momenta that . . . birth” the orders of nature, immanetized by a transcendental origin that is “deeply natural” rather than supernatural. Nature naturing creates the products of nature natured that is the world. 4 Nature natured, what is birthed or created, is the basis of Corrington’s ontological pluralism and radical empiricism. Nature natured is infinitely deep and infinitely broad in its mode of acutality. All things actual (and hence natural, there is nothing “unnatural”) are related and thus are “complex” in their poised relations. On the other hand, “nature” itself (apart from what has been natured), for Corrington, cannot be said to properly “exist” like the orders of nature exist. There is no supercategory of “Nature” that contains all natural things. There is simply nature natured as well as the ground of nature naturing which creates those orders and establishes their own creative activity. As Corrington puts it, “It is impossible to give a definition of nature. . . . Nature has no location, that is, it is not in anything. It is the nonlocated location within which all container relations obtain, as well as innumerable relations that are not container relations.” 5 And, “[Nature] is an unending providingness of actualities and possibilities, as well as the sum of these ejects.” 6 “Nature prevails as . . . constant, open-ended availability . . . [it] has no contour or shape…it is the ultimate clearing.” 7 As for what is created, “nature natured…is like an infinite maze in which there are innumerable entrance points and a shifting center,” it is thus “infinite in a variety of ways.” 8 Ecstatic naturalism stresses the “transcendental spasms” and “rhythmic movement” of nature naturing to the manifest orders of nature natured. 9 The natural difference between “nature natured” and “nature naturing” is the crux of Corrington’s project. Similar to Heidegger’s ontological difference, it functions as a Schellingean “divine” space where potencies for transformation transcend and emerge. In Corrington’s words, from within the ontological difference the “potency of nature itself is manifest in innumerable potencies.” 10 Thus “nature is the ultimate ‘notyet’ . . . [it is] itself is open.” 11 These potencies may best be compared to Deleuze’s singularities or “lines of flight” (what Corrington refers to at times as “infinitesimals,” following the American pragmatist Charles Sanders Peirce). Nature naturing, the generative ground, not being a “thing” and having no predicable existence, may best be conceived in Deleuzian terms as “the virtual” or in Peircean terms as “Firstness.” From the virtual infinitesimals take flight and emerge, taking on formal shape and creating nature natured as various orders or forms of existence. As Corrington explains, “From the Nothingness [the virtual, nature naturing] the poten-

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cies unfold.” 12 The orders established by these potencies are infinitely complex in their relational mode as well as in their mode of communicative being. Being so, they are primarily the subject of semiotic analysis. Robert Corrington’s ecstatic naturalism is both a semiotic theoretical method and poetic speculative metaphysics that probes deeply into the mystery of nature’s self-fissuring of nature naturing (natura naturans) and nature natured (natura naturata). Here his naturalism draws upon as well, interestingly, psychoanalysis in connection with the semiotic or what Corrington in his latest book Nature’s Sublime titles “psychosemiotics.” 13 This method suggests that nature naturing can be characterized as the “underconscious” of the world, where “the unconscious of nature” or nature’s underconscious is a metaphor for the ontological difference. 14 The innumerable orders of the world (nature natured) are spawned by the predispositional dynamics and rhythms of the unconscious of nature, and from the unconscious of nature the psychoanalytic concept of the “powers of origin” is derived. Put differently, as the actual world emerges from nature’s underconscious, one is able to use psychoanalysis to work backward as it were back through to the unconscious tendencies of those orders’ creation. One is able to discern what specific tendencies of the natural are at work within natural’s creativity activity. In this way, metaphorically, nature is said to have a “Self.” This self is rhythm driven (by the potencies) and is of an unconscious mind that is a “vast ejective power.” 15 Corrington’s ecstatic naturalism can be comprehended and fully appreciated only when this crucial element of the theory of the unconscious is thoroughly acknowledged. Corrington believes that Freud, Lacan, and Kristeva have failed to recognize that the domain of the unconscious in all actuality remains outside of the realm of the human process of consciousness; and hence, unlike those psychoanalysts, Corrington finds Carl Jung’s concept of the unconscious more aligned to his own perspective. Essentially, Corrington states that because the unconscious, which is not circumscribed by the human domain, performs its own unique role in the creation of world, semiosis is thus an external objective process that works in and through the internal subjective human process. This idea is summarized his book Nature’s Self, where Corrington shows that the unconscious is the “basic link” between the realms of nature natured (the attained orders of the world) and nature naturing (the preformal and presemiotic potencies). 16 Metaphysics informed by phenomenology is the logical backbone of ecstatic naturalism’s perspective. Corrington uses hermeneutics as an interpretive tool for his phenomenological metaphysics, or “ordinal phenomenology.” Here Corrington modifies the traditional hermeneutics of Schleiermacher and Gadamer into a shape which he calls “horizonal hermeneutics.” 17 Corrington argues for a hermeneutics that does not limit itself to specifically human linguistic or textual artifacts but must extend

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itself to extralinguistic structures including all of semiotic nature and communal life. As the term suggests, hermeneutics must be “horizonal” in scope; that is, it must semiotically attempt to investigate the most generic traits or features of the world; namely, nature in its vast compass as well as the human process of personal and communal life. While the term “horizon” connotes the notion of indefinite boundaries, the term “hermeneutics” indicates the self-conscious moment of semiotic interpretation within that topology. As a metaphysical and semiotic stream of thought and as a formal perspective on nature, ecstatic naturalism thus is neither confined to nor circumscribed by metaphysical or existential anthropology or by textuality. Nature’s signs are the subject of analysis. In this way Corrington’s semiotic-realist turn surpasses much of the phenomenological tradition found in twentieth-century American and Continental philosophy where human culture or specifically humantainted conditions were taken to be the signs of the most generic traits of reality. Corrington has turned to the natural itself simply in order to gain a more capacious metaphysical perspective. In this sense his naturalism is deeply robust and metaphysically realist in orientation. As a metaphysical method, ecstatic naturalism’s “ordinal” phenomenology, informed by semiotics and hermeneutics, as well as psychoanalysis, is indebted to Justus Buchler’s ordinal metaphysics most generally, but particularly to the dual concepts of “ontological parity” and “ontological ordinality.” 18 As a deviation from Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology, Corrington’s ordinal phenomenology metaphysically moves from the limited traits or the process of “human selving” to the more generic orders of relevance and worldhood. Influenced by Buchler’s metaphysical concept of ontological parity, ordinal phenomenology deprivileges both foundationalism and essentialism, for any part or “order” of nature cannot be any more “real” than any other, nor can any order be reduced to a singular essence that is incapable of relating or suffering change as an ordinal location. These caveats are summed up in Buchler’s twin notions of “ordinality” and “parity.” Whatever is has a naturally related (and thus “complex”) location: an “ordinal” location (though there is no “totality” of relations). And whatever is is no more real than (nor less real than) anything else: there is a “parity” of reality to what exists among the orders of the world. 19 The term “ecstatic” in ecstatic naturalism functions as a metaphysical pointer (akin to Peirce’s “indexical sign”). It dynamically and causally points to the self-transforming (or self-transcending) possibilities within the orders of nature. According to Corrington, the term “ecstasy” “refers to the momentum of self-transcendence in which an antecedent state welcomes an internal transfiguration in which its plenitude is enhanced.” Or, putting the two together, “ecstatic” and “naturalism” plays out as follows: “Initially, ecstatic naturalism can be defined as that moment within naturalism when it recognizes its self-transcending character. Naturalism

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is self-transcending when it understands the eternal power of the transition from preformal potencies to the realms of signification within the world. The movement from a presemiotic potency to a signifying structure or a signifying position is ecstatic insofar as the potency stands outside of itself and gives birth to its own self-other as a sign or sign system.” 20 Ecstatic naturalism stresses this movement: from nature naturing to the orders of nature natured where the sacred, too, is fully a part of these orders and their sign systems. At this point, “spirit” enters into Corrington’s metaphysics as a category of especial significance. Because nature’s momenta carry no moral significance in and of themselves (nature naturing is “beyond good and evil”), creatures who consider the meaning of the sacred are often cast into the existential quandary of the very meaning of suffering and evil. Corrington, who struggled with manic-depression for many years, turned to studies in theology (most notably Tillich, but also to a longstanding friendship and correspondence with the Boston University theologian Robert Neville), in order to sort out whether nature’s sometimes vicious and erratic rejections of stability and wholeness could be accounted for within any greater spiritual scheme of things. The result was Corrington’s transition from the “panenetheism” of Whitehead and Hartshorne (“All is in God”), which secured an extra-cosmic meaning for the nature of suffering, to a “deep pantheism” which recognizes God, but also gods, as orders of nature, are orders among others. However, the pragmatic difference of these sacred orders takes on a significant value when, according to Corrington, communities may transcend their tribal allegiances to gods and goddesses and find a deeper spirit of healing present within shared religious commitments to community, love, peace, and justice. These commitments, in turn, can best find a universal or generic expression through works of art. In the end, Corrington concludes for this reason that art is able to supplant religion, removing its tribalism and uniting communities under a common banner of humanity. In this—crowing theology with the aesthetic—Corrington begins to wear the colors of German romanticism. Other than German romanticism, if one were to summarize the major trajectories and figures influential for the creation of ecstatic naturalism, a list might look like the following: American philosophical naturalism; American pragmatism; Continental phenomenology; German idealism (and romanticism); semiotics; hermeneutics; psychoanalytic theory; metaphysical realism; and speculative and systematic philosophy; followed by these figures (in no particular order): C. S. Peirce, William James, John Dewey, George Santayana, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Paul Tillich, Martin Heidegger, Karl Jaspers, Friedrich Schelling, G.W.F. Hegel (critically), Arthur Schopenhauer, Immanuel Kant, Gilles Deleuze, Julia Kristeva, Signmund Freud, Friedrich Nietzsche, Alfred North Whitehead

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and Charles Harsthorne (both critically), Justus Buchler, Paul Weiss, and Robert Neville. THE PURPOSE OF THIS BOOK There have been several books published which mention throughout the whole or in part the work of Robert S. Corrington. Some of these books include Nature’s Primal Self by Nam T. Nguyen, Naturalism’s Philosophy of the Sacred by Martin O. Yalcin, and Charles Sanders Peirce and a Religious Metaphysics of Nature by Leon Niemoczynski, as well as the forthcoming Fearsome Entrancing by Guy Woodward. 21 There have also been sustained studies and dissertations on the work of Robert Corrington, book reviews, and special issues of journals dedicated to ecstatic naturalism (recent issues of The American Journal of Theology and Philosophy and the Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature, and Culture are but two examples). 22 Why, then, this book as an addition to the currently standing literature on Corrington's ecstatic naturalism? Ecstatic naturalism has inspired a younger generation of scholars to forge ahead and carve out spaces of their own within the terrain of American religious naturalism. Each year, so far for the past four years, there has been an international conference held on the campus of Drew University where participants can discuss ecstatic (or any variety) of religious naturalism. The results of those conferences have inspired the creation of this book. In particular, this book aims to allow readers to see what can be done with ecstatic naturalism, and what directions, interpretations, and creative uses that doing can take. In other words, we would like to explore the prospects of ecstatic naturalism. As the table of contents reveals, while this volume is organized according to basic trajectories within Corrington’s system of thought, each chapter represents a direction of its own. We hope that readers find these directions as inspiring as we found them to be. In the end we believe there is still much to do with ecstatic naturalism as a fecund ground for the future of religious naturalism both within but also beyond the American and Continental philosophical traditions. Corrington’s unique vision of religious naturalism has inspired so many to see nature differently, as a place that is capable of affording religious, but also aesthetic, ethical, and even political insight. Within the American tradition of religious naturalism at least, we believe Corrington has certainly transformed its landscape.

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NOTES 1. Robert Corrington, Nature's Sublime: An Essay in Aesthetic Naturalism (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2014). 2. Robert Corrington, Nature's Self (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1996), 119. 3. Justus Buchler, Metaphysics of Natural Complexes, second expanded edition with editor’s introduction and editor’s endnotes, co-edited with Kathleen Wallace and Armen Marsoobian (Albany: SUNY Press, 1989). 4. Robert Corrington, A Semiotic Theory of Theology and Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 246. 5. Robert Corrington, Nature’s Religion (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1997), 3. 6. Ibid., 41. 7. Robert Corrington, Nature and Spirit (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1992), 30. 8. Corrington, Semiotic Theory of Theology and Philosophy, 249. 9. Ibid., 249. 10. Corrington, Nature and Spirit, 31. 11. Ibid., 87. 12. Robert Corrington, “Unfolding/Enfolding: The Categorial Schema,” in Semiotics 2002, ed. by Terry J. Prewitt and John Deely (New York: Legas, 2003), 164. 13. Corrington, Nature's Sublime, 35. 14. Ibid., 35. 15. Robert Corrington, Ecstatic Naturalism: Signs of the World (New York: Fordham University Press: 1994), 148. 16. Corrington, Nature's Self, 9, 13, 75. 17. See for example Robert Corrington, The Community of Interpreters (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1987). 18. Developed most explicitly in Robert Corrington, “Horizons and Contours: Toward an Ordinal Phenomenology,” Metaphilosophy, 22, no. 3 (1991): 179-189 and Robert Corrington, “Ordinality and the Divine Natures,” Nature’s Perspectives: Prospects for Ordinal Metaphysics, ed. Kathleen Wallace, Armen Marsoobian, Robert S. Corrington (Albany: SUNY Press, 1991), 347-366. 19. See Buchler, Metaphysics of Natural Complexes and Nature's Perspectives: Prospects for Ordinal Metaphysics. 20. Corrington, Ecstatic Naturalism, 18-19. 21. See Martin O. Yalcin, Naturalism's Philosophy of the Sacred (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2013); Nam T. Nguyen Nature's Primal Self (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2011); and Leon Niemoczynski, Charles Sanders Peirce and a Religious Metaphysics of Nature (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2011). Guy Woodward's manuscript, Fearsome Entrancing, is forthcoming. 22. American Journal of Theology and Philosophy Special Issue on Ecstatic Naturalism, Volume 34, Number 1, January 2013 and Journal for the Study of Religion, Culture, and Nature Issue on Ecstatic Naturalism Volume 8, Number 2, Summer 2014.

REFERENCES Justus Buchler. Metaphysics of Natural Complexes. Second expanded edition with editor’s introduction and editor's endnotes. Co-edited with Kathleen Wallace and Armen Marsoobian. Albany: SUNY Press, 1989. Corrington, Robert S. The Community of Interpreters. Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1987.

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———. “Horizons and Contours: Toward an Ordinal Phenomenology,” Metaphilosophy. Vol. 22. No. 3 (1991). ———. “Ordinality and the Divine Natures,” Nature’s Perspectives: Prospects for Ordinal Metaphysics. Eds. Kathleen Wallace, Armen Marsoobian, Robert S. Corrington. Albany: SUNY Press, 1991. ———. Nature and Spirit. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1992. ———. Ecstatic Naturalism: Signs of the World. New York: Fordham University Press: 1994. ———. Nature’s Self. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1996. ———. Nature’s Religion. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1997. ———. A Semiotic Theory of Theology and Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. ———. “Unfolding/Enfolding: The Categorial Schema, Semiotics 2002. Eds. by Terry J. Prewitt and John Deely. New York: Legas, 2003. ———. Nature’s Sublime: An Essay in Aesthetic Naturalism. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2014.

ONE Reflections on the Philosophy of Robert S. Corrington Robert Cummings Neville

Robert Corrington is the premier ecstatic naturalist and I would like to introduce him with some remarks on his career. We have been friends for a long time and most of you know that I have written about his work and he about mine. We share many of the same philosophical and religious cultures as well as the chutzpah to be systematic thinkers striving to make creative advances. So my remarks here are personal. He first came into my consciousness through some of his early papers on Tillich and Heidegger. He was appreciative of that ontological version of Continental philosophy and of its resources for philosophical theology, working to extend it in contemporary theology. For my generation, and even young Robert’s, Heidegger opened the way to recover the ultimate significance of being, and the significance of ultimacy, without associations with a transcendent divine being. Heidegger was not a naturalist, but then he was not a supernaturalist either. His work also exemplifies and addresses the madness of the twentieth century, the Nazis, the totalitarians, and those in despair because the worldview of Christian civilization had imploded. Much of twentieth-century North Atlantic culture exhibited narcissistic oscillations between the grandiosity of fundamentalisms and totalitarianism on the one hand and the despairing loss of affect on the other in withdrawals to individualism, privatization, and commercialism. The remedy to this madness is to turn from a preoccupation with culture to an investment in nature. Robert took that turn, toward which Heidegger had tiptoed without conviction.

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Tillich was a different case. He was an ecstatic naturalist, although he did not call himself that and had only a puny orientation to nature. Wesley Wildman, says that Tillich could have and should have called himself an ecstatic naturalist. 1 He had the appropriate theory of ecstasy and rejected both supernaturalism and what he called supranaturalism, the view that God is in any way a determinate extension beyond determinate nature. Robert is in many senses a Tillichian, although he has grown less and less patient with Tillich’s project to be a church theologian who breaks traditional symbols in order to give them new naturalistic interpretations. My next and seemingly incongruous encounter with Robert was his participation in the circle of thinkers around Justus Buchler, with whom I taught at Stony Brook for the last several years of his life. Buchler was an avowed and ultimately committed naturalist whose jewel-like metaphysical system is about the most elegant philosophy of the twentieth century. He was passionately concerned to show that nothing is more real than anything else and this meant, practically, that nothing is more valuable than anything else, although he did give an account of value as among the many orders of nature. Buchler belonged to, and for much of his career, dominated the Columbia University School of interpreting American philosophy, with an early book on Peirce. The Columbia School was adamantly hostile to religion and read that dimension out of American philosophy with extraordinary rigor. John E. Smith at Yale, who was my mentor, took his Ph.D. in American philosophy from the Columbia department but also had studied with Tillich. Smith read the Americans through the lens of philosophy of religion and found extraordinary resources there for religious thought—how could religion be missed in Edwards, Emerson, the pragmatists, and Whitehead? Perhaps the fact that many of the Columbia interpreters of American thought were secular Jews, like Buchler rejecting the religious dimension of that heritage and never entertaining the possibility of Christianity, and the fact that the tradition I just named generally assumed a Christian hegemony however generalized beyond institutional religion, account for the hostility to religious dimensions. To be in Buchler’s circle guarantees that one would never have to truck with transcendence. Robert did truck with transcendence, however, and I think took from Buchler only the confidence that it is possible to give a metaphysics of nature without supernaturalism and the enthusiasm of his disciples for doing so. He also took an appreciation of the seminal importance of the American tradition of philosophy and has long used Buchler’s language of ordinal metaphysics. The most important classic American philosopher for Robert has been Charles Peirce, although he appreciates the others. Peirce is an extraordinarily rich thinker who seems seminal from radically different and conflicting perspectives. For Robert, the heart of the matter is Peirce’s theory of the Community of Interpretation (the title of Robert’s first book) and

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more particularly his semiotic theory. Robert’s book, An Introduction to C. S. Peirce: Philosopher, Semiotician, and Ecstatic Naturalist, is a fundamental perspective for understanding Peirce’s whole theory and it baptizes Peirce into the community of subjects for this series of international congresses. I use it regularly when I teach Peirce. Perhaps the most important lesson Robert draws from Peirce is a two-fold claim. First, interpretation in Peirce’s semiotic theory involves a thoroughgoing engagement of the interpreter with nature. Interpretation is not a set of representations between nature and the interpreter: the natural object, the signs, and the interpreter are all three internal to an interpretation. Second, interpretation is the causal way of all nature, not just of conscious interpreters of nature. Nature’s processes are the ongoing interpretation of themselves and causation has the form of semiosis. So the process of semiosis is Robert’s fundamental philosophy of nature. This comes out most strongly in his book, A Semiotic Theory of Theology and Philosophy, the point of which is that for the thinker to engage nature is for the thinker to get inside the semiosis of nature itself. Robert elaborates this point far more richly and with greater nuance than Buchler ever did. Now the question of the originality of Robert’s semiotics of nature is of crucial importance. From where or whom does he derive the major thematic signs by which he interprets the world as ecstatically natural? In the deep background is his heritage of Methodism, his home-faith, as it were, long left behind. Good Methodists are pietists, and Robert is surely a devoted, emotional, truly ecstatic, pietist. The feeling-tone of pietism pervades his work and is itself a baseline family of signs. In the middle background, with erudite articulateness, is the history of Western philosophy and theology. Robert draws as do most of us on the rich resources of Plato and Aristotle; he maneuvers around Hume and Kant, and he adroitly looks for the stepping stones just beneath the surface of the vast lake of Hegel’s supranatural absolute. But two figures are especially important and figure regularly in his discussions, Spinoza and Whitehead. Spinoza’s distinction between natura naturans and natura naturata has been the core metaphysical concept in Robert’s ecstatic naturalism from very early on. Natura naturata is the determinate world of process that we see and interpret. Natura naturans is the deep inner emergence of this world, move by move, from creative depths that are not themselves determinate in the same way as their expression. Natura naturans has an asymmetry to it, from nothing toward determinate manifestation. Transcendence is the obverse of that causal asymmetry, transcending natura naturata to its ground or source in being. The ecstasy in ecstatic naturalism starts with nature and ecstatically steps above, behind, or beneath it into natura naturans. For Robert, because of the centrality of Spinoza, the order of knowing is the opposite of the order of being, to use the traditional phrase.

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The lessons of Whitehead’s work pervade Robert’s philosophy. He does not often use Whitehead’s technical vocabulary. But Whitehead demonstrated that it is possible to articulate a respectable philosophical cosmology that privileges change over substance, as Robert does, and showed how creativity is at the heart of everything changing in the present as it was in the heart of all changes in the past that are taken interpretively into the present and needs to be in the heart of everything future that might interpret the present. Robert surely is right not to buy Whitehead’s conception of God. But he makes good use of his conception of creativity to translate natura naturans into the issues of the age of latemodern science. Whitehead’s strikingly original themes provide a confidence to the processive character of nature as Robert sees it. So much for the deep background and mid-background of Robert’s signs for nature. The foreground is his astonishing appropriation of the dynamic psychological tradition with its signs of the activity of the unconscious. Some of this, such as the psychoanalytic theory of archetypes of Karl Jung, is explicitly religious. The sub-tradition from Freud to Kristeva, however, is not particularly friendly to religion, and yet Robert makes it do much of the work for his theology that metaphysics usually has done for theology. Fundamentally, the point is that the work that the unconscious primary process does in psychology is like what natura naturans does in nature, moving with its own logic and giving rise to the manifest world of consciousness, which is like natura naturata. The unconscious is the hidden ground of consciousness. Consciousness itself has many determinants, of course, including the events of the real world and its various interpretations of them in addition to the unconscious determinants. But the holy, sacred, ultimate, or transcendent elements of consciousness are those that rest upon the unconscious activity that sometimes manifests itself as sacred irruptions within ordinary life. Remember that for Robert the semiotic processes of interpretation are not limited to human interpreters but are the causal structures of natural processes across the board. So nature itself is to be understood as the semiotic process with an analogue to the conscious play of experience, namely natura naturata, underlain by the dynamic, usually hidden, and creative process of the unconscious, natura naturans. This is the story upon which the contentful interpretation of nature is built in Robert’s philosophy. So the signs for interpreting nature’s sacred depths are much like the signs by which in psychoanalysis the unconscious is uncovered. Here is Robert Corrington’s astonishing originality as a philosopher of ecstatic naturalism. The primary signs with which he engages the ontological and sacred depths of nature, those that embody the appropriate ecstasy, are those of the sort appropriate for psychodynamic interrogation. The tradition of dynamic psychoanalysis is extensive and highly varied. Freud is by no means the same as Kristeva or Lacan. Robert has careful reasons for taking the particular signs he does. But there is a

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doubled analogizing here. Most of the signs or images uncovered in psychoanalysis are already metaphors or analogies, as mountains and towers are penises and pools and folds in the earth are vulvas. The symbolic penises and vulvas of the unconscious are not really about body parts but have even deeper meanings of thrust and return, life and death, and much more. In Robert’s usage, these psychodynamic analogies or symbolic mirrorings are turned back one more time to refer to the depths of nature, not the depths of a personal psyche. Sacred nature is to be interpreted with signs taken from the fecund psyche. This is not the only way Robert interprets nature, of course; he is sensitive to both common experience and science. But it is the way to get to nature’s sacred depths so that nature can be appreciated as ecstatic. By means of the psychodynamic signs the ordinary is transcended to ecstatic naturalism, to the sacred and holy. Robert is this kind of philosophical/semiotic theologian. Because of his Peircean semiotic, Robert is a realist in his ecstatic naturalism. He does not want to say only that nature’s depths are something like the psychodynamically derived signs. He wants to say that those signs are true of nature in certain respects, that nature really does have sacred folds in certain places, and that other places do not have that irruption of the depths of natura naturans. Of course, the structure of the psychodynamic signs is highly metaphorical, analogical, symbolic, and all sorts of other representational indirections. The signs need to be explicated in terms of decoding symbolic systems as in certain strains of psychoanalysis. But their reference is both iconic and indexical, for Robert. Nature in its depths, at least in certain respects (reference “in certain respects” is a technical notion for Peirce), really is a fecund primary process that gives rise to and irrupts into nature in its ordinary experienced surface manifestation. Robert’s books have greatly helped me integrate my own Methodist pietism with my Confucian practices of fengsuei. But still I am uncomfortable with them in one respect. For all his extraordinary attentiveness to the interior life of individuals, he does not regularly say just what it is in the circumstances of an individual’s or a community’s life that would make a particular psychodynamic sign pertinent in a given situation. Rather, it seems that in the right circumstances individuals can just read off of nature the sacrality of a terrain of folds. I would myself argue that we look for signs that we can use to symbolize ultimacy or nature’s depths, and that we construct them out of natural objects or human capacities such as that for unconscious-conscious creativity. By itself the terrain is not sacred and personal psychodynamics is just what it is. But things like that can be turned into signs through incorporation in semiotic codes and employment in the direct engagement of ultimacy in, behind, above, and beyond nature. Read any three books by Eliade and you will have an inventory of potential signs to keep you interestingly engaged with ultimacy for life. As Peirce would say, the material quality of

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the sign by itself has no significance until it is taken up into an interpretation and referred to its object. Robert would not object to this in principle, I think, but he does not take it to be very important to look into the historical, cultural, and personal conditions under which certain things can be taken up and used as signs to interpret the ultimate depths, and when they cannot or would be misleading if so used. Why is this? I think the answer is that another dimension of Heidegger has slipped into Robert’s thinking that is at odds with his semiotic theory, namely, an assumption that philosophy of nature should be a kind of phenomenology. By “phenomenology” I do not mean the specifics of Heidegger’s or anyone else’s systematic phenomenology. In Nature and Spirit, where Robert was still deeply indebted to Buchler’s ordinal metaphysics, he claimed to be rejecting transcendental phenomenology in favor of ordinal phenomenology, reading off the “orders” of nature in Buchler’s terms, and I do not mean this temporary assumption of ordinal phenomenology when I speak of phenomenology here. Rather I mean the philosophical sensibility that says that in the long run we read nature’s traits off of nature. Phenomenology here means a priority to the given, however mediated by signs. What this phenomenology rejects, which it should not, is an equally up-front interpretation of the nature of signs and their construction, and a project for controlling how signs are used in the reading of nature. Robert would never agree with Heidegger that, with proper phenomenological discipline, “being” and other ultimate things can just “come across the open” to us. But he does not feel the need, as much as I do, to develop a metaphysics of ultimacy on the one hand and a cultural analysis of signs of ultimacy on the other so as to give proper control and positioning to the reach of those signs he derives from psychodynamic sources. The result is my discomfort about knowing just how metaphorically or literally he means those signs. Robert is an artist, a dramatist, as well as a philosopher. Perhaps he means that we should enter into his ecstatic naturalism as into a play, taking up the signs and running with them for what they are worth. The experience of living in Robert’s philosophical world is bracing and for some life-changing. In the long run, no philosophical vision can hope for more than that. In the short run, however, and as an important part of the drama, philosophy steps back to be critical of itself, to build in metalevels of analysis, to come back to the evidence again and again. All these elements are present in Robert’s work and manifestly called for by Peircean semiotics. But I miss the development of the most abstract metaphysical signs that could articulate ultimacy apart from what appears in the experiences of nature, an elaborate Whiteheadian updating of Spinoza’s natura naturata and natura naturans, and the use of that metaphysics to say just in what respects the depth of nature is a womb and in what respects not. 2 I miss also the elaboration of cultural analyses of the occasions under which certain things can be signs of ecstatic nature for certain

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people and not for others, and how others might find different things appropriate to be used as such signs. I urge Robert to abjure phenomenology that does not recognize that the critical analysis of intentionality requires metaphysics and that the mediation of phenomenological openness requires a cultural analysis of what makes a thing a potential sign for engaging ultimacy. So what should we think about ecstatic naturalism? Robert rightly notes that I am a naturalist, even if I am not up to much ecstasy about it. But I am allergic to thinking about philosophies in terms of isms and ologies, and thus would never call myself a naturalist as if that explains something. I agree with Robert that a philosophy is like a work of art, which Thomas Aquinas said should have integritas, consonantia, and claritas. Joseph Grange, following James Joyce, translates these as wholeness, harmony, and whatness or thisness. 3 A philosophy is whole when it stands out as such from a background; it has harmony when its internal elements are complex and fitted together in patterns that make more than the parts; it has claritas when it shines as a radiant unique thing with its own specific character. Robert’s philosophy is very beautiful in these respects and can be grasped exactly on its own terms. To call it “a naturalism” lumps it in with other philosophies in ways so as to obscure its wholeness, harmony, and thisness. Robert tries to fend this off by distinguishing many kinds of naturalism, but this still causes people to understand the philosophy by the label rather than by what the philosophy actually says. I am somewhat allergic to the term “naturalism” itself because of its polemic against supernaturalism. Supernaturalism, in the sense of belief in disembodied intentional agents, and also in the sense of conceptions of God as an intentional agent apart from and perhaps creative of the world, is always parasitic on the historical conceptions of nature involved. Whitehead’s God, for instance, is conceived to be part of nature albeit “differently bodied” from the embodiments of the rest of nature. If one has a philosophy that describes a full orb of reality, as Robert does, that philosophy does not have to be named in polemical distinction from others, only expressed with wholeness, harmony, and thisly radiance. The internal workings of that philosophy will already express its connections and differences relative to other philosophies. Understanding philosophies by classifying them with and over against other philosophies is a shorthand that obscures their very own nature and beauty. The polemical side of naturalism usually leads to tone-deafness regarding the symbols involved in engaging ultimacy. The Columbia School was tone-deaf in principle. Robert is extraordinarily musical, astonishingly poetic in fact, regarding psychodynamic metaphorical signs for the sacred. He short-circuits the more traditional theistic metaphorical signs for the sacred, however, perhaps for good reason. But those traditional symbols understood as metaphors rather than nearly

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literal metaphysics are no more anthropomorphic than the psychodynamic ones. The only question is when they can be used so as to be engaging with ultimacy without being misleading. For this would they need triangulation with metaphysics and cultural analysis. Concern about the label of naturalism is no new issue for Robert and me. Some years ago I prepared a paper about it for a conference, greatly expanding my remarks here. But I broke my leg just before the conference and could not attend. Wesley Wildman read the paper for me and reported that Robert came to agree pretty much with my argument. So I will construe the title of this series of congresses about ecstatic naturalism to name only a general movement, not anyone’s real philosophy. My purpose here has been to call attention to the real singularity of Robert’s own philosophy, its background and beauty, and to save him from obscuring classification. My conclusion returns to the question broached earlier. Just how literally or metaphorically does Robert want the music of his signs to refer to what is ultimate or sacred? NOTES This chapter was first an address delivered at The first International Congress an ecstatic Naturalism (April 1-2, 2011) at Drew Theological School. 1. See Wildman’s Science and Religious Anthropology: A Spiritually Evocative Naturalist Interpretation of Human Life (Surrey, UK: Ashgate, 2009), 21. 2. At the conference, Corrington presented a paper that addressed just the lacuna in his work; see chapter 2 of this volume. 3. Joseph Grange, Soul: A Cosmology (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2011).

REFERENCES Grange, Joseph. Soul: A Cosmology. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2011. Wildman, Wesley J. Science and Religious Anthropology: A Spiritually Evocative Naturalist Interpretation of Human Life. Surrey, UK: Ashgate, 2009.

TWO Ecstatic Naturalism Robert S. Corrington

DELIVERED TO THE SOCIETY FOR THE ADVANCEMENT OF AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY Denver, Colorado, 2014 My first use of the phrase “ecstatic naturalism” was in my 1992 work Nature and Spirit: An Essay in Ecstatic Naturalism, however, the phrase was used earlier by students of the Protestant theologian Paul Tillich to describe his work, although as far as I know, he did not use the phrase himself. Ecstatic naturalism has deep roots in Continental philosophy, especially the perspectives of Schelling, Schopenhauer, Jaspers, Tillich, Heidegger, and Kristeva, but I want to focus on the twin streams of EuroAmerican philosophy that have had the most impact on this stillevolving perspective. First is the Columbia School as represented by F. J. E. Woodbridge, and John Herman Randall, Jr., as consummated in the ordinal metaphysics of Justus Buchler, with Santayana in the background as an important interlocutor for the Columbia philosophers. 1 And second is the transcendentalism of Ralph Waldo Emerson, one of the key loci for nature’s self-disclosure. These twin visions have helped to shape and enrich ecstatic naturalism by providing a powerful and capacious horizon within which to unfold a categorial array that does honor to the vast scope and depth of nature. Ecstatic naturalism shares with its naturalist cousins the notion that nature is all that there is and that there can be nothing that is outside of the innumerable orders of the world. For now it is crucial to note that “within” the one nature that there is lies the fundamental distinction for 9

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thought; namely that between nature naturing (natura naturans) and nature natured (natura naturata). 2 This is the natural or ontological difference that is binding on thought as it probes into the nature of nature. Both Emerson and Buchler shed light on this distinction. From Emerson in his 1844 essay Nature: let us not longer omit our homage to the Efficient Nature, Natura naturans, the quick cause, before which all forms flee as the driven snows, itself secret, its works driven before it in flocks and multitudes, (as the ancient represented nature by Proteus, a shepherd), and in undescribable variety. It publishes itself in creature, reaching from particles and spicula, through transformation and transformation to the highest symmetries.

And for Justus Buchler, writing in Metaphysics of Natural Complexes in 1966 and 1990, If natura naturata is “the world” or “the universe,” then natura naturans is the order of provision and determination. It is reflected in the fertility of any complex whatever. Nature is not so much the order which contains or even includes all other orders as the order which permeates them all: not the order within which but by which new orders are discriminable and explorable, whether through assertion, action, or contrivance.

And in his 1978 article, “Probing the Idea of Nature,” Buchler expands on this distinction: Nature as ordinality is natura naturans; it is the providing, the engendering condition. Nature as “orders” is natura naturata; it is the provided, the ordinal manifestation, the World’s complexes.

These ur-texts provide the horizon within which contemporary ecstatic naturalism understands nature. First we need to make some larger order assertions about the metaphysical commitments of naturalism per se, especially as naturalism struggles with the religious dimensions of experience. For some, like John Ryder, naturalism is most at home in humanism and most uncomfortable around at least some forms of theology or religious experience. I hope to show that there are ways to lessen this anxiety by a phenomenological account of how art and the Sublime can transfigure the religious in such a way as to purge it of its demonic traits. So, on to naturalism per se, we can see a number interlocking themes: (1) nature is all that there is, (2) there is no supernatural realm, (3) nature was not created by something outside of itself, (4) there is no order of orders, (5) nature has no contour, no outside or inside, (6) no order is related to all other orders, (7) there is no first or last order, or first or last sign, (8) the divine is a natural complex within the one nature that there is, (9) there is no one trait found in each and all natural complexes, (10) there is no telos in nature, (11) in fact, “nature” doesn’t exist, only orders

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in an astonishing and fecund variety of ways, (12), nature cannot be defined as to do so would be to put it in a genus with a specific difference—there is no genus in which it could be put and thus no specific difference from something other than itself, (13) there is no principle of sufficient reason “behind” nature, and (14) no complex is more or less real than another and this applies to the divine natures as well—the principle of ontological parity as so carefully developed by Buchler. Ecstatic naturalism affirms all fourteen naturalist commitments and adds a few of its own, starting with the above key distinction between nature naturing and nature natured, which I now translate: nature naturing is, “nature perennially creating itself out of itself alone,” while nature natured is “the innumerable orders of the World.” The word “perennially” is chosen rather than the word “eternally” to connote a deeper sense of activity and engagement between the pre-temporal and the temporal. On the side of nature natured, ecstatic naturalism feels most comfortable with the kind of pragmatic naturalism as developed by John Ryder in dialogue with the Columbia School and now we can properly speak of the Stony Brook School as the second wave of ordinal naturalism. However, the situation changes when the focus shifts to a phenomenological analysis and description of nature naturing. Here ecstatic naturalism strikes out on its own. Every “thing” in the spheres of nature natured is a natural complex and as such is both located within other orders and locates other (subaltern) orders within itself. There can be no unlocated order nor can there be any simples as such an entity would be without traits and be order-less, which is an impossibility. Consequently, god must be a natural complex and cannot have created the innumerable orders of the World from a position outside of it. God thus is within nature and locates and is located. The question of god’s existence is a fruitless one as god certainly prevails in many orders in many respects. Part of the task of an ordinal phenomenology is to probe into the places where the divine is rendered into pertinent dimensions of the human process and its experiences. Ordinal phenomenology goes beyond both transcendental and hermeneutic phenomenology by opening out the fuller spectrum of the various ordinal locations of the phenomenal “object” of its investigations. Not relying on a spurious transcendental ego or the quasi-Kantian Dasein-analytic, ordinal phenomenology rotates its chosen complex through each of its (pragmatically) available ordinal locations in order to let its fullness become disclosed to circumspective sight. The ultimate goal is to gain a sense of the contour of the phenomenon, that is, its larger integrity in as many orders as time, sensitivity, and sheer energy allow. So what is ecstatic about ecstatic naturalism? Following Heidegger in Sein und Zeit the initial notion of the ecstatic refers to the experience that at the core of the human process the self transcends itself ecstatically into the worldhood of the world, but this act/event of transcendence is fully

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worldly and doesn’t transcend the world itself. In the language of ecstatic naturalism, the selving process transcends itself in and through the one nature that there is but it is always a finite and limited transcendence that lights up its locatedness within certain horizons of meaning, but not others. Deeper down, nature “itself” is ecstatically self-transforming through what I call, following Schelling, its potencies, which are rooted in the perennial pulsations of nature naturing. Nature naturing is the seed bed for the momenta of the innumerable orders of the world, the sheer geniture or providingness, the provider allowing for the allowed, namely nature natured. As allowed, nature natured is in debt to nature naturing, the state of “natural debt” noted by Buchler. If we are born in a state of natural debt, a state much less violent than Heidegger’s notion of “thrownness,” and less valoristic than Whitehead’s notion of “adventure,” how do we deal with this indebtedness? This is where religious experience comes in. Accepting that the ordinal scheme truly demolishes classical theism and also puts heavy pressure on process panentheisms, the question is: How do we deal with the object of religion phenomenologically? If god prevails as a natural complex, can we have access to the givenness of god outside of theism and panentheism? I would argue that the phenomenological evidence points toward a deep pantheism that experiences god in the fullness of what we can call god-ing. God-ing, what Heidegger will call götterung in his 1938-1939 work Mindfullness (Besinnung), is the spirit-infused energy that is directed to the opening self as it can welcome an intensification of its selving process. I refer to this transit as “god-ing” because it harks back to the ancient god, gods, and goddesses of the tribes of our species, but is nothing like any of the divinities worshiped in our planetary history. God-ing is manifest as a ground feeling that swims, however briefly, in the infinite, but in its depth logic god-ing is ever elusive and in its sway it gently melts down all pretenders to the throne, ironically, all of those pretenders to a throne that doesn’t even exist. Perhaps one could liken god-ing to a natural grace that, like the Dao, rests in the quiet places yet quickens the human selving process so that it can evolve through the involution of a spirit that is neither personal nor a power over and against the innumerable orders of the World. God-ing makes leaps in selving possible as it unfolds dynamically through both the quotidian and the hyper reality of sacred folds, those special orders of multi-layered semiotic density that point toward the aesthetic summum bonum. God-ing is the “how” of the sacred, but it does not present itself as a static “what,” rather, it flickers on the edges of phenomenological intuition and gives itself as a co-given within the phenomenal field of finite experience as it feels the infinite in that very cogiven. God-ing is, in the words of Jean Luc Marion, “a saturated phenom-

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enon.” Its fullness marks it as unique within the ordinal phenomenal field. God-ing is not caused by a deity or deities somehow standing outside of nature, but is experienced as if it is so. In fact it is more like a microburst of energy that intersects with the human process when there is some rare surplus energy in the system that allows for something that is not strictly instrumental or tied directly to immediate evolutionary needs. It feels like it is from an infinite source of energy that has personal form and takes on personal predicates. But its main mode of being is to enter into concresced and ossified meaning horizons and loosen them of their grip on the psyche, on both the conscious and unconscious levels. Here we can use Wilhelm Reich’s concept of “characterological armoring” as the anti-pole to the energies of god-ing. This type of armoring, as blocking what he calls “orgonotic pulsations,” can be cracked open by the force fields of god-ing when the conditions are right for its reception in the host psyche. Thus, we have at the cutting edge of evolution the entrance of god-ing working through what can be called “involution,” which is a complementary process to those operative in evolution as understood in the Neo-Darwinian Synthesis. Involution, not to be in any way confused with Lamarkianism or creationism, occurs when surplus psychic energy is freed for a brief moment that allows for a slight leap in consciousness that makes it possible to add semiotically rich traits to the meaning field of the self in process. The self folds into its ongoing semiosis novel patterns and prospects that add to its cumulative ordinal locations by bringing something new into its world. Note, from this small breakthrough of god-ing energy and creativity on the edges of evolution, it does not follow that creativity is a major metaphysical category in its own right. Contra process perspectives, ecstatic naturalism affirms that creativity is rare in nature and that it has a brief and precarious tenure in only a few of nature’s orders. Put another way, creativity is very expensive and it has to be paid for by a creature already in a state of deep indebtedness. 3 These many conceptual webs having been woven, we now turn to the final question of what I have called “deep pantheism” and its aesthetic form. Deep pantheism is the theological perspective operating within the philosophy of ecstatic naturalism. I am uneasy about the term pantheism and the variety of forms it has taken, not to mention the polemical and political fires it has ignited over the centuries. My simple version is centered around one statement: “Nature is all that there is.” As we have seen, god is a highly complex and ramified natural complex within the one nature that there is. But there is a sense that god is also encompassed by nature naturing. In the Summa Aquinas refers to those who simply equated god with nature naturing, “the universal nature is an active force in some universal principle of nature . . . or again belonging to some superior substance, in which sense God is by some to be nature naturing,”

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whereas I want to distinguish between the two. From my perspective god is eclipsed by nature naturing and is an emergent from it. One can understand nature naturing as the great unconscious of nature and, as such, the other to the innumerable orders of the world, including god in its many ordinal locations. What separates deep pantheism from its more prosaic cousin is that it stresses the potencies within nature’s unconscious, as these potencies eject the archetypes and, through them, the orders of the world. The aesthetic dimension of deep pantheism is best seen in the quasireligious experience of the Sublime in Kant, Schopenhauer, and art works insofar as they are honored by ecstatic naturalism. Schopenhauer presents the strongest case for what he, following Kant, calls the Sublime (das Erhabene), both mathematical and dynamic. The former is best seen when we gaze at the night sky and truly feel our littleness or our sheer finitude in general. The dynamical Sublime is experienced whenever nature takes on a dangerous and frightening aspect, say on a ship in a storm-tossed sea. Or, when we encounter a sacred fold of great depth and form-shaking power that threatens to overwhelm us. The experience of the Sublime is actually the deepest encounter the human process has with god-ing. For an aesthetic or deep pantheism god-ing weaves together the beautiful and the Sublime into one moment of vision in which pragmatic instrumentalities are left behind as the selving process reaches its most profound awareness of what Schopenhauer calls the Will to life, his version of nature naturing. Of all the metaphysical ultimates in the Western traditions that can be seen as roughly equivalent to nature naturing, Schopenhauer’s concept the Will comes closest to expressing the churning potencies of the unconscious of nature as they objectify themselves above all in works of art that in turn house the archetypes, his Platonic Forms, as the highest crystallizations of nature naturing. Ecstatic naturalism reaches its own culmination when it celebrates these works of artistic genius that hold open the vibrant traces of nature naturing that appear with special intensity in the moments of the Sublime that punctuate the aesthetic domains of nature natured. Here in the free space of the aesthetic Sublime religious tribalism with all of its violence, perhaps partly hardwired into our psyche/soma, as argued so forcefully by evolutionary psychology, is left behind as the aesthetic sphere transfigures finite human experience making it permeable to the Sublime which is manifest on the other side of the will-topower of the religions of the world. Art, by locating itself on the side of the universal potencies of the archetypes, is universalistic in its assimilation and manipulation of local and regional traits of experience as then rendered into various media of contrivance, whereas religion serves the powers of tribe and constricted social identity that works against healthy cosmopolitanism and the emancipatory energies of selving.

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Here we come full circle and offer a naturalism that has a place for both humanism and for a theonomous perspective that sublates antecedent forms of religion into what could be called a religion of art, or perhaps one should say, an aesthetics that is aware of its indebtedness to the unconscious of nature from whence even the religious comes. From the standpoint of human emancipation, moreover, the free space opened up by the aesthetic Sublime represents the Alpha and the Omega of the selving process under the conditions of finitude. Ordinal phenomenology, the spiritual discipline that serves the meditative spirit of ontological parity, culminates in an openness to the pulsations of nature naturing that Emerson saw so clearly. We leave the last word to him: “Nature is intricate, overlapped, interweaved, and endless” (Fate, 1860). NOTES 1. For insight into the Columbia School of naturalism, see the following: Yervant H. Krikorian, ed., (1944). Naturalism and the Human Spirit (New York: Columbia University Press); William M. Shea (1984). The Naturalists and the Supernatural (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press); and John Ryder, The Things in Heaven and Earth: An Essay in Pragmatic Naturalism (New York: Fordham University Press). Ryder’s book also describes the Stony Brook School that derives directly from the Columbia School upon Buchler’s assuming a chair at Stony Brook in 1971. 2. While Spinoza did not invent this distinction he did make it common coin in the Modern Period of philosophy. In his book, Spinoza: Practical Philosophy (San Francisco: City Lights, 1988), Gilles Deleuze puts the distinction succinctly: “Natura naturans (as substance and cause) and Natura naturata (as effect and mode) are interconnected through a mutual immanence: on the one hand, the cause remains in itself in order to produce; on the other hand, the effect or the product remains in the cause” (92). That is, both dimensions of the one nature that there is operate intimately together on the plane of immanence. 3. Two important texts involved in the dialogue on the correlation of evolution with spiritual involution are: The Human Phenomenon, by Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, translated by Sarah Appleton-Weber (Brighton: UK, 2003) and The Life Divine, by Sri Aurobindo (Twin Lakes, WI: 1990). While I don’t take these texts literally I find them suggestive of new ways of thinking about the self/world correlation from a general evolutionary perspective.

REFERENCES American Journal of Theology and Philosophy. Special issue on Ecstatic Naturalism. 34, no. 1 (January, 2013). Aurobindo, Sri. The Life Divine. Twin Lakes, WI: Lotus Press, 1990. Bloch, Ernst. Das Prinzip Hoffnung. English translation in 1986. The Principle of Hope. In three volumes by Neville Plaice, Stephen Plaice, and Paul Knight. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1959. Buchler, Justus. Metaphysics of Natural Complexes. Second expanded edition. Ed. Kathleen Wallace, Armen Marsoobian, with Robert S. Corrington. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1989. Crosby, Donald. A Religion of Nature. Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 2002.

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Dewey, John. Experience and Nature. Vol. 1 of The Later Works. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1925. ———. Art as Experience. Vol. 10 of The Later Works. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1934. Emerson, Ralph Waldo. Essays and Lectures. Ed. by Joel Porte. New York: The Library of America Edition, 1984. Heidegger, Martin. Sein und Zeit. English translation 2010, Being and Time by Joan Stambaugh and Dennis J. Schmidt. Albany: NY, SUNY Press, 1927. ———. Bessiinung. English translation 2006 Mindfullness by Parvis Emad and Thomas Kalary New York: Continuum, 1938/1939. Peirce, Charles Sanders. The Essential Peirce: Volume One (1867-1893). Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1992. ———. The Essential Peirce: Volume Two (1893-1913). Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998. Reich, Wilhelm. Die Function des Orgasmus. English translation 1973 The Function of the Orgasm. Trans. Vincent R. Carfagno. New York: The Noonday Press, 1927. Schopenhauer, Arthur. 1819. Die Welt als Wille und Vorstellung. English translation 2008 The World as Will and Presentation by Richard E. Aquila and David Carus. New York: Pearson Longman, 1819. Tillich, Paul. Systematic Theology. Three Volumes. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963.

THREE Ecstatic Naturalism and the Sacred Martin O. Yalcin

Unlike most metaphysical or philosophical naturalists who reject any supernatural beings or supernatural/sacred entities, naturalists who take the concept of the sacred seriously must answer this question: “What is the value of the sacred with respect to nature?” Because the concept of nature is narrow, a non-naturalist or religious person has no reservations about de-privileging nature or the natural when considering it in relation to the sacred. For the religious person the sacred has its intrinsic, essential, and non-derived worth in contrast to the profane. While nature as the profane is of secondary worth the naturalist’s concept of nature is far more capacious. Robert Corrington, a self-described ecstatic naturalist, has embraced a rather broad understanding of nature. This chapter seeks to exhibit the traits unique to Corrington’s ecstatic naturalism and then to determine what the sacred amounts to in ecstatic naturalism. If, as Corrington argues, nature is all that there is, and whatever is, in whatever way it is, is in and of nature, what value does the sacred have within naturalism? Corrington’s form of naturalism is austere. His ideal naturalist resembles a tightrope walker who must tread a rather narrow path that avoids every form of dogmatism. And beyond the narrow path eight vices can be found: (1) the materialism that would render all natural complexes derivatives of matter; (2) the idealism that would insist that some nonphysical, spiritual, or rational principle is ontologically superior to anything else in all respects; (3) the humanism that would tout the unbounded possibilities of human perfectibility and progress; (4) the mysticism that would completely transcend all ties to nature’s orders; (5) the excessively skeptical reductionism that would demystify nature once and 17

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for all, thereby jettisoning all traces of the sacred; (6) the pluralism that would declare discontinuity as the universal category; (7) the monism that would unify all natural complexes into a single superorder; and (8) the theism that would elevate a personal creator God to such a dizzying height that nature comes to be utterly devalued. How viable is a philosophical theology that must tread such a narrow path—a philosophical theology whose chief aim, as I will argue here, is the shattering of all sacred idols? Can those who desire to maintain the category of the sacred, but are skeptical about the benefits of traditional theism and its derivatives, embrace the life of a tightrope walker touted by Corrington’s ecstatic naturalism? THE ONTOLOGICAL DIFFERENCE AND SEMIOTICS Central to Corrington’s ecstatic naturalism is the concept of the ontological difference between the orders of the world (nature natured) and the realm of potencies that spawn those orders (nature naturing). Thus a fundamental fissure exists between these two realms of the one nature that makes it possible for what is in potency to become manifested as an order of the world. Nature is therefore constituted by ecstasy understood as negation. This is a pervasive drive within nature that is characterized by a going outside of the self (ex-stasis), a tendency for what is in potency to engender its other. In the heart of nature lies a drive for manifestation that can be compared to “enjoyment and sexual release.” 1 One might imagine the drive as constituted by pulsations of energy, or as a primal restlessness in the womb of nature naturing that overflows giving birth to the orders of the world. Corrington’s ecstatic naturalism is fully semiotic. He divides nature into pre-semiotic (nature naturing), semiotic (nature natured), and postsemiotic (return of nature naturing) realms. Semiosis, a term originated by Peirce meaning “sign action,” can be defined as the act of pointing. When potencies engender the orders of the world they are, in essence, semiotically pointing beyond themselves to their manifestations. Potencies are signs in the making that remain in the condition of pregnancy perpetually. Potencies remain ever-elusive origins despite giving birth to signs because the “origin is constituted by a preformal negativity that pushes away its products as soon as they emerge.” 2 The pre-semiotic womb therefore does not provide nourishment to its young, but remains enveloped in mystery, always beyond the reach of its ejections. The immediate retreat of the potencies is beneficial both to the potencies and their ejections. Corrington describes the structure that maintains the integrity of the potencies and their ejections as a “betweenness” structure that can be understood as an “emptying,” a term which

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conveys the pouring out of plenitude from the elusive ground that is ever-reticent to show its face. The plenitude of nature natured, the orders of creation, is made possible by the self-denial of nature’s potencies that “refuse” to become full of content. There is a kind of darkening in which the potencies of nature turn away from the light of manifestation so that the innumerable centers of power and meaning constituting world semiosis can enter into their positions. The pre-positional realms of the potencies are never “appropriated” to the human process in such a way that they bring us home from our estrangement. Nor are we somehow gathered into nature natured as if it were a great mother that could reconcile all of the fissures of finite existence. 3

The betweenness structure makes it possible for the pregnant, pre-semiotic realm to remain an infinite giver by allowing for the potencies to remain in a perpetual state of pregnancy as they give birth to signs. From the side of the semiotic realm, the betweenness structure makes it possible for signs to flourish without collapsing into the pre-semiotic womb, thereby also engendering an infinity in the semiotic realm that takes the form of an ever-increasing network of sign interaction. The finite conditions of world semiosis produce only a limited and flawed approximation of unity. An Absolute Spirit (such as the one posited by Hegel) that brings about a seamless union of the sacred and profane here on earth is impossible for Corrington’s semiotic realm. 4 The hard-won unity of a semiotic order can easily turn into a rigidity of meaning and power that forecloses further expansion and enrichment, ultimately leading to the demise of that semiotic order. The greater the scope of meaning and power, the greater is the likelihood of survival. Negativity as engendering an other to the self appears to be the source of a world ethics that consists of the unceasing drive of multiple centers of networks of power and meaning, each desiring to create its own kingdom of god. Corrington suggests that the countermovement to the problems of semiotic plenitude must come from somewhere other than the semiotic realm. Nature provides a solution to the problem it has originated. No power external to nature is required to remedy the internal workings of nature. Since nature is all that there is, nature is finite in certain respects and infinite in others; therefore, one does not find in Corrington’s metaphysics an absolute severance of the finite from the infinite. If one wishes to call the infinite in nature divine, then divinity is always already at work in the periphery of the semiotic orders of nature. The semiotic orders are provided with traces of healing power from the maternal womb that has ejected them. In describing this act of grace, Corrington borrows the psychoanalytic concept of the unconscious as the source of the healing power. Though some have accused Corrington of imposing a human paradigm upon nature, he rightly notes that the paradigm originates with nature so that we should not be surprised to find one order of

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nature natured, the human order, exhibiting the paradigm of its parents in its own makeup. Counteracting the problems engendered by semiotic plenitude, the unconscious of nature goads the sign to “become permeable to a presemiotic chaos that is not part of the web of signification.” 5 In this way the unconscious of nature serves as a healing force that breaks open the sign from rigid, solipsistic, self-enclosure by “restlessly undermining the selfencapsulated pockets of meaning.” 6 One might say that the unconscious of nature serves to remind the sign that its current level of meaning and power is limited and parochial, and that the realm of signs is grounded by a pre-semiotic realm of potencies that envelopes it. The unity of world semiosis is grounded by the realm of strife. In religious terms, the human being comes to experience something greater than its semiotic constructions when it encounters the pre-semiotic numinous presence coming from the unconscious of nature. THE ENCOMPASSING At the risk of oversimplification, the foregoing discussion on Corrington’s ecstatic naturalism can be rendered in this way. From Corrington’s ecstatic naturalist perspective there is no supernatural realm or dimension that transcends or creates nature. Nature is all that there is. It is perennially self-fissured in two dimensions: nature naturing and nature natured. The difference between these two dimensions is an ontological difference that is akin to Heidegger’s ontological difference between Being itself (das Sein) and things in being (das Seiende). Put in terms of Kant’s critique of the ontological argument for the existence of God, acknowledgment of the ontological difference is really an acknowledgment that the being of anything cannot be enumerated among all the other predicates of that thing. Being is not the trait of a complex. For Corrington, therefore, at the heart of nature there lies a deep chasm or ontological divide. On one side, we have nature natured: all the emerging or attained orders of nature. On the other side, we have nature naturing: nature giving birth to itself out of itself alone. While nature natured is the orders of nature, nature naturing is the potencies or powers of nature. Nature is the ever-fecund, ever-potent “mother” whose ejects are the innumerable orders of the world. Corrington’s metaphysics is anti-foundational through and through. He argues that nature ontologically has no ultimate foundation. It is not a container of all containers, or a horizon of all horizons. “Nature has no contour,” 7 no definable limits that would distinguish it from all other orders of nature as the grand order; indeed, it is not an order at all. Corrington’s philosophy burrows itself into the depths of nature, but finds no final resting place there. He agrees with Karl Jaspers that there is

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a perpetually receding horizon—a horizon-less horizon—called the “encompassing” (das Umgreifende). 8 For Corrington, the encompassing is a metaphor for the ever-elusive origin that is nature naturing, which cannot be encompassed by the human order, or any other order. The encompassing is the “radical transcendence” 9 that goads the human self to expand its limited horizon. The human self is unceasingly shaken to its core by the encompassing as it founders or shipwrecks “upon that which will not be brought under its sway.” 10 Whereas the self seeks to privilege its own perspectives, the encompassing shatters the self’s tendency to idolize some natural complexes at the expense of others. A chief concern of Corrington’s philosophical theology is the desire to quicken the sense of encompassment in the self. When the self experiences radical transcendence its attachment to ontological priority, the view that some complexes are more real than others, is shattered and replaced by ontological parity, the view that all natural complexes are equally real. Corrington’s “infinitizing ordinal phenomenology” 11 is the method by which the self is shriven of the “pathological psychic armoring” 12 that forecloses the finite self’s awareness of the modes of infinity or transcendence in which it participates. Phenomenological attunement to nature’s encompassment infinitizes the finite self. In other words, the self’s horizon becomes far more capacious or expansive as its finitude is stretched by the heightened sense of encompassment. In Ecstatic Naturalism: Signs of the World (1994), and in A Semiotic Theory of Theology and Philosophy (2000), Corrington offers four modes of infinity found in nature, including: (1) the actual infinite, (2) the prospective infinite, (3) the open infinite, and (4) the sustaining infinite. Briefly rendered in the language of semiotics, the actual infinite refers to the ontological density, plenitude, fullness, or thickness of the world of signs; the prospective infinite refers to the enabling condition, the empty space, or the medium within which semiotic density can emerge in certain respects in particular sign systems; the open infinite refers to the “innumerable spaces of betweenness surround[ing] each sign” 13 that allow for such a sign to become individuated; and finally the sustaining infinite refers to that which enables both sign systems and particular signs to be at all. The sustaining infinite is akin to what the American naturalist Justus Buchler has referred to as sheer “providingness” and Paul Tillich as “the ground of being” (so long as the ground is not equated with god). 14 Attunement to the sustaining infinite is what shakes the self to its core by destabilizing its ontological priority constructs. Or as Corrington puts the matter, the open infinite “sustains whatever is by being sheerly relevant to all orders in all respects. At its depth, numinosity points to parity, not to ontological hierarchies, making the numinous powers different in kind from every other. This is because they . . . are implicated in the pulsations of nature naturing.” 15 The self that is infinitized has an acute sense of the various sorts of transcendences in nature, and ultimately of the radical

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transcendence of nature in its naturing when the self intersects with the sustaining infinite. But Corrington insists that it is not just the finite human self that cannot encompass the encompassing mystery at the heart of nature. Although in recent years Corrington has become reticent about the use of the word “god,” he has argued in his Nature and Spirit (1992) that the encompassing infinitizes both the self and god. God is decentered and radically transcended as much as the self. In Corrington’s words, “the encompassing ‘reminds’ the divine that it is eternally incomplete, and that no stage of divine fulfillment is adequate.” 16 In yet another passage he declares that “God cannot fill in the encompassing any more than the human process can encompass nature.” 17 Due to the anthropocentric trappings, the concept of god has no longer played an important role in Corrington’s philosophical theology. THE SACRED Corrington resolutely and unflinchingly asserts that “nature is the genus of which the sacred is a species.” 18 The sacred is one among innumerable orders of nature—it is in and of nature. As an ecstatic naturalist, Corrington locates the sacred among all other complexes of nature. The sacred does not have traits disconnected from the traits of all other orders. As with any other natural complex, the sacred is related in certain respects to other natural complexes and unrelated to them in others. Because they are limited—as all complexes are—sacred complexes do not have universal efficacy. To the human self a sacred order is manifested as a complex with unusually high semiotic density and an unusually robust gravitational pull. For Corrington, any natural complex can be sacred (e.g., a grove of trees, a mythical deity, a poem, etc.) because it is able to exhibit such over-determined and multi-layered semiotic content. To restrict the sacred to one manifestation of it is to forget that the sacred, insofar as it is experienced at all by the human order, whether consciously or unconsciously, arises as a mere temporary wave out of the ocean of nature naturing; in other words, the “sacred remains encompassed by the nonsacred.” 19 Corrington explains: The potencies of nature naturing lie outside of the sacred and can never be exhausted by the holy. The sacred orders ride on the back of natura naturans and they are as much a product of the potencies as is any other order. From the perspective of the sacred, if we may be briefly allowed this anthropomorphic way of speaking, the potencies of nature naturing are filled with mystery and represent the unconscious of nature for the sacred. That is, the orders of the sacred have their own encompassing otherness in the potencies that can never be wrenched into the clarity of a kind of cosmic awareness. 20

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As with other orders of nature, the sacred is encompassed on all sides. As a natural complex among other natural complexes, a sacred complex has a delimited contour and delimited scope. Its semiotic density and gravitational pull are not powerful enough to have every other order of nature revolve around it. As quoted above, for Corrington, sacred complexes are not only circumscribed by other complexes, they are also encompassed by the horizonless horizon, the encompassing that is nature naturing. For this reason, attunement to the encompassing first requires attunement to the ontological difference between nature naturing and nature natured. Nevertheless, the human order has a tendency to cast into oblivion the sense of the ontological difference. In the work Powers of Horror (1982), the psychoanalyst and semiotician Julia Kristeva has described the oblivion of the ontological difference as a primal abjection—a simultaneous attraction for and repulsion of one’s origin. 21 She argues that signification or the positioning of signs in the human order is constituted by an act of primal abjection in which the “material maternal” origin (or the “semiotic” realm) is repressed so that the realm of human cultural productions (or the “symbolic” realm) can be constituted. Recast in the terminology of Corrington’s metaphysics, and expanded beyond reference solely to the human order, Kristeva’s semiotic/symbolic distinction comes to resemble Corrington’s nature naturing/nature natured distinction. Just as the semiotic is jettisoned for the symbolic to arise so the sense of the ontological difference is cast into oblivion by the human order when the sacred is engaged. We chisel away some essential aspects of the sacred and bury them along with nature naturing so that all that remains in nature natured is the sacred that we want, not the sacred as it is. The oblivion of the ontological difference is the oblivion of the unpalatable traits of the sacred. The unsavory traits of the sacred order—precisely the traits that are necessary for having a genuine encounter with the sacred—are oftentimes violently severed and buried. The deity who has been refashioned to suit the selfish needs of the ego, the deity who is not only perfectly good, but also perfectly just, perfectly one, perfectly wise, perfectly loving, and perfectly forgiving is a counterfeit deity. When genuinely engaged, sacred complexes are seen to be for what they are: forged in the womb of nature. The sacred, found within such complexes, is what can shake us to our core, disturb our dogmatic slumber, and de-center us. But this sacred cannot properly be called a “person” nor can it be claimed to possess an intelligence or purpose in its decentering activity. For the ecstatic naturalist, the womb of nature is not conscious, and because it is not a person it has neither mind nor soul, it does not care for us. The womb of nature does not have goals or intentions, and it does not direct the world or human history. Sacred complexes are natural complexes that are relevant to the human order in certain respects. To say more than this is to project our own wishes and desires upon some natural complex-

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es which happen to be relevant to the human order. Sacred complexes may be relevant to mountains and fish in different respects than they are to us. Whether relevant to us or to some other order of nature, sacred complexes have no absolute otherness that would put them in the honorific category of complexes that are sui generis. A natural complex whose genus is indistinguishable from its species, whose essence is indistinguishable from its existence, and whose existence is necessary, is no complex at all; hence having no relevance for any order of nature. Naturalism cannot tarry too long with any sacred complex for fear of absolutizing that complex. The word “absolute” is a Latin derivative of the word “absolve”; therefore, to absolutize any complex is to set it free from its relations and dependencies to other complexes. Naturalism cannot have a final, definitive, and exclusive theology, whether philosophical or otherwise. The chief task of an uncompromising naturalism should be, to use Nietzsche’s language, to “philosophize with a hammer.” Naturalism should be iconoclastic through and through, bestowing absolution upon no sacred complex, indeed, no complex at all. As I interpret it, the philosophical theology of ecstatic naturalism, with its unmitigated embrace of ontological parity and of ordinal ontology, does indeed eventuate in the breaking of sacred idols; namely, of all those sacred complexes that have become so thoroughly solidified that they are severed from all other orders of nature. 22 Unfortunately, if a theology of quiescence is sought, ecstatic naturalism cannot provide it. Just as panentheism is superseded by pantheism, so must pantheism be superseded by some other descriptive of the sacred. As Corrington suggests, it is wise to rest awhile in the presence of a sacred complex that has us in its grip; but clearly no sacred complex can become a final resting place, and no theology can claim to assuage primal human restlessness once and for all. Some will counter that no finite sacred symbol can capture the infinite nature of the deity, and that sacred complexes, being mere symbols of the ineffable deity, will undoubtedly fail to assuage primal human restlessness. It may be argued that symbols may be broken but not the deity to which they point. Ecstatic naturalism as I understand it makes no such distinction between finite sacred symbols and their infinite referent, the unbroken deity. For the ecstatic naturalist, sacred complexes do not stand in for an ineffable deity. Put differently, the sacred that I experience is not transcended by the sacred that I do not experience. The referent of a sacred complex is nature itself, and to the naturalist nature is not a sacred reality, a deity, or a god. The god in and of nature that has me in its grip is a broken god. There are no other gods beyond the broken gods or sacred complexes in and of nature. Sacred complexes are not symbols that point to a unified, single god. Nature itself does not round out sacred complexes. Indeed, nature does not absolve any complex or order of its indebtedness and brokenness. The human order has a tendency to round out the rough edges of whatever complex it cannot bear with, but this is

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precisely the sort of encompassing that ecstatic naturalism opposes. The ecstatic naturalist replaces the encompassing sphere of Parmenides with the ever-receding encompassing horizon that transcends the sphere. Each of us must decide whether the ever-receding encompassing horizon ought to be given the appellation “natural” or “supernatural,” and each of us must then live with the metaphysical and ethical consequences of that label. As for the naturalist, the ever-receding encompassing horizon must be natural and non-sacred. ECSTATIC NATURALISM, THE SACRED, AND THE AESTHETIC I have argued that for the ecstatic naturalist nature is not the sacred; rather, the sacred is one among innumerable orders of nature, some of which are more or less relevant to the human order. When nature is taken to be the sacred, theism is introduced into the concept of the sacred in the form of one of its variants, namely, pantheism. Pantheism is simply too closely allied to theism to be a viable path for the naturalist who still wishes to retain the concept of the sacred. In an article entitled “American Naturalism on Pantheism” (2011), I suggested that because the pantheist’s divinity shares many of the same traits found in the traditional theistic God, the pantheist devalues nature as ontologically inferior vis-à-vis the pantheistic divinity that unifies, permeates, and undergirds nature. 23 Assuming for the nonce that the ecstatic naturalist cannot also be a pantheist but must take the sacred to be one among the innumerable orders of nature, I would argue that when the sacred is no longer conceived as nature’s wholly transcendent divine creator (as in theism), nor its wholly immanent divine source (as in pantheism), nor its partly transcendent partly immanent divine lure (as in panentheism), then the value of the sacred is no longer metaphysical but rather aesthetic. As theism and its variants are jettisoned, inevitably religion is either understood as art or replaced by art. The transformation is consummated when nature is allowed to stand alone without assistance from a divine creator, source, or lure. Corrington’s trajectory from panentheism to pantheism and most recently to a purely aesthetic appreciation of the sacred is indicative of the path that must be followed by an ecstatic naturalist who by degrees sheds theistic trappings in order to don the garb of naturalism unreservedly. In “Evolution, Religion, and an Ecstatic Naturalism” published May 2010, Corrington’s mature position on religion is on display. In a section entitled “The Superiority of Art to the Religious Pathogen,” Corrington offers four arguments for replacing religion with art: 1. Religion is assertive, while art is exhibitive. Religion puts forward exclusivist truth-claims; art displays or arrays nature from various

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perspectives all of which can be appreciated by the observer inclusively. 2. Religion practices ontological priority by privileging some traits over others as more or less real. Art practices ontological parity— as a phenomenological spiritual discipline art engages whatever traits happen to prevail in just the way that each prevails. 3. Religion is iconoclastic: it seeks to destroy idolatry. Art dampens the will-to-power that drives iconoclasm by reminding the narcissistic self that it is encompassed and indebted to chthonic natural “rhythms.” 4. Religion upholds tribalism, manic utopianism, and divisive binary oppositions (between the saved and the damned, for instance). Art radically decenters and grounds self-enclosed subjectivity and selfenclosed communities. Art neutralizes triumphalism. The naturalist who understands the sacred aesthetically has accepted that the sacred is not a metaphysical power. As the father of American naturalism, the Spanish-born George Santayana set the tone for the aesthetic reconstruction of religion in American philosophy and theology. 24 For Santayana religious beliefs are symbolic, metaphoric, analogical, poetic responses of the human order to the protean and mercurial womb of nature, namely, matter. The sacred is the projection, translation, or interpretation of potencies or powers that are not sacred. Santayana’s understanding of the sacred is consonant with that of Joseph Campbell, the popular mythologist who has argued that deities are projections of psychological powers. 25 Gods are reflections of powers in the depths of nature and in the depths of the human psyche. Because human translations or interpretations of such depths are varied, the religion of naturalism (if it must have one) cannot but be polytheistic. This is precisely what David L. Miller, professor of religion at Syracuse University, has argued in The New Polytheism: Rebirth of the Gods and Goddesses (1974). Corrington’s term “sacred folds” not only denotes the plurality of the sacred, but also refers to the centers of power and meaning that grip us and shake us to our ontological core. Corrington insists that these folds are not mere projections of the human psyche—they are not illusions. At first blush Corrington’s position appears to contradict the view of Campbell, Miller, and Santayana that sacred complexes are not powers; however, a closer reading of Corrington’s work proves otherwise. For Corrington, sacred folds are not deities who manifest themselves to humans in the natural order. They are natural folds embedded and encompassed by other folds, all arising out of the womb of nature, which is not sacred. Corrington’s “ecstatic naturalism remains reticent to assign a divine origin to the folds of nature.” 26 That some natural complex is of great importance to me is no illusion. That I represent, translate, or interpret this complex as this or that deity by way

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of projections is also no illusion. But that there is some grand and ultimate sacred reality that is the source of the sacred folds manifested in nature is a belief that a naturalist cannot embrace. 27 Corrington agrees with Santayana that religious beliefs are aesthetic projections of the human order responding to powers in and of nature. Our religious beliefs go awry when projections are conflated with powers, when the aesthetic response to the “supernatural”—which denotes for Corrington nothing more than “events and complexes within nature that have a vagrant, perplexing, or unnerving quality” 28—”take[s] on a life of its own”: Human history is filled with the suffering that comes from the failure to withdraw projections from the genuine powers within nature that can accelerate the human process without any ethical upshot. Schopenhauer was clearly right when he made the Buddhist move to see existence as a form of suffering. The root cause of this suffering is not so much desire or ego as it is the inevitable momentum of projection in which undigested complexes get thrown out into the folds of nature that seem to beckon them. Each projection becomes inflated to a superhuman status and seems to take on a life of its own. This life, were it a mere aesthetic phenomenon, would not be a danger to the species. However, it soon becomes a power in its own right and, by definition, cannot abide other powers that compete for scarce semiotic resources. Any strong projection that is left alone and unexamined will run the risk of shortening the prospects of other selves. 29

As an “aesthetic phenomenon” a numinous or sacred projection has the value of expanding my limited horizon, of breaking through the psychic armoring that forecloses further relatedness to others within the human order and to other orders in and of nature. But when this aesthetic phenomenon is then employed as a weapon wielded against others, a power in the world vying for supremacy, disaster follows. We must, as Corrington suggests, digest our complexes before they are transformed into projectiles. It is easy to be gripped by the mania and exhilaration that follows from whatever happens to arrest me; the simultaneous fear and fascination, loathing and loving of what touches me in the depths of myself has been vividly described by the German theologian Rudolf Otto in his famous work, The Idea of the Holy. 30 What naturalism can teach us who are engaging what we believe to be the sacred is playfulness in the midst of a serious encounter with the sacred. A power has me in its grip. One or more signs in the world that have become highly relevant to me have put me out of my wits. How should I respond? I should respond as a painter or a poet or a sculptor who is enamored and mesmerized by his or her creation but essentially, I should also be fully aware that my contribution to the creation is aesthetic. My rendering of the natural fold has no more or less intrinsic and unequivocal legitimacy or supremacy than any other

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rendering of the same natural fold. And, indeed, my rendering may have little relevance to the other, whom the fold has left untouched. In a world consisting of signs and sign systems vying for supremacy, the sacred encounter would then serve the purpose of reminding the human self of the utterly arbitrary and precarious nature of its semiotic bubble. Compared to all the semiotic clusters in and of nature, the self’s cluster has no absolute legitimacy with respect to the cluster of another self, or of a rock, or of an ant, or of a myth. The sacred—again whatever the aesthetic rendition may turn out to be—can be the goad that destabilizes my hardened semiotic cluster, thereby expanding the scope of my horizon to include what was previously foreclosed or unavailable to me. The ecstatic naturalist’s position is valuable for introducing levity into religious beliefs about the sacred. If only we interpreted our own religious beliefs less seriously we would produce far better renditions of the sacred, renditions that could stand along with a medley of other renditions, both similar to and different from our own. I would argue that the chief purpose of engaging the sacred is to open the self to what exceeds its limitations and prejudices, to what has been demonized, so as to encompass with compassion what initially appears opaque, dark, mysterious, threatening, and resistant. Simply put, if my god or gods restrict what I admit into my ken then I should not believe in that god or those gods. I should only admit the sacred through whose assistance I am enabled to develop a far more capacious metaphysics and a far more charitable interpretation or translation of what eludes me. In sum, the deity who lets me play with those who do not believe in it is a far better deity than one who does not. The deity who lets me represent it as a bull today, a sun tomorrow, and an ant the following day—and allows me to disbelieve in it with impunity—is a far better deity than one which insists that I paint it solely in this fashion. NOTES 1. Robert S. Corrington, Ecstatic Naturalism: Signs of the World, Advances in Semiotics (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994), 19. 2. Corrington, Ecstatic Naturalism, 29. 3. Corrington, Ecstatic Naturalism, 127. 4. For the concept of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel’s Absolute Spirit see his Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, One-Volume Edition: The Lectures of 1827, ed. Peter C. Hodgson, trans. R. F. Brown, P. C. Hodgson, and J. M. Stewart with the assistance of H. S. Harris (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2006). 5. Corrington, Ecstatic Naturalism, 108. 6. Corrington, Ecstatic Naturalism, 110–111. 7. Robert S. Corrington, “Naturalism, Measure, and the Ontological Difference,” The Southern Journal of Philosophy 23, no. 1 (1985): 30. 8. For the concept of the encompassing in Karl Jaspers see his The Perennial Scope of Philosophy, trans. Ralph Manheim (New York: Philosophical Library, 1949); Truth and Symbol from Von der Wahrheit, trans. Jean T. Wilde, William Kluback, and William

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Kimmel (New York: Twayne Publishers, 1959); and Philosophical Faith and Revelation, trans. E. B. Ashton, vol. 18, Religious Perspectives, ed. Ruth Nanda Anshen (New York: Harper and Row, 1967). 9. Robert S. Corrington, Nature and Spirit: An Essay in Ecstatic Naturalism (New York: Fordham University Press, 1992), 89. 10. Corrington, “Naturalism, Measure, and the Ontological Difference,” 29. 11. Robert S. Corrington, “Appendix: My Passage from Panentheism to Pantheism,” in Riding the Windhorse: Manic-Depressive Disorder and the Quest for Wholeness (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2003), 208. 12. Corrington, “Appendix: My Passage from Panentheism to Pantheism,” 208. 13. Robert S. Corrington, A Semiotic Theory of Theology and Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 109. 14. For Justus Buchler’s description of nature as “providingness” refer to his Metaphysics of Natural Complexes, ed. Kathleen Wallace and Armen Marsoobian with Robert S. Corrington, 2nd exp. ed. (Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990); and for Paul Tillich on God as the “ground of being” see his Systematic Theology, vol. 1 (Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1973). 15. Corrington, Semiotic Theory, 161. 16. Corrington, Nature and Spirit, 187. 17. Corrington, Nature and Spirit, 187. 18. Robert S. Corrington, Nature’s Religion (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1997), 2. 19. Corrington, Nature’s Religion, 10. 20. Corrington, Nature’s Religion, 10–11. 21. Julia Kristeva, Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection, trans. Leon S. Roudiez (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982). 22. I offer some brief remarks here on naturalism and iconoclasm. It is easy to label what the other has fashioned an “idol” to be smashed when what has been fashioned does not measure up to one’s own aesthetic, ethical, religious, or metaphysical standards. This sort of iconoclasm is surely to be avoided. The father of American naturalism, George Santayana, berates the iconoclasts in his Later Soliloquies, in Soliloquies in England and Later Soliloquies (Ann Arbor, MI: The University of Michigan Press, 1967): How blind is the zeal of the iconoclasts, and how profoundly hostile to religious impulse! They pour scorn upon eyes that see not and a mouth that cannot speak; they despise a work of art or of thought for being finished and motionless; as if the images of the retina were less idols than those of the sculptor, and as if words, of all things, were not conventional signs, grotesque counterfeits, dead messengers, like fallen leaves, from the dumb soul. Why should one art be contemptuous of the figurative language of another? Jehovah, who would suffer no statues, was himself a metaphor. (128) Like Santayana, Corrington admonishes the iconoclast. In a recent article entitled “Evolution, Religion, and an Ecstatic Naturalism,” American Journal of Theology and Philosophy 31, no. 2 (May 2010), Corrington argues for the superiority of art over religion. One of the reasons he provides for this superiority is that art is not iconoclastic: Unlike religion, art does not unleash the will-to-power; that is, the drive to overpower rebellious “insiders” and smash the “idols” of “outsiders.” Cromwell can smash Anglo-Catholic church art, Taliban fundamentalists can blow up ancient statues of the Buddha, iconoclasts can reek havoc across Russia, and religious zealots can picket art museums for exhibiting dung on the Virgin, but the arts themselves actually still the beast of manic will by gathering their interlocutors into a depth-momentum that conveys a radiant emptiness strangely entwined with fullness. (129)

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Corrington and Santayana are suspicious of iconoclasm for good reason. There is a tendency to violence in iconoclasm that should be acknowledged. Nevertheless, I believe that a serious commitment to naturalism does entail as its consequence a nonviolent form of iconoclasm. Santayana, who unequivocally rejects iconoclasm, also insists that all human renditions of the flux of nature (matter) are symbolic or aesthetic in character and therefore none has absolute legitimacy. Santayana has a keen sense of the sheer indebtedness of the human order to the natural conditions that exceed it. This sense of indebtedness to nature breeds, I would argue, iconoclasm. A robust naturalism inevitably destabilizes the metaphysical tendency to place in the honorific category one or more traits in opposition to all others. Naturalism produces a democratic metaphysics without kings or gods entirely severed from their subjects or creations. Naturalism reminds us that nothing is without relation to all other things, and that all things are indebted in one or more ways to some other things. Santayana insists that we are icon-producing beings, but he also acknowledges that our iconic productions are mere translations or interpretations of the nature that embeds, encompasses, and exceeds us. No icon has sovereign legitimacy. 23. For the question whether a naturalist can also be a pantheist see my article “American Naturalism on Pantheism,” American Journal of Theology and Philosophy 32, no. 2 (May 2011): 156–179. 24. A good introduction to George Santayana’s aesthetic understanding of religion can be found in his Interpretations of Poetry and Religion (London: Adam and Charles Black, 1900). 25. For Joseph Campbell’s view of religious beliefs as metaphors connotative of states of mind, see his Thou Art That: Transforming Religious Metaphor, ed. Eugene Kennedy (Novato, CA: New World Library, 2001). 26. Corrington, Nature’s Religion, 34. 27. Although it may appear shocking to the religious person, what we label “sacred” is arbitrary. The theist gives this label to a wholly other supernatural being who creates and therefore transcends nature without qualification; the pantheist gives this label to a wholly immanent power, force, spirit, mind, source, or origin of nature; the panentheist gives this label to a being that envelopes but also transcends nature; Corrington has given the label to natural complexes possessing a thick layer of meaning and power relevant to the human order; some psychologists such as William James and Carl Jung have given the label to whatever holds the place of honor and supremacy in the psyche; others such as Freud and Marx have given the label to some projection of the human psyche that dissimulates and escapes from reality. Many others could have been given, but the list here is sufficient to indicate the sheer arbitrariness of the label. It seems to me that the naturalist is or should be the most receptive to the notion that the sacred may be different for different people. What grips and shakes me to my core may certainly be partly or entirely different than what does the same for you. Perhaps this is why Santayana and Corrington insist that iconoclasm should be avoided. What may appear to me an idol to be crushed may be for you some sacred reality to be worshipped and desired. Therefore, the naturalist knows that the breaking of idols should be performed, if at all, within the ego against its own idols and not without the ego against the apparent idols of other egos. In the context of Corrington’s “sacred folds,” we should not be surprised to find Corrington arguing that these folds are both our projections and not our projections. They are our projections because we must experience these centers of great power and meaning through our own limitations and prejudices; but they are not our projections because these centers of power and meaning are complexes arising in and of nature; and, indeed, even our projections have their source in some larger natural context (for Corrington the projections of the human unconscious have their origin in the unconscious of nature). The sacred fold and our projections are all natural formations or complexes. I am natural after all. At least this is what the naturalist would argue from his or her perspective. 28. Corrington, “Evolution, Religion, and an Ecstatic Naturalism,” 124.

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29. Corrington, Nature’s Religion, 35. 30. Rudolf Otto, The Idea of the Holy: An Inquiry into the Non-Rational Factor in the Idea of the Divine and its Relation to the Rational, 2nd ed., trans. John W. Harvey (New York: Oxford University Press, 1950, paperback 1958).

REFERENCES Justus Buchler. Metaphysics of Natural Complexes. Second expanded edition with editor’s introduction and editor's endnotes. Co-edited with Kathleen Wallace and Armen Marsoobian. Albany: SUNY Press, 1989. Campbell, Joseph. Thou Art That: Transforming Religious Metaphor. Ed. Eugene Kennedy. Novato, CA: New World Library, 2001. Corrington, Robert S. “Naturalism, Measure, and the Ontological Difference,” The Southern Journal of Philosophy 23, no. 1 (1985). ———. Nature and Spirit: An Essay in Ecstatic Naturalism. New York: Fordham University Press, 1992. ———. Ecstatic Naturalism: Signs of the World. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994. ———. Nature’s Religion. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1997. ———. A Semiotic Theory of Theology and Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. ———. Riding the Windhorse: Manic-Depressive Disorder and the Quest for Wholeness. Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 2003. ———. “Evolution, Religion, and an Ecstatic Naturalism,” American Journal of Theology and Philosophy 31, no. 2 (May 2010). Hegel, Georg W. F. Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion, One-Volume Edition: The Lectures of 1827. Ed. Peter C. Hodgson. Trans. R. F. Brown, P. C. Hodgson, and J. M. Stewart with the assistance of H. S. Harris. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2006. Jaspers, Karl. The Perennial Scope of Philosophy. Trans. Ralph Manheim. New York: Philosophical Library, 1949. ———. Von der Wahrheit. Trans. Jean T. Wilde, William Kluback, and William Kimmel. New York: Twayne Publishers, 1959. ———. Philosophical Faith and Revelation. Trans. E. B. Ashton. Ed. Ruth Nanda Anshen. New York: Harper and Row, 1967. Kristeva, Julia. Powers of Horror: An Essay on Abjection. Trans. Leon S. Roudiez. New York: Columbia University Press, 1982. Otto, Rudolf. The Idea of the Holy: An Inquiry into the Non-Rational Factor in the Idea of the Divine and its Relation to the Rational. 2nd ed. Trans. John W. Harvey. New York: Oxford University Press, 1950. Santayana, George. Interpretations of Poetry and Religion. London: Adam and Charles Black, 1900. ———. Soliloquies in England and Later Soliloquies. Ann Arbor, MI: The University of Michigan Press, 1967. Tillich, Paul. Systematic Theology. Vol. 1. Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1973. Yalcin, Martin O. “American Naturalism on Pantheism,” American Journal of Theology and Philosophy 32, no. 2 (May 2011).

FOUR The Spirit of Robert S. Corrington’s Ecstatic Naturalism Wade A. Mitchell

INTRODUCTION: WHAT IS ECSTATIC NATURALISM? What is ecstatic naturalism and from where does it ultimately come? Without question, the Columbia School naturalists John Dewey and Justus Buchler are major influences from American philosophy for Corrington. But so are Ralph Waldo Emerson, Charles Sanders Peirce, George Santayana, Josiah Royce, and Alfred North Whitehead—not to mention formative influences from the disciplines of Continental philosophy, philosophical theology, the natural sciences, and psychoanalysis. The presence in ecstatic naturalism of such a wide-ranging cadre of thinking places Corrington’s work in a unique, albeit precarious, position. Corrington fully subscribes to what Michael Hogue sees as the “basic metaphysical commitment of naturalism,” namely, that “[f]or a naturalist, . . . anything in the universe . . . will be discovered to be part of nature. There is no going beneath or beyond nature to something that is qualitatively and ontologically different from, more than, or outside of nature.” 1 For Corrington, however, upholding this commitment does not demand that naturalism devolve into a brute physicalism. He noted recently that many naturalists “who do know better . . . register with some vexation that the reigning concept of naturalism has been flattened into a dullwitted colorless perspective that veers toward some kind of materialism.” 2 Naturalism, for Corrington, is never without color nor depth. In fact, ecstatic naturalism expends most of its expressive energy attempting to discern that which is “below” or “within” the various processes of 33

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nature—a nature which is invariably complex, deep, and dynamic. It is a naturalism that deviates from the letter of Hogue’s definition only. Corrington’s approach to nature is inexhaustibly preoccupied to affirm, and even to show, the ever-congealing, ever-condensing depth structures of the natural world. By being attuned to the hidden or elusive depth dimensions of nature, ecstatic naturalism will continue to offer a unique contribution of lasting value for all naturalist inquiries. 3 The impetus of this particular exploration into Corrington’s ecstatic naturalism centers on his use of the term “spirit” vis-à-vis “nature.” The present essay began as a pragmatic response to a number of questions concerning the basic character of “naturalism” itself. 4 Given the multidisciplinary character of Corrington’s work, could following the development of a single concept offer a way into ecstatic naturalism’s conceptual complexity? Recognizing that the perspective of ecstatic naturalism is both a certain kind of naturalism and a certain kind of philosophical theology as much as it is a philosophical naturalism, how might ecstatic naturalism’s relevance for either domain be clarified? It is my contention that because the concept of spirit is essential to Corrington’s ecstatic naturalism, these questions find answers if we trace the development of his “naturalized pneumatology”—a concept relevant for both philosophical naturalism and philosophical theology, and thus a concept which helps to introduce ecstatic naturalism as a philosophical theology in its own right. 5 What emerges from an analysis of Corrington’s naturalized pneumatology are three different pictures of the spirit; the specific attributes and activities of which are deeply connected with Corrington’s developing understanding of what nature is. Comprehending these various senses of spirit is therefore essential for understanding ecstatic naturalism as a philosophical naturalism and a philosophical theology. Corrington himself admits that “[f]ew topics have so inflamed philosophical and theological consciousness as that of the spirit.” 6 The word inflamed in this instance can refer to both the incendiary and the swollen. Pneumatologies abound in both theology and philosophy—charismatic, triumphant, prophetic, pluralistic—and too often the “spirit” is rolled out bloated, offering “little more than shop-worn antecedent categories that have minimal phenomenological and metaphysical warrant.” 7 Being attentive, then, to how ecstatic naturalism enlists the concept of spirit will serve two important purposes. First, it will function as one heuristic point of entry through which to engage the complex, evolving trajectory of Corrington’s perspective and second, it will offer an evocative portrayal of spirit, a particularly salient religious concept, from a naturalistic perspective. As will be shown, Corrington’s naturalized pneumatology remains within a pneumatological formula recognizable to Christian theology. That is, he affirms that the spirit issues forth from an ultimate source and that the spirit’s agency within the world is deeply constrained by

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whence it blows. But unlike traditional monotheisms, Corrington’s ultimate concern is nature itself, not God. Before delving directly into his deployments of the spirit, we should take a moment to familiarize ourselves with the particular stance Corrington takes toward nature. As the late Todd A. Driskill suggested, there are at least two essential keys to understanding Corrington’s naturalism. The first is to recognize the extent to which Corrington’s “mode of thought” relies upon the “ontological difference,” a Heideggerian insight that attempts to think a divide between “Being and a thing in being.” 8 Here Corrington applies the notion of ontological difference to nature itself with reference to the distinction between “nature naturing” and “nature natured.” This way of referring to nature has been explored within Western philosophy since at least the twelfth century. 9 For Corrington the ontological difference cleaves the two. He explains that, [w]ithin nature there is a fundamental divide that remains the most basic divide that can be experienced by thought. This divide is that between nature naturing (natura naturans) and nature natured (natura naturata). . . . Being faces the being-thing from across an abyss that can only be traversed, if at all, by a leap into another kind of thinking. Ecstatic naturalism reenacts this insight into the ontological difference but radicalizes and broadens it to open up the even more basic divide between the potencies of nature naturing and the attained and emerging orders of nature natured. 10

The ontological difference serves to establish two “locations” of inquiry, nature naturing and nature natured, within the one nature. Corrington presumes that by deeply attending to the dynamic interactions of nature natured and nature naturing one can be provided with phenomenological glimpses into how nature is “perennially creating itself out of itself alone.” 11 Through this framework, Corrington is also able to insist, like other naturalists, that “[n]ature is all that there is, i.e., there is no nonnatural realm,” 12 while still claiming that nature itself harbors a metaphysically fecund source of inexhaustible potentiality at its very heart. The ontological difference, therefore, operates strategically in Corrington’s naturalism to maintain nature’s own capacious, yet often hidden, ultimacy; no recourse to a supernatural creator or nonnatural realm becomes necessary. 13 Furthermore, recourse to the ontological difference bolsters ecstatic naturalism’s Buchlarian ordinal metaphysics and allows Corrington to call attention to those breaks and discontinuities that exist within nature. Against certain forms of process naturalism, ecstatic naturalism insists that while there are innumerable orders in nature, there is no superorder that would support a Whiteheadian doctrine of internal relations. Ecstatic naturalism, particularly in Corrington’s later writings, recognizes that fissures and fractures exist within the one nature that is all there is. These ruptures, consciously known or not, can be both creative

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or destructive, and often, if major evolutionary theories are to be believed, destructively creative. In this way, as one traces the arc of Corrington’s explorations of nature’s ontological divide, ecstatic naturalism inevitably takes on different appearances. Depending upon which text you read, Corrington’s naturalism can either confront you as predominantly threatening to the human process or as quite generous and provisioning. And, as has already been indicated, this range is related to the way the concept of spirit is depicted in each of Corrington’s books. Driskill’s second key to understanding Corrington’s naturalism follows from the first. Corrington’s reliance upon the ontological difference creates the conceptual framework necessary to enable one “to pursue and inquire into nature naturing.” 14 Ecstatic naturalism has benefited theologically from explorations into the manifest meanings and creative potentials of nature naturing. This is not to imply that Corrington becomes the kind of philosophical theologian who, according to Aquinas, merely equates God with natura naturans, 15 but, more radically, Corrington identifies how it is possible for god (or any of nature’s orders) to emerge from natura naturans as a fully natural being or event. Thus nature’s generative ground, natura naturans, takes on greater religious significance. Like Donald Crosby’s religious commitment to nature, Corrington’s nature can be religiously ultimate. This ultimacy is worthy of veneration and attention, according to Crosby, because nature “exhibits inexhaustible hiddenness” which “constitutes one of its important qualifications as an appropriate focus of faith. There is more than enough mystery in nature to satisfy the most sensitive, awe-attuned, deeply wondering, and acutely responsive religious inquirers.” 16 Corrington would agree, but unlike Crosby, Corrington’s approach to the mysteries of nature naturing is completely reliant upon an assumed natural reality of the unconscious. This means that the unknown in the natural environment is analogous to the unknown within ourselves. The implication here is that the inexhaustible natural depths may indeed be mysteries which are nonetheless amenable to certain kinds of human query in certain respects. Corrington avoids being dismissed as a religious mystagogue therefore because he affirms that ultimacy always has a natural referent. In ecstatic naturalism, the unconscious is an attribute and product of nature. Corrington attempts to avoid anthropocentrism by carefully unearthing the possibility that nature’s hidden reality can be more accurately approached through the concepts and dynamics posited by psychoanalysis. He repeatedly refers to nature’s “underconscious,” or to its “material maternal” source because “in certain carefully delineated cases, some use of an anthropomorphic bridge can be illuminating.” 17 In the end, Corrington’s predominant approach to nature naturing is apophatic. 18 Like Peircean “Firstness,” what natura naturans actually is cannot be said. “[N]ature naturing and ‘its’ constituents can only be caught out of the corner of the hermeneutic eye, a process I liken to seeing M31 (the

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Andromeda galaxy) from the side of the eye where the relevant rods and cones are thicker.” 19 It is because of the phenomenological glimpses of the workings of nature naturing that Corrington has stopped resorting to “God” language and why his naturalism, nonetheless, remains relevant to religious and theological inquiries. Suffice to say, his overall picture of an ecstatic nature elicits religious-like reverence and fear. Like Emerson, Corrington finds nature’s creative spawning worthy of praise. But like Schelling, he recognizes that nature’s depths can be a terrifying and unruly ground. What about the spirit? In his earlier texts, Corrington’s “Spirit” is Hegelian. It acts as a sustaining, even hopeful, unifying agent relieving the natural tensions created by the ontological divide. Through these articulations of spirit, nature appears less turbulent and more domesticated. However, when nature’s discontinuities shift into the foreground, as they do in Corrington’s later writings, the spirit is less triumphant within all orders, fragmented but still active in certain respects. This particular picture of the spirit, based upon a certain depiction of eros, allows for connection and relation, at least between a few orders of nature. In his more recent writings, the concept of spirit is pluralized, referred to only as “spirits.” According to Corrington, this pluralization not only wrests “the Spirit” away from its tribalistic religious appropriations but also accounts for the various ways that natural clearings emerge in ethical acts of compassion and during moments of communally transformative interpretation. 20 In all cases, the Spirit of ecstatic naturalism matters and always has an essential role to play. Let us now turn to an early expression of Corrington’s naturalized pneumatology so as to begin to trace out how nature relates to spirit within ecstatic naturalism. In Nature and Spirit: An Essay in Ecstatic Naturalism the portrayal of nature’s ontological divide is the least pronounced while the Spirit is most beneficial to the world. NATURE AND SPIRIT (1992) The tone of Corrington’s first monograph on ecstatic naturalism is anticipated by the painting which appears on the book’s cover. Clouds over the Riesengebirge c. 1821-22 by Casper David Friedrich depicts an expansive Hamburg valley intermittently glimpsed beneath sweeps of a clouding German sky. Very much like Corrington’s text, an image of nature is cast from the relative safety of an adjacent rise thereby achieving a slightly ominous yet nonetheless romantic homage to its subject. 21 When Corrington later reflected on Nature and Spirit, he understood how it “struggled toward a post-monotheistic understanding of the one nature and its innumerable orders.” 22 In this text, Corrington’s pneumatology largely establishes nature’s oneness. “The unity within nature, a part of nature itself, comes from the ever-protean spirit that lives as the bond for the

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innumerable orders of the world.” 23 Here Corrington’s Emersonian influences are obvious and yet, theologically he remains largely indebted to a Whiteheadian process panentheism. Unlike his later writings, Corrington’s Nature and Spirit posits an open-ended Tillichian God that is “ontologically unique in being both a complex within nature and the ground for the sheer prevalence of all complexes.” 24 As Corrington would later offer as a self-criticism, his thinking stays too “closely related to the forms of twentieth-century panentheism . . . to truly reflect the depth-categories of nature naturing and nature natured.” 25 The issue for critical readers of Nature and Spirit is Corrington’s attempt to straddle the line between affirming “that there is no supernatural realm, while also acknowledging that there are places within nature where something like the divine operates.” 26 His attempt dissatisfies both naturalists and theologians for different reasons. The naturalist critics of Nature and Spirit accuse Corrington of “sell[ing] naturalism to the religionists” because he “affirm[ed] the view that nature has room for an ontologically thick spirit.” While theological critics held that Corrington is “only a halfway process thinker” severely limited by an “antiquated naturalism.” 27 Corrington’s pneumatology, by identifying an ontologically thick spirit, evokes a robust agency operative in the world, an agency that is “in all orders, even though [it is] not an order itself.” 28 Spirit, nature, and God exist in a dynamic where each is related to the other. As Corrington writes, “God is . . . the ‘place’ where Nature and Spirit become open to each other,” and the [s]pirit gives of itself to create and sustain worldhood and the divine natures. God lives out of the eternal self-giving of spirit that wills to become finite, to become the innumerable orders of the world. Nature in its naturing is the birthing ground of all complexes, divine or otherwise. 29

Notice here that nature naturing is understood as the source which births all complexes in a dynamic “forward-moving” push. This push, perhaps better characterized as a gentler Heideggerian thrownness into life, may also be understood as an “ejective” momentum. Interestingly, there is no lamenting our origins, no birth trauma to seriously indict nature’s benevolent provisioning—its own creating processes—because the “ejective power is part of the life of the spirit.” 30 That is, the spirit acts to quell any spawning tensions emergent from the creative act found “between” nature natured and nature naturing. 31 Corrington’s Spirit is doing considerable work in Nature and Spirit, but the theological picture is confusing. As the Spirit is increasingly intimate with the ways of nature, “God” remains in the picture, albeit limited in scope compared to nature’s own horizon of meanings throughout the world. Ecstatic naturalism wants to interpret every event in life, e.g., individuation, transformation, and (divine) manifestation, as occurring

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within the conditions of an evolving natural process. 32 However, arguing for nature’s own self-sufficient generativity is hampered in this text by an incomplete, unconvincing God-talk. It prompts Robert Cummings Neville to ask: “Why not worship nature naturing . . . and eliminate middling gods?” 33 In Nature and Spirit Corrington answers that [n]ature prevails as the constant and open-ended availability of complexes and horizons. It is neither the “sum” of all complexes nor the horizon of horizons that would govern all finite horizons. Rather, it sustains and cancels that which is of lesser scope than itself. Nature has no contour or shape. As such, it is the ultimate clearing within which contours may emerge. That which is without contour is the enabling condition for the sheer proliferation of contours, whether they be human perspectives or the “more” that surrounds given complexes. 34

The image of nature taking shape in this book begins as a generic affirmation that nature is a pervading “location” which allows for God(s) to emerge in instances of gathering and decline; perhaps even for the emergences and passing of the gods. These lines imply that natural contours, encompassing both human processes and aspects of the divine, are selfregulating. But they are also, “ultimate,” and thus worthy of religious significance. For Corrington, in this work, nature is becoming his god, but not yet. His panentheism still reserves a place for God in the picture. Corrington’s Nature and Spirit is, therefore, both a theological “high point” after which his articulations of the Spirit and of the divine move away from process panentheism, and also his least developed naturalism after which he peers more directly into the depths of nature. The result of this perspectival reemphasis is Nature’s Religion, a text to which we now turn. NATURE’S RELIGION (1997) It is perhaps fitting that Nature’s Religion is without pictorial cover art. The book opens with this admonishment: Our pictures of nature are too small while our pictures of the sacred are too large in some respects and too small in others. . . . In the end, we only perceive a small dimension of the utter vastness of nature, combined with a provincial, and often self-serving, portrait of a divine power that is in all respects superior to its product. 35

Like Nature and Spirit, Nature’s Religion is concerned with the “one nature” and its innumerable orders, but with an important difference. Encouraged by his critics, Corrington now recognizes how ecstatic naturalism does not need a “third being of unlimited scope,” neither a “middling” god nor a robust spirit. 36 Nature’s Religion, therefore, is a purer expression of Corrington’s naturalism. That is, it is more internally con-

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sistent with his own basic categorial framework of nature natured and nature naturing. Jerome Stone refers to this text as a “capstone” of Corrington’s “religious outlook.” 37 I cannot completely agree with Stone, particularly in light of the recent developments in Corrington’s naturalized pneumatology, but Nature’s Religion is a significant improvement from the perspective of religious naturalism. In this work, Corrington remains more faithful to nature’s ultimacy. He finds it capacious enough to relinquish most lingering antecedent theological commitments and heaving enough to accommodate his phenomenological appreciation of the depth structures of nature naturing. The “God” of Nature and Spirit is now simply referred to as the “sacred” (to capture the intermingling of reverence and fear as in Rudolf Otto’s notion of the mysterium tremendum), and nature itself becomes an ultimate because the “sacred . . . cannot penetrate into or exhaust the richness of the potencies of nature; they remain forever beyond reach.” 38 Whereas traditional theology has proclaimed that the ultimate is unreachable because of its transcendent “height,” ecstatic naturalism, in this book, maintains that ultimacy is beyond reach because of its inexhaustible depth. Corringtion’s notion of ultimacy, then, should be recognized as a provocative inversion—a pronounced reverence and fear not for that which resides transcendently above but for that which resides descendently below. This is an important move. It marks Corrington’s turn toward a deep pantheism—an evocative approach to nature in terms analogous to the dynamics of the human psyche as described by depth psychology. Corrington’s diving down, therefore, amounts to a diving in. Like unconscious itself there are many ways in which the unruly ground can appear in personal and communal life, each of which is directly tied to some unconscious projection that sees the unfragmented ground as something. Since this is an inevitable state of affairs, it makes no sense to bemoan the fact, but to come to terms with its depth logic, and thereby gains some access to its mysterious presence/absence outside of the most intense currents of the transference field. 39

Such a grounding funds nature with an unpredictable mesh of projective excess, called “folds,” that are punctuated in Corrington’s ecstatic naturalism by uneven contrasts of relative decompression, called “intervals.” In dialectical tension, these interconnected momenta of nature’s sacred typography can either be creative or destructive within certain orders of nature. Tillich’s relatively stable ultimate ground of being is replaced by Schelling’s “unruly ground” as the pervading aspect of nature in Corrington’s Nature’s Religion. Positively, nature’s sacred contours, pictured through the fold/interval dynamic, provide the “locations” that may become religiously significant. These sites of meaning can be understood

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either as a “gathering together” or as an “opening out” of the individual or communal semiotic processes; perhaps even establishing interpretive spaces that allow for new relational clearings or interactions. 40 These potentials are tentative hopes, “proof” that the Spirit’s eros is at work. The “spirit of the sacred will be able to work in and through some orders to bring them closer to transparency and a new kind of power,” but “this process is limited by the sheer resistant otherness of many aspects of the world.” 41 When compared to the tone of Nature and Spirit, Corrington’s phenomenological renderings of the unruly ground in Nature’s Religion consistently challenge our pictures of nature as not only “too small” but as too safe. 42 In stark opposition to descriptions of nature naturing as the birthing source of it all from Nature and Spirit, in Nature’s Religion “such a highly romantic perspective” envisioning “nature as the great nurturing mother, always ready to enfold the wayward foundling in the great web of being” conveniently forgets “that the image of the web is derived from a creature that uses it primarily as a finely-turned killing machine.” 43 By taking exception with the metaphor of the “web,” an honorific description of ultimacy, Corrington echoes reservations expressed by another religious naturalist, Bernard Loomer. “Why call this interconnected web of existence ‘God’? Why not simply refer to the world?” 44 Both thinkers are rejecting a Whiteheadian inspired process naturalism which places God in a position pervasively relevant to the all of nature’s orders. Corrington’s fatalistic, some would argue more realistic, description of nature as both source and destroyer of life is meant as an antidote to “most panentheistic frameworks” that “create a picture of the sacred that will smooth out the edges of nature and the irrational and surging powers of the potencies.” 45 Ecstatic naturalism, as it emerges in this book, is determined not to cover over “the utter indifference of nature” or to make “the sacred palatable” merely to fulfill our “narcissistic longing.” 46 In the end, Nature’s Religion affirms natural ruptures, invokes tragedy, undercuts benevolence from ultimacy, and likens the work of the spirit to an erotic longing with only limited relational scope. There are three reasons why Nature’s Religion describes its pneumatology in erotic terms, despite its tragic outlook. First, affirmations of the spirit in world religions have lacked conceptual clarity. That is, “the Spirit” has been exclusively bound to certain faiths and used robustly without qualification to name how it is that their deity can be seen as an historically potent agent in the world. But perhaps, according to Corrington, “[w]ithin the heart of Western monotheism is a universalist momentum that may emerge from a defensive and constricted position to overcome the demonic temptations of origin and tribe. Is the movement toward universalism, both in theory and in practice, the work of the spirit?” 47 He demurs in answering, but hints at the prospects of his pneumatological proposal. Corrington names the historical abjection that “eros”

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has received in most religions and claims that a pneumatology coming from such a “defensive and constricted position” is “not only possible, but compelling.” 48 The second reason for an erotic spirit, then, is to reenact a concept that has been drastically slighted by monotheistic faiths, perhaps because its power is both deeply intuited and non-tribally grounded. The third reason for a pneumatology based on eros is that such a longing is entirely natural. Contrary to the Christian concept of agape whose notion of relationality idealizes the vertical, “eros can be freed for its proper horizontal role, a role which also includes a powerful movement toward the depth-structures of the world.” 49 In other words, Corrington argues that the “spirit belongs to nature, not to Christianity.” 50 For Corrington, the spirit’s eros allows for two important possibilities. First, it moves nature’s orders “toward conjunction, disjunction (where required), and the enhancement of meaning.” 51 And second, it begins to initiate the movement of “unconscious material into consciousness.” 52 In this way, the naturalized erotic spirit is unlike the robust spirt of Corrington’s earlier work because it is “splintered in its operations by the orders of the world, yet [the spirit] gathers itself up form its imposed estrangement.” 53 In the end, the erotic spirit compels some connections, horizontally and “descendently,” even if these sacred activities cannot drastically blunt the sharp edges of an indifferent, divided nature. In his foreword to Corrington’s book Nature’s Religion, Robert Neville rejects the absolute diremption in nature and its existential implications. Neville writes that “Corrington runs too fast metaphysically when he thinks he can insert a gulf between nature naturing and nature natured. That simply cannot be conceived.” 54 This quickly leads to a “more profound” phenomenological difference for Neville. He writes that Corrington’s “last word” is “sadness,” and he “goes beyond calling nature brutal,” he “calls it cruel.” Neville admits that we experience nature as cruel when it “frustrates our wishful projections,” but ultimately, “[n]ature’s ground is never far from us but always hold us.” 55 If the picture of nature in Nature’s Religion strikes one as too harsh, then A Semiotic Theory of Theology and Philosophy begins to slowly repaint a nature teeming with spirits. In this book, Corrington’s ecstatic naturalism is unfurled with recourse to a vast array of philosophical, theological, and psychological meanings and applications. The ontological difference, though not erased, becomes like a wound around which to be extremely sensitive but not perpetually frightened. In this book, Corrington’s spirit multiplies and the spirits, in certain respects, begin to initiate some healing processes within a perennially divisive nature.

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A SEMIOTIC THEORY OF THEOLOGY AND PHILOSOPHY (2000) The cover image of A Semiotic Theory of Theology and Philosophy is aesthetically open, simultaneously a womb, wound, bloom, or the rippling heart of some form of life. Like the content of the book itself, it is a comprehensive offering. In this work, Corrington is not only after a certain conceptual rigor—often by being pneumatologically apophatic—but also seeks a perspectival conciliation for the sake of its social benefits. He admits that “[e]cstatic naturalism has struggled to find a conception of spirit that would satisfy the genuine concerns of more traditional forms of naturalism . . . while also honoring what various religious traditions have come to recognize regarding the how of spirit.” 56 Coming to offer an illuminating middle position, then, necessitates a series of pneumatological negations. Corrington writes that the spirit is not a person, not omnipotent, not omnipresent, not a body of signs ready to be decoded, and is not a reality that existed prior to the other orders of the world (hence anything like the Christian notion of the immanent trinity is rejected). 57

The intention of this deconstructive move is to create an opening for an alternative understanding of the spirit. Corrington therefore asserts that the spirit is finite, plurally located, a field phenomenon that exists in the between, relevant to semiosis but not part of a sign series per se, concerned about the human process in a way that nature simply cannot be, and a necessary but not sufficient condition for healthy personal and social life. 58

These lines are a summation of sorts. They capture much of the current spirit of Corrington’s naturalized pneumatology. Embedded within this particular book is a concern to emphasize how the spirit relates to ethics. Corrington asks the question directly: “How does the current perspective use the concept of spirit to understand the foundation of ethics and communal transformation?” 59 To be clear, Corrington’s question does not imply that the spirit can be the foundation of ethics and communal transformation, but that the spirit can be shown to participate within movements toward a healthy personal and social life. Here Corrington asserts that the spirit exhibits an ethically efficacious “dual locatedness.” That is, the spirit is “within the nature that eclipses it” and “outside of the churning underconscious of the world.” 60 By inverting the Christian phrase “of the world but not in the world,” Corrington investigates where in the world the spirit may be known. 61 The spirit’s where, and its beneficial how, within an often hostile natural environment are pronounced concerns in Corrington’s ecstatic naturalism. Corrington therefore takes a calculated risk in explicating the lo-

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cation/s of the spirit. Spatial predicates may not be appropriate for such an elusive aspect of nature, but Corrington, nonetheless, hedges his bets by resorting to a notion of “‘betweenness,’ where the stress is on the interstices that are found between and among more ‘solid’ orders of the world.” 62 In this way, the spirit cannot be given “more solidity than is warranted” while still being “bound . . . where it has some form of relevance to other, nonspiritual orders.” 63 With respect to its relevance to certain orders of nature, the how that often appears most beneficial to the world is the spirit’s “clearing” function, particularly with respect to “those projections that emerge from unconscious complexes” within nature. 64 By way of illustrating how and where the spirit enacts this kind of clearing function—advantageous because of its betweenness among orders of nature—Corrington creates an example. Suppose we assume a “congregational-style church” attempting to conduct an “anti-racism campaign.” 65 In such a communal event, the activity of the spirit is integral for two reasons, according to Corrington. First, the spirit can be understood as that phenomenon which “opens out” communal abjections, manifest in this example as an “historical blindness” to the “structures of racism that have given these members economic freedom and intellectual license.” 66 This opening, or clarifying insight, is made possible because the spirit provides a “kind of penumbra around the projection that pulls it outward by a vacuum-like momentum” making it more transparent, “thinner.” 67 With communal projections thus diminished, its group’s abjected racial superiority is potentially brought closer to the surface. The reason the movement of the spirit is needed in this type of campaign “has to do with the kind of inertia found in psychosemiotic structures.” This “inertia” tends toward uninterrupted meaning-making schemes that are unable to accommodate “painful” intrusions “on selfunderstanding.” 68 Rational arguments alone can rarely circumvent these structures and may actually make them stronger. The first movement of the spirit is necessary, then, because it allows for a clarifying “search light” to be turned “inward to acknowledge the ways in which racism marks the very empowerment structures that the community has taken for granted, perhaps for centuries.” 69 What Corrington is naming here is the energy the spirit possess to assist individual selves through the selving process. Inductively, the spirit’s participation is said to have occurred when a self begins to integrate is own painful self-realizations. Such integrations are necessary preconditions for compassionate responses to the pain of others. This second movement of the spirit works to open up the self to new interactions with other selves. Taking a cue from Tillich, Corrington maintains that the spirit can be said to “infuse” the community with “ontological and moral courage . . . so that it can take on emancipatory energies” 70 in the form of social action. In the case of anti-racist actions, individual empathy for the historically abjected other may be-

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come communally transformative. That is, “the spirit compels the self, via the sense of parity, to take the individuation of other selves seriously.” 71 The spirit’s second kind of participation in the situation, then, pulls the community toward actions of increased reciprocity with its previously abjected neighbors. This illustration attempts to offer an explication of an ethically relevant, yet completely natural pneumatology; that is, in ecstatic naturalism, accounting for the transformations of selves and communities does not necessarily demand recourse to a spiritual ultimacy that comes from outside of the orders of nature. Corrington invites us to consider that such transformative growth can occur in our world (although not as frequently as we would hope) and that it is enacted by nature’s ecstatic spirit. However, this interpretive possibility is often obstructed because the concept of spirit, particularly the “so-called Christian spirit,” has been “tribalized for so long that it is unclear if it can ever escape its captivity to this tradition with its various forms of manifest destiny.” 72 It is because of this captivity that Corrington pluralizes the spirit—a move that “immediately evokes a strong sense of resistance, or even downright abjection.” 73 But, Corrington asks, could this rejection actually mask a deeper unconscious acknowledgment that “the spirit cannot be supernatural, especially since it always seems to operate under fully natural conditions that thwart its momentum?” In other words, isn’t it true that we tacitly acknowledge a plurality of spirit whenever we claim “that not all manifestations of ‘the’ spirit move in the same direction or have the same moral force?” 74 Corrington’s ultimate response to these questions comes from his particular understanding of nature. Because ecstatic naturalism portrays the one nature—as natura naturans and natura naturata—blooming with a plurality of partially related orders or complexes, then the spirit, efficacious within all orders of nature but not everywhere and in the same way, should be considered naturally plural. Corrington’s naturalized pneumatology affirms plurality and phenomenologically discerns the spirits wherever and however they may be. A religiously tribal pneumatology has held the spirits captive by presuming that there is just the one “Spirit.” For Corrington, this kind of pneumatology has said far too much for far too long. 75 Somewhat paradoxically then, his multiplication of the spirit into the spirits actually says much less than what many contemporary liberal theologies may want to. In this way, he actually follows Emerson’s belief that “[o]f that ineffable essence which we call Spirit, he that thinks most, will say least.” 76 The challenge of ecstatic naturalism is to therefore think pneumatology “in small units”; that is, to seek a more honed and grounded attention to all of nature’s spirits and to attend to them in a mostly silent and reverent, yet speculative and open mode. The spirit of ecstatic naturalism tells us to look more closely at what is in front of us, and to be more responsive to the “pulsations that emerge before

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and within [us] as [we] endlessly walk among the quotidian organic invitations” of nature’s ultimacy. 77 For Corrington, nature’s depth dimensions are of ultimate concern. Nature, like the unconscious itself, is mysteriously replete with meaning enough. Its naturing potencies may swallow, or house, all our spirits. And its orders are just too discontinuous to accommodate only one movement of the spirit.

NOTES 1. Michael S. Hogue, The Promise of Religious Naturalism (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 2010), 52. 2. Robert S. Corrington, ”Evolution, Religion, and an Ecstatic Naturalism,” American Journal of Theology and Philosophy 31, no. 2 (2010): 124-135. 3. According to Wesley Wildman, whose own multidisciplinary expression of naturalism he calls religious, the primary upshot of Corrington’s “ecstatic” perspective is to “point out the limitation of the value-averse, spiritually flat, and metaphysically naive kinds of materialism that sometimes pass under the banner of ‘naturalism.’” Science and Religious Anthropology: A Spiritually Evocative Naturalist Interpretation of Human Life (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2009), 21. Corrington’s use or what he calls “emancipatory reenactment,” of the term “ecstasy” can be linked to both Emerson and Tilllich. See Ralph Waldo Emerson, “The Method of Nature” in Essays: First and Second Series with an introduction by Douglas Crase. 1st Library of America paperback classic ed. (New York: Library of America: Distributed to the trade in the United States by Penguin Group [USA], 2010), 115-132 and Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology Volume III: Life and the Spirit, History, and the Kingdom of God (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963), 111-161. For an early, informative use of Corrington’s description and employment of the term “reenactment” see Corrington, “The Emancipation of American Philosophy,” APA Newsletter: Blacks in Philosophy 90, no. 3 (1991): 23-26 with a reply by Cornel West. 4. For a broader understanding of “naturalism,” see Arthur C. Danto, “Naturalism,” in The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Paul Edwards (New York: Macmillan, 1967); Rem Edwards, Reason in Religion: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Religion (New York: Harcourt, 1972); Charley D. Hardwick, Events of Grace: Naturalism, Existentialism and Theology (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996); Owen Flanagan, “Varieties of Naturalism,” in The Oxford Handbook of Religion and Science, ed. Philip Clayton and Zachary Simpson (New York: Oxford University Press, 2006); Wildman, Science and Religious Anthropology, 19-32; and the inaugural issue of Philosophy, Theology, and the Sciences on “Naturalism” Vol. 1. no. 1 March, 2014. For a general taxonomy of naturalism see Jerome A. Stone, Religious Naturalism Today: The Rebirth of a Forgotten Alternative (New York: SUNY Press, 2008); John Deely, “Foreword: Natura naturans and Natura naturata,” in Robert Corrington, Ecstatic Naturalism: Signs of the World (Indianapolis: University of Indiana Press, 1994) and Robert Corrington, A Semiotic Theory of Theology and Philosophy (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 22-31. 5. Robert S. Corrington, “My Passage from Panentheism to Pantheism,” American Journal of Theology and Philosophy 23, no. 2 (2002): 129-153. 6. Robert S. Corrington, Nature’s Religion (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 1997), 140. See also Robert Corrington, Nature’s Sublime: An Essay in Aesthetic Naturalism (Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2013), 126. 7. Corrington, Nature’s Religion, 137 8. Todd A. Driskill, “Beyond the Text: Ecstatic Naturalism and American Pragmatism,” American Journal of Theology and Philosophy 15, no. 3 (1994): 305-325. Corrington, A Semiotic Theory, 7. See also Corrington, Nature’s Religion, 3. See Martin Heidegger,

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Being and Time. trans. John Macquarrie, and Edward Robinson (New York: Harper and Row, 1962). 9. Donald A. Crosby, Living With Ambiguity: Religious Naturalism and the Menace of Evil (New York: SUNY Press, 2008), 6-7. and Deely, “Foreword,” vii-viii. 10. Corrington, Nature’s Religion, 3. 11. Corrington, “Evolution, Religion, and an Ecstatic Naturalism,” 124. 12. Ibid. 13. Neville rightly points out that naturalism no longer needs to define itself in opposition to supernaturalism. See “Comments on Nature’s Religion,” 256-257. 14. Driskill, “Beyond the Text,” 320. Driskill argues that Corrington’s understanding of nature naturing is closely aligned with C.S. Peirce’s category of “firstness.” See Corrington’s, Nature and Spirit: An Essay in Ecstatic Naturalism (New York: Fordham University Press, 1992), 139; also Corrington, An Introduction to C.S. Peirce: Philosopher, Semiotician, and Ecstatic Naturalist (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 1993), 117-164; 205-217, and Leon Niemoczynski, Charles Sanders Peirce and a Religious Metaphysics of Nature (Lanham: Lexington Books, 2011). 15. Deely, “Foreword,” vii. 16. Crosby, Living With Ambiguity, 56. 17. Corrington, Nature’s Religion, 137. 18. Apophasis, as it is used here, refers to a discursive practice of negation, or unsaying, whereby any statement about, or any image of, “God” or “Spirit” or “Nature” is revealed to be an insufficient encapsulation of the Ultimacy in question. 19. Corrington, “Response,” 268. 20. Corrington, Nature’s Sublime, 126-128. 21. Friedrich’s painting, sometimes referred to as Drifting Clouds currently hangs at the Hamburger Kunsthalle in Hamburg, Germany. On the ambiguity of Friedrich’s landscapes see Joseph Leo Koerner, Caspar David Friedrich and the Subject of Landscape, 2nd edition, (London: Reaktion Books, 2009) especially Part III “The Halted Traveller,” 149-178. 22. Corrington, “My Passage,” 134. 23. Corrington, Nature and Spirit, xii. 24. Ibid., 162. 25. Corrington, “My Passage,” 133. 26. Ibid., 134. 27. Ibid., 131. 28. Corrington, Nature and Spirit, 127. 29. Ibid., 36. 30. Ibid., 139. 31. Ibid., 141. 32. For an extended treatment of how Corrington relates natural processes, spirit, and individuation see Nature and Spirit, 40-82 and Robert Corrington, Nature’s Self: Our Journey from Origin to Spirit (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1996). For further discussion of how spirit interacts within communal processes see Nature and Spirit. 83119 and Robert Corrington, The Community of Interpreters: On the Hermeneutics of Nature and the Bible in the American Philosophical Tradition (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1987). 33. Robert Cummings Neville, “Review of Nature and Spirit by Robert S. Corrington,” International Philosophical Quarterly 34, no. 4 (1994): 504-505. 34. Corrington, Nature and Spirit, 30. 35. Corrington, Nature’s Religion, 1. 36. Ibid., xvii. 37. Jerome Stone, Religious Naturalism Today, 211-219. This book contains a very good discussion of Nature’s Religion. However, Stone’s comment that this text is the culminating work of Corrington’s religious naturalism has to be questioned in light of Corrington’s A Semiotic Theory, a text Stone doesn't engage. 38. Corrington, Nature’s Religion, 12.

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39. Ibid., 106. 40. Ibid., 96. 41. Ibid., 10. 42. Ibid., 1. 43. Ibid., 97. 44. Extrapolated by Stone in Religious Naturalism Today, quoting Loomer’s The Size of God. For a contrasting position of the “web” from a recent process theological perspective, see Catherine Keller, From a Broken Web: Separation, Sexism, and Self (Boston: Beacon Press, 1986). 45. Corrington, Nature’s Religion, 8 46. Ibid. 47. Ibid., 21. 48. Ibid., 137. 49. Ibid., 137. 50. Ibid., 160. 51. Ibid. 52. Ibid., 162. 53. Ibid., 155. 54. Ibid., xiv. 55. Ibid., xv. 56. Corrington, A Semiotic Theory, 216. 57. Ibid., 212. 58. Ibid. 59. Ibid., 212. 60. Ibid., 164. 61. Ibid., 218. 62. Ibid., 164. 63. Ibid., 165. 64. Ibid. 65. Ibid., 212. 66. Ibid. 67. Ibid., 165. 68. Ibid., 212. 69. Ibid., 213. 70. Ibid., 214. 71. Ibid., 215. 72. Ibid., 218. 73. Ibid., 217. 74. Ibid., 216-217. 75. Ibid., 166. 76. Emerson, Essays: First and Second Series, 40. 77. Corrington, “American Transcendentalism's Erotic Aquatecture” in Toward a Theology of Eros: Transfiguring Passion at the Limits of Discipline. eds. Virginia Burrus and Catherine Keller (New York: Fordham University Press, 2006), 224.

REFERENCES Corrington, Robert S. The Community of Interpreters: On the Hermeneutics of Nature and the Bible in the American Philosophical Tradition. Macon: Mercer University Press, 1987. ———. “The Emancipation of American Philosophy,” APA Newsletter: Blacks in Philosophy 90, no. 3 (1991). ———. Nature and Spirit: An Essay in Ecstatic Naturalism. New York: Fordham University Press, 1992.

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———. An Introduction to C.S. Peirce: Philosopher, Semiotician, and Ecstatic Naturalist. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1993. ———. Ecstatic Naturalism: Signs of the World. Indianapolis: University of Indiana Press, 1994. ———. Nature's Self: Our Journey from Origin to Spirit. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1996. ———. Nature's Religion. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1997. ———. A Semiotic Theory of Theology and Philosophy. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000. ———. “My Passage from Panentheism to Pantheism,” American Journal of Theology and Philosophy 23, no. 2 (2002). ———. “My Passage from Panentheism to Pantheism,” American Journal of Theology and Philosophy 23, no. 2 (2002). ———.”American Transcendentalism's Erotic Aquatecture,” Toward a Theology of Eros: Transfiguring Passion at the Limits of Discipline. Eds. Virginia Burrus and Catherine Keller. New York: Fordham University Press, 2006. ———.”Evolution, Religion, and an Ecstatic Naturalism,” American Journal of Theology and Philosophy 31, no. 2 (2010). ———. Nature’s Sublime: An Essay in Aesthetic Naturalism. Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2013. Crosby, Donald A. Living with Ambiguity: Religious Naturalism and the Menace of Evil. New York: SUNY Press, 2008. Driskill, Todd A. “Beyond the Text: Ecstatic Naturalism and American Pragmatism,” American Journal of Theology and Philosophy 15. No. 3 (1994). Emerson, Ralph Waldo. Essays: First and Second Series. (Library of America Paperback Classics). New York: Library of America, 2010. Hogue, Michael S. The Promise of Religious Naturalism. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2010. Keller, Catherine. From a Broken Web: Separation, Sexism, and Self. Boston: Beacon Press, 1986. Koerner, Joseph L. Caspar David Friedrich and the Subject of Landscape. Second edition. London: Reaktion Books, 2009. Neville, Robert Cummings. “Review of Robert S. Corrington’s Nature and Spirit,” International Philosophical Quarterly 34, no. 4 (1994). Niemoczynski, Leon. Charles Sanders Peirce and a Religious Metaphysics of Nature. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2011. Stone, Jerome A. Religious Naturalism Today: The Rebirth of a Forgotten Alternative. New York: SUNY Press, 2008. Tillich, Paul. Systematic Theology Volume III: Life and the Spirit, History, and the Kingdom of God. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963. Wildman, Wesley. Science and Religious Anthropology: A Spiritually Evocative Naturalist Interpretation of Human Life. Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2009.

FIVE Nature’s Primal Self A Critique of Peirce’s Semiotic Self and Jaspers’ Existenz Nam T. Nguyen

“The human process is not so much a level within nature as a dimension of nature. The human self is only one semiotic order within innumerable other orders.” —Robert S. Corrington 1

A GENERAL ASSESSMENT In this chapter I examine Peirce’s category of Firstness as it relates to the formation of the self (via the unconscious, thus the “semiotic self”) and Jaspers’ notion of reflective consciousness as it relates to the formation of the self in existential terms (thus the existential concept of human being, “Existenz”). Specifically, I will attempt to show that nature’s “primal self”—a self that is postulated by Robert S. Corrington’s ecstatic naturalism—is a viable alternative to both Peirce’s semiotic self and Jaspers’ Existenz. Because Peirce and Jaspers have anthropocentrically and anthropomorphically written and privileged the self so large on the canvas of nature, their understanding of nature’s primal self and the self-transcending powers of nature (nature naturing) has become deprivileged; in short, the human has taken place over the natural within each of their metaphysics. While Peirce’s semiotic pragmaticism and Jaspers’ existential anthropology have overlooked the dialectical and dynamic tension between nature natured (natura naturata) and nature naturing (natura natu51

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rans), the distinction of the ontological difference, the philosophical-theological perspective of ecstatic naturalism, on the other hand, honors the principle of ontological parity (Buchler) as it probes more deeply into the pre-semiotic mysteries of a self-fissuring nature. Not only does ecstatic naturalism metaphysically attempt to explore the realm of nature natured (the categorial) or what Dewey called “generic traits of existence,” it also probes deeply into the realm of nature naturing (the precategorial). 2 In order to probe deeply into the ubiquity of nature, the pre-semiotic and pre-formal realm of nature naturing or the underconscious of nature, ecstatic naturalism’s a semiotic cosmology is required to merge itself in the other two disciplines: semiotics and metaphysics. For Corrington, the discipline of semiotics is “primarily concerned with the structure and dynamics of significations as manifest in any order whatsoever.” 3 The discipline of semiotics helps ecstatic naturalism not only to describe systematically cultural or natural forms of signification, but also to understand how signs or sign-using selves function within a particular order of relevance. Unlike metaphysics, since the semiotic is in and of nature, it has nothing to state about nature as a whole. The discipline of metaphysics (in contrast to semiotics) is “concerned with a slightly large use of the categories to evoke, describe, and show the innumerable ties between signification and nature.” 4 The discipline of metaphysics is evoked when it not only probes into the precategorial or semiotic features of nature, but also brings forth the elusive dimension of worldhood 5 (the pregenus of any world), semiotic or not. THE SELF IN PEIRCE, JASPERS, AND CORRINGTON Ecstatic naturalism’s primal self can only attain its true identity by acknowledging itself as both a “gift” and “ontological wound” of nature’s self-fissuring: nature natured (the categorial) and nature naturing (the precategorial). The self is “eject” or a product of the pre-formal potencies of nature naturing; it is spawned from the “material maternal” (Kristeva). The term “primal self” implies the metaphysical notion that the self was birthed by the other side of nature (nature naturing). Nature naturing is not conditioned by the principle of entropy. As a result, the primal self will forever be fissured by the ontological difference of nature natured and nature naturing. Nature is not only radically and ontologically other than human process or the self, but it is also the enabling ground. Nature’s primal self can only be transfigured when it moves from the pretemporal and its lost object to the posttemporal where ecstasy is “the ultimate signpost of fitful transcendence.” 6 From the perspective of ecstatic naturalism, because Peirce’s semiotic pragmaticism and Jaspers’ existentialism are grounded in traditional phenomenology, a semiotic construction of the self and its elucidation as

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Existenz is incomplete by remaining bound to specifically human characterizations of semiotic generation. Corrington believes his ecstatic naturalism’s metaphysical concept of ordinal phenomenology has liberated traditional phenomenology from this anthropocentrism. By analyzing and describing orders of relevance, ordinal phenomenology, contrary to traditional phenomenology (e.g., Husserl’s transcendental phenomenology, which is concerned with the human subjectivity or transcendental ego) “does not privilege consciousness by assuming that it must be the mysterious origin of all phenomenal features. The concept of ‘order’ is in a sense pre-phenomenological in that it enables phenomenology to proceed toward a description of any order no matter how constituted or how located.” 7 Lacking the methodological tool of ordinal phenomenology, 8 Peirce and Jaspers were not able to identify, delineate, and analyze nonhuman orders of relevance; hence human subjectivity was highly elevated above nature. Neither Peirce nor Jaspers have developed an adequate concept of nature’s primal self; that is, the self in its Firstness. Peirce exalted his ontological category of Thirdness (community, continuity, intelligibility) over Firstness (pure possibility or the unintelligible). Jaspers emphasized how the self (Existenz), as unique and irreplaceable, can achieve its existential freedom, communication, and historicity in “boundary situations” (Grenzsituationen), and how authentic existence may be realized through encountering transcendence. While the anthropocentric self of Peirce and Jaspers is ontologically located in the realm of nature natured (finitude and embodiment), ecstatic naturalism probes profoundly into the speculative and creative realm of nature naturing in order to unfold the eternal rhythms of the ontological difference. Let me briefly outline both Peirce’s and Jaspers’ concepts of the self in order to clearly identify what ecstatic naturalism finds problematic in each of their philosophies (but this is not to say that ecstatic naturalism does not find Peirce and Jaspers to be resourceful, quite the opposite is true). I shall then give an account of ecstatic naturalism’s “primal self.” Peirce, in spite of his concept of the dynamic object (the hidden but operative dimension of the object) and theory of the unconscious in 1880s, remained preoccupied with the semiotic dimensions of human subjectivity as well as with the metaphysical concept of panpsychism to the extent that he still privileged Thirdness over Firstness (as relevant to the pre-semiotic self). As a result, Peirce’s semiotic self was not fully developed, and psychoanalytically, it has become more or less an abjected self (the self that exists simultaneously in fear/denial and desire). Unlike Peirce’s objective idealism which attaches itself to panpsychism (“matter is effete mind”), ecstatic naturalism, grounded in Buchler’s “principle of ontological parity,” deprivileges and decentralizes such distinction as mind over matter, for “whatever is, in whatever was, is real.”

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Jaspers’ Existenz, synonymous with human selfhood, is not a Cartesian res cogitans, but it is the unique individual with will, emotion, body, and the unconscious. Existenz emerges out of Dasein (empirical existence); it will never be conceptualized, objectified, or universalized. For Jaspers, Existenz can only be elucidated by reference to concrete situations. Existenz is firmly founded in freedom; namely, the possibility of decision and the fundamental form of freedom is to be able to decide for oneself, and this is where the authentic self is fully realized. Unlike Sartre’s groundless freedom, Jaspers’ Existenz is embedded in the mysterious origin—the dark abyss or the irrational, through which the self only acknowledges or what Schelling called “intellectual intuition” (intellektuelle Anschauung); in other words, Existenz cannot be grasped through conceptualization. Jaspers asserts that, through Existenz, not Dasein, we will reach the dark ground of selfhood and existential freedom—the abyss or the irrational which never becomes transparent to “consciousness-as-such” (Bewusstsein überhaupt). Jaspers’ understanding of Existenz shows that he still privileges human meaning horizons insofar as they have their own kind of lucidity; thus the depth dimension of the self in its primal ground in nature (nature naturing) has not sufficiently been explored or probed into. Even though the realm of the unconscious was investigated by Peirce and Jaspers, its implications and demands were evasive, essentially because they were eclipsed by anthropocentrism and anthropomorphism. Consequently, they fell short of probing into the depth-dimension of nature (nature naturing). Peirce’s semiotic self and Jaspers’ Existenz were not made aware of the pre-semiotic rhythms of nature naturing (the unconscious of nature). Understanding nature as an order and by subscribing to the principle of priority, both Peirce and Jaspers have magnified the self on the face of nature, thus not acknowledging that the self is ejected from the vast abyss of nature. From Corrington’s perspective of ecstatic naturalism, the self “rides on the back of a self-transfiguring nature and derives its own rhythms and momentums from the unlimited domains of the world. In one sense, the self is inexhaustible as the world, while in another sense, the self represents but one perspective on the world as a whole.” 9 At nature’s expense, Peirce and Jaspers assigned the self the highest human forms of signification; thus the elevation of the self (or of human subjectivity). And by eulogizing the human forms of signification, Peirce and Jaspers did not detect what Corrington calls “the twin sources of semiotic momentum; namely, the extrahuman orders of the world and the potencies of nature naturing.” 10 From the standpoint of ecstatic naturalism, Peirce and Jaspers have failed to illuminate the self/self correlation and the self/nature naturing correlation; in other words, the self-identity of Peirce’s and Jaspers’ self lacks correlation with the infinity of nature. What makes nature’s primal self of ecstatic naturalism a viable alternative to Peirce’s semiotic construction of the self and to Jaspers’ existen-

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tial self in periechontology is that, as a “still evolving” perspective combining cosmological, semiotic, and psychoanalytical dimensions, ecstatic naturalism probes deeply into the pre-semiotic mysteries of a self-fissuring nature. While Peirce’s semiotic pragmaticism and Jaspers’ existential anthropology have overlooked the dialectical and dynamic tension between nature natured and nature naturing of the ontological difference, Corrington’s ecstatic naturalism, as a “radical naturalism,” honors the principle of parity (as opposed to the principle of priority), deprivileges glottocentrism, “allow[s] full scope for the underconscious of nature, [and] . . . unfold[s] a fully generic semiotics that deals with signs, sign unfolding, infinite semiosis, and the evolution of meaning (the heart of semiotic cosmology.” 11 Peirce’s semiotic self and Jaspers’ Existenz are individually and socially confined to the realm of nature natured (the innumerable orders of the world) of the ontological difference. Without what Corrington calls the “fourth order of the self” (which transcends analogies), the self’s true identity will not be fully manifest. Like other three semiotic orders of the self: the public (Peirce’s Thirdness and Jaspers’ Dasein and consciousnessas-such), the introspective (Peirce’s interpretive musement and Jaspers’ Existenz), and the archetype (Peirce’s dynamic object as manifestation of developmental teleology) whose embodied signs are confined to the human process, Corrington’s fourth order of the self, still an embodied sign, transcends semiosis; that is, its semiotic identity cannot be explicated or characterized through analogies. PEIRCE’S FIRSTNESS AND THE UNCONSCIOUS Unlike ecstatic naturalism which honors both the human unconscious and the unconscious of nature, the Peircean self evades the potencies of nature naturing; therefore it does not experience the transformed repositioning of meaning. Because of his inadequate theory of the unconscious, mainly due to his fear of Firstness, Peirce’s primal category of Firstness, especially the Firstness of Firstness and his semiotic conception of the self were not fully developed. Further, because of his fear of the unconscious, Peirce’s semiotic self is deprived of what Corrington calls, “postsemiotic power” or the power of transcendence; and that makes Peirce’s triadic semiotics remain limited to the innumerable domains of nature natured. His primal category of Firstness serves as an “iconic” sign, superficially pointing to the potencies of nature naturing or the underconscious of nature, which transcends the principle of sufficient reason. Peirce’s Firstness suffers “shipwreck,” for it cannot penetrate deeply into the inexhaustibility and infinity of nature. Corrington believes, because of his abjection (desire, fear, and denial) of the dept-meaning of Firstness and

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iconicity, Peirce has severed semiotics from the pulsating movements of the underconscious of the self and nature. Approached from his reconstructed psychoanalytical standpoint, Corrington has tried to show that because of Peirce’s fear of Firstness, he was abjecting the Firstness of Firstness (the maternal unconscious). Peirce’s employed the dyadic interaction of Secondness and the interpretive triad of Thirdness to help him evade or resist the “threat” of Firstness. Because of the fear of the unconscious (Firstness), Corrington argues, Peirce wanted to connect the Secondness of Thirdness (his father) with Firstness of Thirdness (his imaginary father, e.g., William James) in order to move toward the realm of Thirdness where semiotic contents and significations would help him shun his fear of Firstness of Firstness (the abjected material). 12 If Peirce’s Firstness is equated with the material maternal or nature naturing, which ejects sign-using selves, then by avoiding it Peirce’s self is detached from the depth structures of both phenomenological and transcendental probing. And by not entering into what Corrington calls “the fissure of nature’s self-diremption” (the dialectical chasm between nature natured and nature naturing), the self becomes a narcissistic self that is “more at home within those orders of the world that mirrors its own desires than within an infinite nature that has no concern for its wishes and drives.” 13 Peirce’s resistance to probing deeply into the unconscious was largely due to his personal and psychological relationship with his father, even though prior to 1880 he had already developed the theory of the unconscious. The unhealthy paternal relation drove Peirce further into denying and abjecting his primal realm of Firstness (the unconscious) and thus into the powers of origin that kept haunting him (evidenced by his enduring melancholy). Under the domination of his father’s intellectual and psychological influence, Peirce’s true self was not given a chance to develop. As a result, the unconscious that configures Peirce’s semiotic self has become the abject; namely, the true self is plagued with fear and denial. And the more the unconscious recedes from the “semiotic playing field” (Corrington), the closer Peirce’s self surrounds itself with Thirds (interpretants). Because of his pushing the semiotic self into nature natured filled with Thirds, Peirce failed to realize that the unconscious (nature naturing) gives rise to consciousness (nature natured), not the other way around. Fleeing from the unconscious (the pre-semiotic) and finding shelter in the pansemiotic realm of the attained orders of nature (the semiotic), Peirce’s semiotic self became alienated by cutting itself off from the enabling conditions of the presemiotic Firstness that connects the self to world semiosis. While Peirce was reticent on the subject of the unconscious, he was more concerned with the dyadic resistance/interaction of Secondness and the law-like habits of Thirdness. Though Peirce did have an understand-

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ing of the underconscious of nature, evidenced by his metaphysical concept of Firstness, this understanding was unfortunately eclipsed by his doctrine of panpsychism; in other words, Peirce made the unconscious become almost conscious. For him, nature was anthropocentrically “mentalized.” Even though Peirce did advance the primal category of Firstness along with his theory of the unconscious, he actually failed to capture the sheer otherness of the unconscious. For Corrington, Peirce’s doctrine of panpsychism made the unconscious too conscious in the sense that mentality is a trait found throughout nature in a vast continuum admitting only of degrees of instantiation. Hence the qualitative abyss separating consciousness from the unconscious remained inaccessible to him. As a consequence he also failed to understand the intensity of the intersection points between his skeletal sets and conscious sign series. 14

It is clear that Peirce’s failure to discern the qualitative separateness between consciousness and the unconscious is certainly attributed to his philosophical anthropology, particularly his preoccupation with developing and elaborating the doctrine of panpsychism, which is essentially anthropocentric and anthropomorphic in orientation. Because of his privileging of mentality (panpsychism), which is extended far into the realm of the unconscious, and because of the theory of synechism (akin to Hume’s idea of contiguity), which stresses developmental teleological features, and also because of the directionalities of the dynamic object as well as through the primal categories of Secondness and Thirdness, Peirce was convinced that he could “unveil” the mysteriously ineffable realm of nature naturing or the “utter sovereignty of nature” (Corrington). Consequently, Peirce did not quite underscore or honor the ontological divide between nature natured and nature naturing; and so the line separating the realms of consciousness and the unconscious became obscured. Peirce’s panpsychistic phrase “matter is effete mind” proved that there was a continuity or a bridge connecting consciousness and the unconscious, nature natured and nature naturing, or self and world. Deeply grounded in the doctrine of panpsychism, the Peircean self, via Thirdness, receives its semiotic signification and purpose (entelechies) from a pansemiotically mentalized nature that encompasses both consciousness and the unconscious. Contrary to Peirce’s synechism (and his mathematical theory of infinitesimals) ecstatic naturalism asserts that there radically exists a kind of self-fissuring within and through the infinitesimals; thus there is an ontological break splitting the realms of nature natured from nature naturing. This only shows that because of Thirdness (meaning or signification), Peirce believed his semiotic self could somehow exterminate the bifurcation between nature natured and nature naturing.

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REFLECTIVE CONSCIOUSNESS AND NATURE Jaspers followed Kierkegaard and Nietzsche in emphasizing the existential selfhood called Existenz (the highest level of authentic selfhood). Recognizing human subjectivity was the gateway to the understanding of Being, Heidegger posed the existential question: “What is Being?” whereas Jaspers was more concerned with the question” “What is human being?” Jaspers rejected Heidegger’s ontology, mainly because of its alleged objectification of Being. Jaspers’ periechontology moved beyond Heidegger’s ontology, for Being in itself can neither be objectified nor grasped by concepts or definitions; his periechontology implies the boundlessness of human existence—with its vast potentiality. 15 Jaspers elevates human selfhood’s full possibilities to the highest ontological status; and since Existenz is itself the encompassing, it is not conditioned by any ontological dimensions. For Jaspers, Existenz is as irreducible, mysterious, and incomprehensible as transcendence. And through freedom and historicity Existenz has the potential to move beyond the empirical world (Dasein). Dasein, approached differently from Heidegger’s conceptual framework, belongs to the realm of objectivity. Jaspers’ understanding of “axial existence” or “axial time” and Existenz confirm his anthropological philosophy, which is deeply seated in classical humanism. Jaspers proposed the so-called “axial period” which extended to the six centuries from 800 B.C.E to 200 B.C.E. This axial period was constituted by the transition from mythos to logos, signifying the transforming break from the mythical period. In this particular period, which took place in China, India, and Greece, the depth of selfhood and its spiritual impetus was transferred to reflective consciousness and to the rational structures of existence. For the first time individual autonomy and the identity and freedom of human beings became more consciously focused. The axial people not only became “particular individuals” (besondere Individuen), but also participated in “the universally valid truth” (der allgemeingültigen). From this came the shift from the unconscious which was represented by the mythical period (ancient civilization) to the individual’s reflective and rational consciousness. And by stressing this breaking away from the mythical period Jaspers did not only widen the gap between the realms of the unconscious and consciousness, but also between Existenz and nature (nature naturing) in the individual life. One can clearly become aware of Jaspers’ anthropocentric self manifest in his characterization of the axial period. By privileging the axial period’s consciousness and by minimizing the role of the unconscious, which dominated the preaxial people and played a larger whole in their primordial connection with nature, Jaspers, like Peirce, expanded the self beyond nature. Emerging from the unconscious and immersing itself in rational and self-reflective consciousness, Jaspers’ human selfhood (Existenz) or “depth Self” (Corrington), liberated itself

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from the unconscious, thereby recognizing itself as a new individuality. It became conscious of Being as a whole and of itself. For Jaspers, to be Existenz is to be independent of any psychic activity or of unconscious functioning. Even though Jaspers belongs to the neo-Kantian tradition, he had a different understanding about the unconscious. While some, such as Jung, for example, “decentralized” consciousness in order to deepen the powers of the unconscious, Jaspers narrowed the contrast between consciousness and the unconscious; in other words, Jaspers privileged consciousness over the unconscious. Corrington contends that “Jaspers maintains that the movement of Existenz is not quickened or deepened by those depth psychological analyses which give priority to universal unconscious structures.” 16 And while Jung’s self is profoundly shaped or configured by the archetypes or traits of the collective unconscious, Jaspers’ Existenz transcends the domain of the unconscious. Jaspers paid much attention to the concept of historicity vis-à-vis the unconscious and consciousness in the last chapter of his book The Origin and Goal of History. By articulating and stressing the axial period, hence emphasizing the anthropocentrism of Existenz, it becomes clear that Jaspers privileged consciousness, which is by definition finite, incomplete, and perspectival. It should be mentioned that coming out of the neoKantian philosophy, Jaspers, who prized both reason and consciousness, was not willing to allow the unconscious to shape or transform Existenz’s historicity and freedom. Though Jaspers admits: “In every conscious step of our lives, especially in every creative act of the spirit, we are aided by an unconscious within us,” 17 he still prefers consciousness to the unconscious: The spirit of man is conscious. Consciousness is the medium without which there is for us neither knowledge nor experience, neither humanity norrelationship to transcendence. That which is not conscious is called unconscious. Unconscious is a negative concept, endlessly ambiguous in its implications. . . . As the unconscious, its characteristics are purely negative, however. . . . Consciousness is the real and true. Heightened consciousness, not the unconscious, is our goal. We overcome history by entering into the unconscious in order, rather, to attain heightened consciousness. The urge to unconsciousness, which takes hold of us humans at all times of adversity, is illusory. 18

While Jaspers likens consciousness to “the crest of a wave, a peak above a broad and deep subsoil,” 19 Corrington’s ecstatic naturalism asserts that consciousness “grants light while casting its own internal and external shadow. . . . Any given perspective maintained or endured by consciousness has its exact compensatory corollary in the unconscious.” 20 Whereas Jaspers heightens the function and widens the scope of consciousness and ascribes negative characteristics to the unconscious, ecstatic naturalism stresses the forms of developmental teleology as found

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in the unconscious, and also how the unconscious furnishes scope and density to consciousness. There exists a correlation or interaction between the unconscious and consciousness. For Corrington: “Whatever the unconscious does ‘internally’ it also does in relation to consciousness. That is not to say that the unconscious is some kind of goal directed mind, but that it has a rhythm that always moves dialectically with and against consciousness.” 21 It is clear that while Existenzen of Jaspers’ axial period shifted the base of existence to self-reflective and rational consciousness, the momentum of nature’s primal self of ecstatic naturalism derives from the correlation between the unconscious and consciousness. And while ecstatic naturalism, through the gateway of the unconscious, brings to the fore the abjected aspects of the material maternal, which is the momentum that births the self outward into the postmaternal orders of semiosis, Jaspers’ periechontology allows no ground for the material maternal—the melancholy for the lost object (nature naturing), which generates nature’s primal selves. By awakening the full possibilities of the self (in the guise of perienchontology; namely, “How Being could be for us?”), by opening up the infinite ground of Existenz, and by enlarging the encompassing power of logos (the product of human language and thought) over mythos, and selfconsciousness over the unconscious, Jaspers, unlike Peirce, semiotically shields Existenz and the human process from nonhuman significations or extra-human traits. And while Peirce’s semiotic self is constantly haunted by the melancholy of the unconscious (Firstness), Jaspers’ Existenz experiences no abjected self/unconscious but existential significations in the comforting shelter of Thirdness. From the standpoint of ecstatic naturalism’s semiotic ontology, Jaspers’ philosophy errs in privileging Existenz over nature. And from the principle of ontological priority, Jaspers’ human selfhood is more “real” than nature. CONCLUSION Deeply seated in a semiotic cosmology and pyschosemiosis, ecstatic naturalism radically and profoundly probes into the mystery of nature’s perennial self-fissuring of nature natured and nature naturing. Ecstatic naturalism provides not only a viable alternative to Peirce’s semiotic conception of the self and to Jaspers’ existential concept of Existenz, but also to traditional phenomenological and existential (anthropocentric and anthropomorphic) forms of philosophy. As a mode of thought and method, ecstatic naturalism provides a more encompassing and judicious framework compared to those of Peirce’s semiotic construction of the self and Jaspers’ existential elucidation of Existenz.

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Peirce’s semiotic construction of the self and Jaspers’ elucidation of Existenz of course cannot be minimized or overlooked, for they both have widened our understanding of the scope and prospects of the self. However, at the same time, the role of nature as it ontologically relates to the self is deprivileged; hence the self is anthropocentrically and anthropomorphically privileged and elevated. While both Peirce and Jaspers failed to develop an adequate concept of nature’s primal self in their respective semiotic-phenomenological and existential-periechontological ontologies, ecstatic naturalism recognizes the self-transcending powers of nature, especially nature naturing. The hidden origin of the anthropocentric self theorized or conceptualized by Peirce and Jaspers, like nature’s primal self of ecstatic naturalism, is directly and infinitely sustained in the “primal ground” called nature naturing, where it is not conditioned or circumscribed by metaphysical or existential anthropology or by textuality. Nature is the self’s enabling ground and goal. NOTES 1. Robert Corrington, Ecstatic Naturalism: Signs of the World (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994), 31. 2. For Corrington, the term “precategorial” is not a real term; it is only an ideal. 3. Robert Corrington, A Semiotic Theory of Theology and Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 10. Hereafter STTP. 4. Ibid. 5. Worldhood is not a world, but it is behind all worlds—the encompassing of all horizons/worlds; it is the ultimate enabling condition for any ordinal complex vis-à-vis the human process. 6. STTP, 41. 7. Robert Corrington, Nature and Spirit: An Essay in Ecstatic Naturalism (New York: Fordham University Press, 1992), 2-3. 8. “Ordinal phenomenology” systematically and descriptively explores and examines the most fundamental and pervasive features of reality (traits of the world). By encompassing prehuman and preordinal orders, ordinal phenomenology moves beyond Peirce’s panspychism and Jaspers’ anthropocentrism. 9. Robert Corrington, Nature’s Self: Our Journey from Origin to Spirit (Lanham, MD.: Rowman and Littlefield, 1996), 6. Hereafter NS. 10. Ibid., 12. 11. STTP, 31. 12. For an excellent version of Peirce’s melancholy, see Robert Corrington, “Peirce the melancholy prestidigitator,” Semiotica 94-1/2 (1993): 85-101. See also his chapter “Peirce’s Melancholy” in An Introduction to C. S. Peirce: Philosopher, Semiotician, and Ecstatic Naturalist (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 1993), 1-26. 13. STTP, 82. 14. Ibid., 53. 15. Jaspers’ periechontology is the privileged anthropocentric concept, for it alludes to human being’s vast and varied experience, especially that of possible Existenz (möglicher Existenz). Periechontology means “beyond ontology.” 16. Robert Corrington, “Hermeneutics and Psychopathology: Jaspers and Hillman,” Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology 7 (1987), 70. 17. Karl Jaspers, The Origin and Goal of History, trans. Michael Bullock (Westport: Greenwood, 1976), 274.

62 18. 19. 20. 21.

Nam T. Nguyen Ibid., 274-75. Ibid., 274. NS, 76. Ibid., 9

REFERENCES Corrington, Robert S. “Hermeneutics and Psychopathology: Jaspers and Hillman,” Theoretical and Philosophical Psychology 7 (1987). ———. Nature and Spirit: An Essay in Ecstatic Naturalism. New York: Fordham University Press, 1992. ———. An Introduction to C. S. Peirce: Philosopher, Semiotician, and Ecstatic Naturalist. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 1993. ———. Ecstatic Naturalism: Signs of the World. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994. ———. Nature’s Self: Our Journey from Origin to Spirit. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1996. ———. A Semiotic Theory of Theology and Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Jaspers, Karl. The Origin and Goal of History. Trans. Michael Bullock. Westport: Greenwood, 1976.

SIX Corrington’s “Natural Self” as the “Subject of Truth” Toward an Ecstatic Political Theology Iljoon Park

Can we still talk about justice? We have experienced so many discourses about justice in recent histories, but none of them turned out to possess a general value because any discourse about justice seems to contain its own power relations; that is, some form of “injustice.” Thus, it has become clear that the concept of “justice” may be nothing but a matter of interpretation depending on who has power, or who is of the stronger kind (cf. Thrasymachus, Plato’s Republic). Here the question, “Whose interpretation?” or “Who is in power?” determines the answer to the question “What is justice?” How can one speak of justice when there seems to be no universal common ground for it? Since the emergence of discourses concerning power and interpretation brought about by deconstructionism and poststructuralism (Derrida, Foucault, et. al) no “universal” concepts have survived. Is it possible to state, against those philosophies which claim to deconstruct the universal nature of justice, that justice exists and that indeed it is universally required—especially if human civilization is to survive into the future? In other words, despite the “universality” of justice deconstructed, is it still possible to speak of justice beyond the differences of perspectives, interpretations, and conflicts of power that surround it? It is my claim that there still exists the possibility to speak of justice beyond a domain of power relations and competing perspectives (a domain today best exhibited by the system of global capitalism—a system that, perhaps, has aided 63

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in justice’s deconstruction, a paradox if democracy, capitalism’s political stable mate, is a philosophy of “justice.”) In looking at the concept of justice this chapter draws upon an unlikely ally: the metaphysical naturalism of the philosophical theologican Robert S. Corrington. In particular, this chapter utilizes an appeal to a “natural” universal, that of the Corringtonian notion of “self”—a “natural self”—understood from Badiouian eyes—where this “natural self” is a subject of truth and thus is a subject (equally among others) of justice. Badiou is a natural partner within query concerning justice, but using Corrington through Badiouian eyes helps to refine the “naturalness” of the concept of justice as well as help identify those limit situations that help bring justice about. JUSTICE AS BEING-HUMAN: BADIOU’S SUBJECT OF TRUTH AND CORRINGTON’S NATURAL SELF According to Alain Badiou, a philosopher cannot deal with everything and thus must “construct his own problems.” 1 Thus, one of the philosopher’s tasks is to define his own philosophical problem for the age. This can be applied within the practice of theology as well. To view the world from a theological perspective and to know the problems of our age is to acknowledge both the limitation and the possibility of the world in which we live. One of the problems of our age is to define the concept of justice within the politically charged logic of difference according to which any kind of the “universal” is regarded as politically charged and hence relative. Voices for difference have been raised up, and respect for and tolerance to difference has become the ethical norm. These difference discourses have emerged to defend the minority against the majority, the colonized against the colonizer, and the “third world” against the “first world.” However, such discourses have also ended with the destruction of the universal in any guise. The great irony of our age is that this difference-seeking discourse is the most adaptable strategy of survival within the global capitalist market “of empire” and of domination (Hardt, Negri). In other words, such discourses have promulgated the respect for and tolerance of difference-positive discourses that seek justice but by nature are unable to attain it. Human rights and political equality, without justice, have been subordinated to equal rights as equal rights for a consumer to purchase material goods. Discourses of ethnic difference and class gap have turned into discussions concerning matters of consumption. Given these developments, a new logic of “justice” hides (rather than reveals) a certain type of “ethnical chauvinism” and results in the other being rendered “poor” in strictly capitalist-materialist terms, typically in

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terms of ownership (or lack thereof). The other is an other without material goods, is objectified and taken to be an object of compassion and concern because s/he is without material goods. 2 In this sense tolerance to “otherness” may not be enough to address the lack of a concept of justice and the corresponding problem of violence to the other, given objectification, given lack of resources, given the rendering of the other as consumer. A new ideal of justice seems to be required with such a pernicious and dehumanizing logic involved. Indeed, a new universal or generic notion for justice is needed, and only a new generic concept of justice will be able to serve as common ground for the kind of being-human that is suffering within the contemporary age. This is to say that justice must be about being-human, not about paying matter due. Badiou’s notion of the subject of truth speaks to many of these concerns, especially concerning how to render humans as subjects, equally, within regimes of truth. This stems from his idea that there are truths outside of any given system even while they remain unspeakable within a current linguistic system of identification pertaining to “subjects.” Because these truths are outside “state” discourse (in this particular case, global capitalism), truths are treated as illegal or foreign and can only work within an established system’s boundary. Even an individual within the state’s system cannot acknowledge the truth(s) because they are outside the system (and must be brought into the system in some way) and thus in some sense are extant to the individual. One cannot even talk about them as truths because they are, as a matter of fact, outside any situation and there is no way to see them as truths so long as one remains within the system so-defined. Given this situation, truth can only come to us through an “event,” a happening at the margin of the state of the situation. This is truth’s radical nature. In any coming event of truth, Badiou claims that the subject has to wager on that which s/he believes is the truth. The wager is required, for truth cannot be believed as true by the minds of the situation. The subject should rise to acknowledge the event of truth however the subject as a subject of truth does not arise from within the inside but only comes from an outside. This seems paradoxical, however if this is so, truth is that which disrupts not only systems or states, but individuals as they accept it. Thus, contrary to traditional concepts of truth that sees truth as a mode of fulfillment and solution, truths point to problems and thus problematize situations and individuals. Truth disappears when a problem is resolved and the state and individual transformed. As F. James puts it, truth is “the vanishing mediator.” 3 When it comes to “subjects” and truth, what might Corrington’s concept of “self” say about this vanishing truth-problematic, of the self, of the subject of truth at the edges and margins of a situation? Does Corrington have a concept of self that can, when seen through Badiouian eyes, speak to the refounding of justice in new guise, perhaps as a subject of

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truth and hence as a new universal? Is there any momentum in Corrington’s ecstatic naturalism—a philosophy of ek-stasis: a potential transformation and change—for the subject to experience something like justice within some new domain or event? As one might guess, the answer is of course “yes.” The significant question is “How?,” especially given the deconstruction of justice within postcolonial discourses whose “other” has been reduced to material subject in any theory of natural, material reality. Corresponding to Badiou’s perspective , the subject of justice is always the subject of the other, because justice does not exist inside the system, or, in Corringtonian metaphysic, “inside” nature (one may say that the impetus of justice is “pre-ordinal,” though justice is ordinal and located, for example within communities). However, for Corrington, otherness is not something outside, but is already “inside” from the beginning, something fully “natural” and consummate to realities not subjugated to conditions of any established power discourse. Power discourse, for Corrington, is not political but rather psychologicial. If anything, power discourse is fully natural and thus contains potential for the positive re-universalization of justice, as much as it can also establish harmful and demonic conceptual practices, such as totalitarianism or fascism. Corrington’s philosophy demands appropriate channeling and release of subjugated or trapped, and largely unconscious, projections produced by the negative power of chora with its ontological power of emptying and denial. The negativity of the concept is the prohibition of any return to the origin of signs—natura naturans—where each sign is thrown into the world of semiosis, living by the evolutionary principles of natural selection and random variation. In this semiotic process, something excessive to the sign process visits the signs to heal their own respective ontological wound. Truth, then, for Corrington, takes on the form of natural grace. It is already natural and its appearance is from extant limits—an “outside” of the natural which is already “within” the state of the situation, a part of nature nonetheless. For Corrington, Spirit aids in the appearance of truth (and possibly of justice within communities of inquiry). Spirit leads the interpretive community to engage in democratic discourse about truth, including justice. Spirit leads each semiotic self toward its own natural comportment, through various rotations of interpretation, through perspectives of power, and through to reconciliation of perspective, to the ecstasy of resolution and fulfillment found when semiotic selves are at harmony with the choric origin. This Spirit does not only abide inside the semiotic self, but rather seems to arise from the outside of the existing semiotic system. It is thus “supernatural,” or more precisely in Corrington’s language, it is “deeply natural.” Thus, like Badiou, justice may appear from an “outside” in an event, but is prompted through grace. Thus an “ecstatic” political theology.

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The subject of truth (in this case the semiotic self, or what Corrington also titles “the natural self”) is birthed or created at the margins or horizons of a natural system within an event. Although there is no “outside” nature per se in Corrington’s naturalist metaphysics, the inside is further away from one’s “own” self than any “outside.” In other words, the “inside” is part of a boundary and is in part defined by what is “beyond” it. In order to find the true “inside,” one must step outside of one’s self (ex-stasis), typically in a limit situation or event of “shipwreck” (to use Jaspers phrase). Such corresponds to the Badiouian “event” in that, from the outside, Spirit enters into various sign processes in order to disclose an inner otherness—an otherness that is common to but “between” and “among” various semiotic selves: this in order to heal broken signs or reconstitute signs as a gift for the community of interpreters. A Corringtonian eschatology of grace, politicized, is not so far from Badiou’s original political intentions, though the subject, while transformed, is left intact. Truth is in the hands of the other, and, in this sense, in the hands of all who are equal as no one singularly alone possesses the truth. But again, truth may only appear within an “event,” from an outside that is defined by limits set by the situation, from the inside. Problematized, and being fully natural, or being a subject of truth, means that to be human is to be equally poor, equally without in an ontological lack or debt, and equally among “those who are not” (ta me onta, 1Cor. 1:27). To be human is to be of an ontological wound and thus in a primal debt. On the other hand, to be poor means to shows us the face of the truth in not belonging to any established system, any “inside,” and remaining unafraid to confront the limits of any situation that calls for justice. In this otherness it is possible to speak of truth and justice again. NATURE AS SELF-OTHERING: CORRINGTON From Corrington’s perspective of ecstatic naturalism, in order to discern how the subject of truth, the “self,” is constituted, it is best to momentarily turn to Derrida. Derrida’s bold argument in Of Grammatology, “There is nothing outside of text,” is not a correct statement of the self’s constitution however. Rather, it should be “there is nothing inside/outside of text!” Here the other is not much different from the self in that both notions of self (self and other) contain the same ontological wound which is left by nature’s self-othering or “selving” process. (This is the common foundation for being-human.) But for Derrida, the term “text” means a substitution or supplement to the presence of voice, that is, the substitution of self-sameness for the possible articulation of difference as selvingprocess. This supplement, the substitution, is always in the mode of differing and deferring, in the mode of différance. 4 There is always the other “outside” the boundary of the self-sameness that is projected and set up

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by the auto-affection involved with différance. Here, the other is always “nothing” within the text because it does not belong to the systematic mechanism of text. The other thus exists like a ghost within the text, voiceless and unwritten. However, from the perspective of Corrington, who sees self-othering everywhere in and out of semiosis, text differing and deferring cannot be anything but imperialistic. 5 Derrida simply starts with the awareness that every human process is that of auto-affection. But he never questions why this auto-affection drives the human process nor how injustice, metaphysically, may actually stem from it. For Corrington, every sign is “the imaginative constructs of the imperial self.” 6 Because auto-affection does not allow perceiving any self “beyond” text, justice—or at least “hope” for justice—is curtailed. 7 Questions about “the Other” as subject of truth prompts not only the inspection of ethical boundaries, but political ones as well. Taking cue from Badiou, the other is generated by the selving process that is the process of other-selving by self-othering. Taking cue from Corrington, the selving process breaks open the hard shell of the narcissistic self and widens the scope of self via a clearing wherein justice may appear. In so doing, the self may integrate itself into the other. In order for the integration of the self into the other to occur, any self must carefully avoid the hidden imperial expansion of self-sameness posed by auto-affection read strictly in terms of text (and thus avoiding alternate interpretations in the interim, discourses concerning power, but also discourses concerning the possibility of justice). To integrate the self into the other means to shatter and deconstruct the self, to allow the outside to appear from within an inside—if the Spirit and natural grace are present. Self-othering may be presented as a way of healing when the other is rendered merely as a consumer, as poor in ways that point strictly to the material dimensions of a consumerist global capitalist market system. Healing means letting the self know that the other comes back to itself despite these dehumanizing portrayals. Indeed, to be aware of the fact that the other outside comes back to the self is a way to heal and overcome auto-affection as narcissistic, manic selving-process without the other. Yet, this acknowledgment of the other is still under the mechanisms of projection and misreading. For instance, according to Corrington, natural communities can distort our consciousness and cognition “by the tragic logic of the human process . . . for reasons that are pseudoreligions and demonic.” 8 In this sense, Derrida is right that one cannot entirely overcome the auto-affecting mode. However, according to Corrington, the self-othering of nature can offer a totally different way to integrate the self within communities of nature. Beings are born with their ontological wound that “reaches down into the heart of nature.” 9 The wound is due to the eternal fissure between nature naturing and nature natured. Nature itself is self-otherized. That is, the way we can know nature is to objectify it; in other words, to make the other objec-

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tified. Thus, the real other is nature itself, and yet it is not entirely the other as being-human is naturally part of it. There is no such thing as the absolute other because every order of relevance (to use Corrington’s phrase, borrowing from Buchler), or every subject of truth (to use Badiou’s phrase) is the product of self-othering. The basic faith of ecstatic naturalism is that this primal ontological wound can be healed by the works of the interpretive community, guided by the natural grace of Spirit, which catches the lure of nature’s whither and whence in the moment of clearing through its interpretive situation, that is, through the possibility of an event. Interpretive spaces are cleared when the pre-temporal, the lost origin, in the mood of melancholy but also ecstasy, shows the self toward the post-temporal, the “outside” extant limit which is whither or not yet. In so doing, the interpretive community “challenge[s] the inert self-signs that are perpetuated by natural communities,” “the inertia of the conditions of origin.” 10 It does not simply delete the inert conditions of origin but illuminates them “from the hovering, yet power-filled, not yet that provides clearing for transformation.” 11 By bringing the unconscious of the self and the underconscious of nature into a fragile awareness, the interpretive community opens out the pre- and post-temporal within the arrow of time. Put differently, there is “a sudden lightning-like clearing in the life world that breaks the shell of the thermodynamic momentum of temporality” 12 and thus the shell of the natural self and selving process are brought together: outside and inside, subject of truth and event, intertwine. At the edge of such chaos, a sudden ecstasy (transformative potential) appears and healing is a true possibility. It is the Spirit that gives ecstasy to the sign-users who live in every interstice between projection and object. Indeed, it is the Spirit who may, through natural grace, afford the very possibility of justice that is the healing required of interpretants in the community who have suffered depersonalization. Living in all the betweennesses of semiotic orders, the Spirit clears away impediments to the interpretation of justice as universal concept in such a way so as to drain the manic energy of relative projections. In this sense, the Spirit is “the open clearing that can hold back demonic or simple overdetermined projections from the self-showing of” 13 the object. By “hold[ing] open a space between the projection and its object so that it stands as a third possibility ontologically between act and object,” 14 the Spirit “reenact[s] the larger betweenness of nature naturing and nature natured.” 15 By holding open the space of resistance between the subject and the object, the Spirit “push[es] contraries into the realm of internal conflict as housed in an external object.” 16 In so doing, the Spirit shows that the object is “not necessarily embedded in the object in its self-showing,” 17 that is, that the object is always more than the sign or sign bloom; in other words, the originating power of the signified is beyond our categorial or projective power, which comes from the be-

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tweenness structure of the underconscious of nature that “can never be transgressed by human, or divine, thought.” 18 Indeed, occupying the betweenness structure, the Spirit leads the human process from totalizing experiences of power relations to the genuine moral courage needed to endure the event where justice may appear. The Spirit shatters the shells of the narcissistic self and breaks it open to the suffering of the other. Indeed, the Spirit lives “between selves, ‘sensing’ their internal travail and providing a means for making that travail available to other selves.” 19 Thus, the Spirit renders ontological wound (rather than purchasing power) as ontological and political resource of sympathy with and for the healing of the other(s). At the point, justice emerges in a form of humanity, a common being-human. This may be why the Spirit can enable us to sympathize with the other’s pain. A BADOUIAN CONCEPT OF JUSTICE Our age is full of discourses on difference. What is missing is something general. A generic feeling of common, natural human nature. Tolerance to difference overlooks the fact that we are the same human beings in the generic sense—which means that this generic is the foundation of our value system for living. In an age of difference, we have lost almost all of the universal so that there is no ground to talk about the common things together with different people. In so doing, we have even lost a relevant measure for justice. How do we bring it back to our lives? In this context, Hardt and Negri say that the only ground for the generic in this age of the global empire is the poor, which is the last universal for consumerist subjects in the age of difference, in which every kind of difference is specialized for commodification for sale. 20 Indeed, catch phrases like “feel the difference” and “know your difference” have become the motto for the consumer subject in this age. 21 In this world, the kinds of inner healing like yoga, mind-body control, chitraining, and so on are also well adapted to this consumer-driven culture. Difference is the truth for our age. Justice and human rights have become the matter of the particularities of culture, while the oppression of the poor like the homeless and illegal immigrant workers may be overlooked, for the wellbeing of the self is regarded as the most valuable to purchase and make a difference. However, the original philosophical belief is that there is “something [that] is not reducible to the human which is to say something inhuman.” 22 Ironically this inhuman thing offers us a sense of universality to hold on to. It is incommensurable to “the general system of predicative knowledge internal to a situation.” 23 (Badiou and Žižek 2009, 35). Yet, it prevails to all human condition, for ta me onta (those who are not, 1Cor. 1:27) is the common name for being “human.” We live as if we are ta onta (those who are; 1Cor. 1:27), but our life unceasingly

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runs toward death, the absolute nullification of our being. At the end of our being lies our truth. We will after all become ta me onta. The face of ta me onta keeps visiting our lives in the disguises of the poor, the homeless, the weak, the meek, and the illegal immigrant workers. This is why the poor becomes the common name for this age of empire. For this common name we need justice, in other words, human rights and compassion. To conclude, the subject is the name for our inner agent to hold onto the truth of ta me onta. It also means that truth is outside, not inside, the established system of knowledge. Thus one needs to get out of the established boundary, making a hole in the existing system of truth in order to encounter (a) truth, but also be ready to rise and be transformed by it. However, within the existing system, such an encounter is impossible, because truth is always outside. The only chance for truth, for a new concept of justice in which the subject can encounter truth, is through an event. The event is neither predicted nor anticipated by the state system. It is a singular event, but one can see some sense of universality within it. From my terminology, I take the generic to be produced from a type of betweenness. From the beginning, the so-called human being has been human betweenness, human-being-between. Derrida successfully shows the problem of the term “human being.” Yet, after his de/construction of human being, there is nothing left for thinking about my “self” and our “selves” save for the metaphysical, too metaphysical, shadowy traces of the O/other. For the O/other is always our auto-affecting creation or projection. At the same time, Derrida’s otherness always breaks and shatters the self and its boundary. Its neverending de/construction is both helpful and unhelpful in understanding the human-being-between-ness. But Derrida also awakens us with the realization that the other we have constructed is not the other as it is. Thus Derrida talks about justice as “gift.” 24 This is to emphasize “the heterogeneity of justice.” 25 That is, justice is the impossible as the gift is the impossible in our global economy based upon the give-and-take system. We have to wait for the coming of “the messianicity” 26 without messianism. Derrida re/locates justice outside like Badiou; that is, absolutely outside our system of law. And thus justice would come as the gift from the divine grace. 27 However, at the same time, I see a momentum of the subject wagering on the im/ possible truth through Badiou’s and not Derrida’s, eyes. Corrington shows the betweenness and availability of justice within an ecstatic political theology. Nature’s self-othering keeps creating all kinds of betweennesses by its ever-spawning signs in the play of differences between signs and their object. We are projected, and we project all the time. We are otherized selves, and, at the same time, we are selfothering all the time. Thus, the other is none other than the self. Even though we notice that we all share the sense of the ontological wound of denial, we also notice that which is carried out by our ontological mother, chora. The sense of denial only can be healed through the interpretation,

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which is carried out by the community of interpreters. At this point, Badiou and Corrington have different thoughts. According to Badiou, due to the fact that philosophy deals with the unspeakable, dialogue is not possible. For Badiou, philosophy is about “something incommensurable, a relation without relation. 28 “As Žižek says, philosophy is “not a dialogue,” but it is always “excessive.” 29 Yet, for Corrington, any resolution for justice always comes from the community of interpreters, for it always creates a space of betweenness, which is the residence of the Spirit. The spiritual presence in their interpretations offers sign-users a sense of ecstasy, in which the abyss between nature naturing and nature natured is crossed, semiotic selves “Traverse” the space opened by ekstasis (standing out). Thus, for Corrington, dialogue is necessary for it brings forth, guided by Spirit, the unspeakable universal of justice into this unjust world. This dialogue is not about consensus or agreement, but about rendering a story, a story of justice. Justice is always deported, for it is “serious trouble for the State.” 30 Thus, justice is circulated under the cloak of story, of power, of interpretation, of semiosis. No one knows when justice may approach, but everyone hears the voice of justice when it arrives. Those who hear the voice of justice will be the subject of truth. NOTES 1. Alain Badiou and Slavoj Žižek, Philosophy in the Present, ed. Peter Engelman and trans. Peter Thomas and Alberto Toscano (Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2009), 1. 2. Wendy Brown, Regulating Aversion: Tolerance in the Age of Identity and Empire, trans. in Korean by Seung-Cheol Lee (Seoul: Galmoori, 2010), 89. 3. Slavoj Žižek, Tarrying with the Negative: Kant, Hegel and the Critique of Ideology (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1993), 33. 4. J. Derrida, “Différance” in A Derrida Reader: Between the Blinds, ed. Peggy Kamuf (New York: Columbia University Press, 1991), 76. 5. R.S. Corrington, Ecstatic Naturalism: Signs of the World (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1994), 2; Corrington, A Semiotic Theory of Theology and Philosophy, 3. 6. Corrington, A Semiotic Theory of Theology and Philosophy, 132. 7. Outside of Derrida’s anthropomorphic framework, there are always signs that have been ignored by organisms, which cannot catch them. We do not perceive the environment in the same way as a bat or a brain worm does. The signs, which the inhuman organisms perceive, are not the signs we the human processes perceive. Yet, although every perception of every organism is respectively different and respectively auto-affecting, there is an encompassing flow of life. Corrington’s concept of the ontological parity is to pay attention to signs outside of human frameworks. All signs are self-othering. They are in the betweenness created by the self-othering. They are always between the primal whence and the primal whither. The primal whence and whither do not refer to any nuances of the self-sameness but the developmental process of organisms. Although a human process does not feel the foundation or purpose of his/her life, s/he grows, at least biologically and socially. Every sign is in this developmental teleology. Yet, it does not have a specific goal. The genetic information is to intend the full actualization of the contained information. It is just to prepare for the interaction with its environment the host organism perceives. The growth is in the

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constant and endless interaction of betweennesses with self-othering/self-effacing. By following the natural mode of self-effacing with the self-othering the human process can reach deep down into the primal flow of nature achieving its universality. 8. Robert S. Corrington, A Semiotic Theory of Theology and Philosophy (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 186. 9. Ibid., 50. 10. Ibid., 135. 11. Ibid., 139. 12. Ibid., 143. 13. Ibid., 179. 14. Ibid., 165. 15. Ibid. 16. Ibid., 178. 17. Ibid., 178. 18. Ibid., 170. 19. Ibid., 213. 20. Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Empire, trans. in Korean by Soo-Jong Yun (Seoul: Ehaksa, 2001), 206. 21. Paul Heelas, Spiritualities of Life: New Age Romanticism and Consumptive Capitalism (Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishing, 2008), 63. 22. Alain Badiou and Slavoj Žižek, Philosophy in the Present, ed. By Peter Engelman and trans. Peter Thomas and Alberto Toscano (Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2009), 75. 23. Badiou and Žižek, Philosophy in the Present, 35. 24. J. Derrida, Specters of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning, and the New International, trans. Peggy Kamuf (New York: Routledge, 1994), 26; Theodore W. Jennings, Reading Derrida / Thinking Paul: On Justice (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006), 79. 25. T.W. Jennings, Reading Derrida / Thinking Paul, 80. 26. J. Derrida, Monolingualism of the Other; or, The Prosthesis of Origin, trans. Patrick Mensah (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998), 68. 27. T.W. Jennings, Reading Derrida / Thinking Paul, 86. 28. A. Badiou and S. Žižek, Philosophy in the Present, 12. 29. Ibid., 69. 30. A. Badiou, Infinite Thought (New York: Continuum, 2005), 55.

REFERENCES Badiou, Alain. Infinite Thought. New York: Continuum, 2005. ———. Badiou, Alain, and Slavoj Žižek. Philosophy in the Present. Edited by Peter Engelman and translation by Peter Thomas and Alberto Toscano. Malden, MA: Polity Press, 2009. Brown, Wendy. Regulating Aversion: Tolerance in the Age of Identity and Empire. Trans. into Korean by Seung-Cheol Lee. Seoul: Galmoori, 2010. Corrington, Robert S. Ecstatic Naturalism: Signs of the World. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1994. ———. A Semiotic Theory of Theology and Philosophy. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2000. Derrida, Jacques. A Derrida Reader: Between the Blinds. Edited by Peggy Kamuf. New York: Columbia University Press, 1991. ———. Specters of Marx: The State of the Debt, the Work of Mourning, and the New International. Translated by Peggy Kamuf. New York: Routledge, 1994. ———. Derrida, Jacques. Monolingualism of the Other; or, The Prosthesis of Origin. Translated by Patrick Mensah. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998. Hardt, Michael, and Antonio Negri. Empire. Translation into Korean by Soo-Jong Yun. Seoul: Ehaksa, 2001.

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Heelas, Paul. Spiritualities of Life: New Age Romanticism and Consumptive Capitalism. Oxford, UK: Blackwell Publishing, 2008. Jennings, Theodore W. Reading Derrida / Thinking Paul: On Justice. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2006. Žižek, Slavoj. Tarrying with the Negative: Kant, Hegel and the Critique of Ideology. Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1993.

SEVEN Ecstatic Naturalism in American Psychological Biography Joseph M. Kramp

INTRODUCTION Through major figures like Ralph Waldo Emerson, or other ideological interlocutors of ecstatic naturalism such as William James and Josiah Royce, modern liberalism became a reputable political ideology by the 1940s and 1950s. So too, the social gospel movement became a parallel religious movement with similar concerns. Erik Erikson’s psychological biography, strongly influenced by Emerson, further solidified the indispensability of modern liberalism for American politics and religion. Since the 1960s, modern liberalism began to fade as a reputable political or religious ideology. Biography in general, and most contemporary psychobiography in particular, has returned to the same methods of the pre-modern liberal era in American history known as the Gilded Age. Only recently, with psychobiographies from Robert S. Corrington, has ecstatic naturalism returned to its roots in tying personal loss and trauma to the political and religious health of the community. While other isolated examples exist, these psychobiographies mark the return of repressed methods that suggest radical changes for contemporary American political and religious communities.

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ECSTATIC NATURALISM’S CONCERN WITH LOSS, TRANSFORMATION, AND POLITICAL INFLUENCE The interest, even obsession, with loss, death, grief, or suffering in ecstatic naturalism begins with the claim that there are limits to what nature can do for us and that “salvation is a deeply fragmented and ambiguous concept.” 1 Nature, according to Corrington, does “not conform to our theological needs” 2 and therefore what traditional theological mechanisms there are to fix or alter loss, defect, or suffering are simply recognized to be self-congratulatory, products of narcissistic projection, and ultimately ineffective for dealing with or managing human error, tragic loss, or ostensible personality defect of any kind. Ecstatic naturalism seeks to open up new interpretive prospects in both the religious and political sphere. Emerson’s “Compensation” is, in my opinion, one of the main ideological precursors to ecstatic naturalism’s fascination with the uses of loss or suffering. Emerson’s essay is also a critique of poor, but commonly accepted, theological formulations: “Men are better than their theology. Their daily life gives it the lie.” 3 Emerson famously notes in this essay that “Our strength grows out of our weakness” 4 and that weakness Emerson speaks of is a willingness to accept the inexorable laws of nature; in so doing “I learn to be content” 5 as well as an ally of powerful forces that allow the character and the body to reach their peak of spiritual and psychological development. Reaching this peak of development has very real implications for the social and political order. According to Emerson: “A wise man will extend this lesson [of compensation] to all parts of life” 6 and “the history of persecution is a history of endeavors to cheat nature.” 7 Corrington’s frustrations with the limits or ambiguities of salvation dates far back in American religious and political philosophy and these ideas were foundational for American Christianities that absorbed the social gospel. In this very sense, ecstatic naturalism has been an unquantifiable source of ideological inspiration for movements that would lift America out of the Great Depression of the late 1920s and that would inspire the civil rights movement, among other memorable and proud moments, in American history. Throughout this chapter I will specifically examine the way in which ecstatic naturalist biographers and psychobiographers used a common method that deviated and continues to deviate from the historically popular methods and reasons Americans have written biography or psychobiography. While I will show that ecstatic naturalist writings and ideas have clearly influenced modern liberalism and social gospel movements alike, I will also show that there has and continues to be a relentless ideological resistance to both the central tenets of ecstatic naturalism in thought, and practical manifestation. Readers should note well that I am

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not suggesting that all policies expounded by, for instance, a politician who identifies as a liberal are ones that Corrington or any other ecstatic naturalist thinker would endorse. The movement itself and its inspiration are clearly wedded to ecstatic naturalists and their proclivities. THE COMMUNITY OF INTERPRETERS: THE SEEDS OF MODERN LIBERALISM AND SOCIAL GOSPEL IN ECSTATIC NATURALISM’S ORIGINS Robert Corrington’s work, The Community of Interpreters, connects the theological and philosophical concerns of Emerson, Pierce, Royce, and other interlocutors of ecstatic naturalism with the birth of modern liberalism and the social gospel movement. To begin to show this connection, it is worth discussing a debate which Corrington mentions in passing but which is illustrative of the connection I seek to establish. Corrington writes: “Royce advocates an absolutistic pragmatism that avoids the subjectivism and dualism of the kind of pragmatism practiced by William James.” 8 While Royce and James shared much in common, their disagreement really centered around differing approaches to doing metaphysics; their argument centered around which approach was more useful or pragmatic than the other. These two philosophical approaches were representative of the political movements in American society in the late 1800s and early 1900s. At the nexus point in that political debate was how to define American freedom, how to regulate commerce or not, what role government institutions should play in ostensibly limiting or refining individual freedoms, and specifically how to have community without snuffing the freedoms of individuals. Royce’s understanding of individuality and community, which were very influential on Corrington, served as an ideological bedrock of modern liberalism in America. Just as Pierce and Royce argue that “truth . . . cannot be won by one interpreter” 9 and that “all interpretation is interpretation for another” 10 and that “the community functions to undermine the more extreme forms of individualism,” 11 so too modern liberalism emphasizes the role of community as critical for establishing the grounds upon which individuals may find their free voice, their sense of self, and meaningful purpose in life. As Hedges so nicely defines modern liberalism: “Human institutions and government were seen as mechanisms that, under the right control, would inevitably better humankind.” 12 The social gospel movement was then directly linked to modern liberalism, as Hedges states: “Faith in human institutions was at the core of the Social Gospel.” 13 Royce’s understanding of community, articulated on the eve of the social gospel and modern liberalism movements, served as philosophical justification. Royce, like Emerson before him and Corrington to follow him, was not just articulating a new form of hermeneu-

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tics or how to be a Christian, but also—at the same exact time—how to solve practical American political and economic challenges within a community. It is no coincidence, therefore, that the biographical writings and psychobiographical writings of the ecstatic naturalists and early American pragmatists traced the evolution of a given self through challenges that forced individuals to reckon with the role of community in rescuing the self, transforming itself and providing it with the right psychosocial and practical means to rebirth. Corrington articulates this in the following manner: “The deconstruction of a meaning is as much an enrichment as the mere augmentation of a commonly accepted interpretation.” 14 In other words, the communicative and interpretive process of the community itself relies upon self exposure of loss, pain, joy, and all varieties of experiences that encompass the communal experience in order to sustain the community. Having been strongly influenced by Royce, Emerson, and others, Corrington lays out a hermeneutic framework that clearly emphasizes the importance of social institutions and communal engagement just like the social gospel movement and its corresponding part of modern American liberalism: Individual liberty does not constitute a sufficient condition for the hermeneutic community. Some form of conscious convergence must also prevail as the locus of future aspiration for the members of the social order. A democracy is not merely the sum total of liberated individuals but requires institutional and social convergence around shared values and goals. Without this common future the sign process would degenerate into a pluralistic cacophony of discordant and competing sounds. 15

Corrington’s influence on these movements is additionally clear in his emphasis on human dignity and that he sees no rigid dichotomy between individual freedom and the community’s trust and investment in political or social institutions that represent the mutual aspirations of a given community. This assumption rests on the loyalty of individuals and the community to commit to opening up “semiotic possibilities for others.” 16 Clearly the origins of ecstatic naturalism were the ideological seedbed for modern liberalism and the social gospel movement. The next task is to show how the early contributors to ecstatic naturalism wrote a different kind of biographical style and how this was linked to their politics as well as their metaphysics and hermeneutics.

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EMERSONIAN BIOGRAPHY TO ERIKSONIAN PSYCHOBIOGRAPHY: THE NATURALIST METHOD SPANNING THE BIRTH OF MODERN LIBERALISM AND SOCIAL GOSPEL UNTIL THEIR CONTEMPORARY DEMISE Emerson’s attraction to biographical writing began as a young boy, in all likelihood influenced by surrounding American cultural interests in biography. According to Roberson: “From the first, Americans looked at their history as biography, confusing fact and fiction and creating, or re-creating, history as myth.” 17 Additionally, the industrial growth of the midnineteenth century spurred even greater interests in biography among Americans: As it became more apparent that America’s greatness and identity lay in its potential for prosperity and material success, writers turned their attention to the problem of attaining prosperity while at the same time maintaining virtue. . . . These advisors . . . encouraged their audiences to imitate men of the past. 18

Early American biographers were obsessed with usefulness, self-improvement, and instilling moral virtue, according to Roberson. 19 Emerson’s early interests in biography reflected these greater cultural sympathies or leanings. As Roberson notes: “Like the writers of the early republic, young Emerson was concerned with the individual’s role in society and often chose as heroic types those who benefited mankind, affirming rather than transforming society and the social man.” 20 Only later, when Emerson would experience the loss of his first wife, choose to exit from the Unitarian ministry, and become close friends with Thomas Carlyle, would his interests in biography shift. It was during this shift that Emerson began to create a different kind of hero “whose resource is his own self trust rather than particular and external talents or feats of strength.” 21 Such a shift in interests shows a solidification of Emerson’s autonomy as well as a divergence from the moral value of accumulating vast amounts of financial wealth for oneself. The figures that Emerson chose to study expose their personal weaknesses as these are essential to self understanding and the figures also became “more and more personal” 22 or relevant for Emerson, showing that Emerson’s interests in and use of biography extended beyond material gain. Though Roberson does not say it, Emerson was in all likelihood consciously meeting his own psychological needs in his scholarly writing as well as making a political statement that he was very much interested in rebelling against the individualistic economic ethos of the industrial period. Emerson was firstly enjoying the free exercise of his autonomous will and secondly attempting to come to terms with the risks and exposed weaknesses this imposed on him—financial, personal, and professional. On a personal level, Emerson was realizing what Corrington

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would note years later—namely, that Emerson was developing a communal interpretive hermeneutics via biographical writing that provided the ideological seedbed for modern liberalism as a distinct alternative to the emphasis on the self-made man of the Industrial Revolution. The closest Roberson comes to offering agreement to this is through examining Emerson’s self-perceptions of his masculinity and how it developed from his pre- to post-ministerial career. Before leaving the ministry, “Manliness, eloquence, and the ministry are conflated by the Emerson of 1823 and 1824.” 23 Later on “he would become empowered [masculinized] not by putting on the ministerial robes, but by putting on the mantle of biography.” 24 Here we bear witness to a shift that Corrington analyzes in its mature form, namely Emerson’s hermeneutical focus on interpreting nature rather than any kind of sacred scripture: “Nature, as the outer form of Spirit, contains all moral and religious truths and presents them in a form that is universal and free from the cultic and tribal limitations of the biblical writers.” 25 Biography, for the ex-minister Emerson, was therefore a means of instruction in understanding compensation and self-reliance, as well as understanding metaphysics and practicing his hermeneutics, with greater precision and depth. In writing about the lives of others, Emerson had begun to articulate his understanding of expressive individualism, which was a means to achieving personal freedom while enhancing loyalty and commitment to the social and political community. Like Emerson, Erik Erikson was far more interested in the struggles and weaknesses of great or representative figures rather than adding to an already overwhelmingly loud chorus chanting the greatnesses of historical legends and their individualistic or manly achievements. For both Emerson and for Erikson, the tendency to lose sight of the psychological struggles, the material struggles, and any other form of pain or discord faced by a historical figure was a way for society to avoid claiming responsibility for some of its most undesirable traits such as its ruthlessness or lack of concern for acts of disloyalty made in the interpretive process. Thus, from the perspectives of Emerson and Erikson, the main forms biography had taken in American history were the kinds of acts of disloyalty which Corrington expounds on. For Emerson and Erikson, these cases of American legend inspire amnesia, disloyalty, and isolation; both sought to remedy this through a method of biographical writing that would eventually be called psychological biography. Emerson and Erikson sought to critique societal legends and to unsettle their readership by examining the trials and weaknesses of prominent social figures, often religious ones. A second commonality that Emerson and Erikson shared in their method of biographical writing was the assumption both had that individual acts and joys as well as sufferings have communal consequences. Therefore for both writers it was really impossible to write biography

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that was not contextualized and that did not at least make some kind of attempt to tie the individual’s life into the struggles of the larger social, religious, and political community. Emerson did this with numerous figures, such as Napoleon. Erikson is most well remembered for his psychobiographical portraits of Luther and Gandhi. A third commonality that Emerson and Erikson shared in their biographical writings was an unquestionable belief in the need to idealize figures one finds heroic or worthy of idealization, typically because the reader identifies with some sort of shared (usually traumatic) experience. A number of scholars such as Homans and Jones have called Erikson to account for this, going so far as to say his entire psychology of religion rests upon a positive understanding of idealization. Erikson did have enough skepticism regarding the power of idealization to sufficiently dodge this criticism, but if this criticism can be applied to Erikson it can also surely be applied to Emerson as well. Both Emerson and Erikson did forcefully argue that their interests in biography rested upon a desire to idealize the figures they wrote about, but these idealizations always occurred in conjunction with frank discussions on the figures’ weaknesses. As such, their works were never jeopardized by careless assertion or gross miscalculation—as was mentioned previously, both Emerson and Erikson sought to move beyond the style of legendary biography that had occupied the American biographical imagination for a significant part of its early history; unfortunately, this form of quotidian biographical writing that is at odds with the hermeneutics and metaphysics expounded by the early ecstatic naturalists remains alive. RENEWING THE FOCUS ON THE INTERPRETIVE COMMUNITY Both Emerson and Erikson were portraitists whose biographical method rested upon empathy with their figure and a keen interest in the psychosocial challenges they faced. As such, both were interested in cultural criticism as well as self-medicating for their own psychological ailments and life cycle challenges. Both sought to popularize a style of biographical writing that was decidedly at odds with the historic biographical styles written in previous American history that focused on character flawlessness and moral probity, along with financial advancement and material gain. On the contrary, Emerson and Erikson exposed the loneliness, the psychological pain, and the social torment experienced by popular religious and political leaders. They both considered their methodological style to be a form of protest—against the grain of the majority of biographies written by other American writers and against the quality controls of the moral and scholastic majority of their time and place. In this process, they both created a new method (psychological biography) and a new quality standard based upon empathic portraiture.

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Today there is a representative minority of writers of psychological biography who continue in the same method used by Erikson and Emerson, such as Robert S. Corrington. Corrington’s psychological biography of Wilhelm Reich focuses closely on a figure’s experiences of loss and how those experiences tied into their subsequent personality transformations. Those personality transformations are critical to assess because they have an enormous impact on the figure’s social, political, or religious leadership. In the case of Corrington’s work on Reich, Corrington manages to mine the intricacies of Reich’s much misunderstood thinking on human sexuality and its relationship to theology and political order. For example, throughout this book Corrington connects Reich’s subversive psychology and writings on sexuality with Reich’s interpretation of politics. Corrington shows that the psychology of the figure under study and the advances they make in the political realm go hand in hand; my work on Emerson does the same. 26 In doing so, Corrington demonstrates the import of the very principles of ecstatic naturalism that he outlines in his entire collected work, but notably through analyzing the lived experiences of Reich and the subtle nuances of his developing personality in context. Just as Emerson and Erikson’s works were crucial to the society and times in which they lived, so too future American psychological biography that embraces ecstatic naturalist principles will remain a vital voice of protest. Corrington’s preface to his book on Reich begins with a discussion of the casual and inaccurate psychological diagnoses that Reich dealt with in his life. While Corrington does not state it this frankly, I see these caricatures of Reich and his work to be indicative of a malignant social psychology at work against Reich to make him a kind of straw man so as to avoid the radical ideas that he articulated. Corrington sensitively contextualizes these diagnoses in the midst of world events and in the midst of Reich’s own willingness to engage in radical experimentation. Similar to Emerson and Erikson, Corrington attempts to engage the figure with greater sensitivity than anyone previous: “Given the astonishing distortions that have been imposed upon his work, it is once again time to do a very careful textual reading of his pertinent major and minor writings so as to rescue them both from the encrustations of history and from the willful distortions of the psychoanalytic establishment.” 27 As Emerson and Erikson have shown, the best individual to do this difficult job is one who has a real and profound connection to this figure over some extensive course of time and is also aware of the transferences that exist with the figure under study. Corrington writes of his relationship to Reich with some profound insight, as he has been interested in Reich for several decades before writing this book. Corrington writes: “This author was to be the second great depth psychologist in my life [next to Jung], although one who would continue to puzzle me and for whom I would develop, as he would have predicted, a kind of latent

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negative transference, namely, a largely unconscious resistance to the growing identification with a parental figure.” 28 Corrington continues on to state that the main reason Reich frightened him was because Reich’s internal conflicts and ambitious studies were impossible to internalize or separate from larger political and social realities: “Reich’s [transgressive ideas] were external and had interpersonal and social implications.” 29 Here Corrington bravely follows in the steps of psychobiographers like Erikson and Emerson in demonstrating that what was most personal for the author (the latent negative transference) was likely tied in some way to the malignant social psychological treatment Reich received from the public. Corrington’s words echo Erikson’s personal remarks to Gandhi: “None of us has a right to foreclose as evil, sick, or doomed what we have not confronted in a radical spirit of risk and experiment.” 30 This is not only the ethics of any reputable psychoanalysis, it was at the core of Gandhi’s Satyagraha, and it also is at the core of Corrington’s ecstatic naturalism. It is the critical element to opening up interpretive possibility; these are some of the specific markers that are lacking in Schultz, McAdams, and Kasser’s contemporary psychobiographies. Not coincidentally, therefore, Corrington re-examines Reich’s ideas in his critically important chapters on selving and communal vistas in Nature’s Sublime. One could surmise that part of why these chapters and this book even exist is because of Corrington’s courageous willingness to examine Reich in such detail. Reich’s concern with the ways in which we limit or place proscriptions on pleasure is, for Corrington, directly tied to the semiotics that have emerged and are attempting to emerge in various communities. Reich’s Christ was so offensive to so many precisely because Reich could only believe in or feel a connection to a Christ who was emotionally and psychologically healthy (as Reich defined these terms in relation to armoring). Reich simply could not connect to any antiquated semiotics or theological system that portrayed Christ’s person and work under the rubric of submission, tolerance of pain, and fulfillment of a supernatural plan ordained by a God dissociated from the realm of nature. Having lived through the horrors of Nazi Germany and having witnessed the overall failure of the Christian Church to stand up to Hitler, Reich’s ideological system and psychopolitical insights are (from my perspective) fully validated. It would be virtually impossible to argue otherwise. It is furthermore critical for readers interested in ecstatic naturalism to pay close attention to Corrington’s use of Reich in Nature’s Sublime, as Corrington integrates the much-maligned Reich into theoretical conversation with the likes of Kohut and other psychoanalytic thinkers. Corrington does this in such a seamless way as to broach the question of why Reich was so maligned to begin with. The answer, found in Corrington’s psychobiography of Reich, is that Reich found himself unluckily at the

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nexus of a number of forces beyond his control. His thinking verged from the psychoanalytic orthodoxy at a period in psychoanalysis where this was an unforgivable sin; he also tackled social, political, and theological topics from a subversive angle (i.e., he made note of the real, the corporeal and the obscene) that would make him the enemy of churches, politicians, and any institution or person that makes their bread off of the illusion of apotheosis. Reich’s early experiences of loss are intricately and sensitively examined by Corrington, and readers get a sense of connections here that make the hearing of Reich’s later radical experimentation far more palatable. For example, I think readers get a sense of the connection between Reich’s feeling responsible for his mother’s suicide 31 and his enjoyment of a martyr complex in later life. 32 Reich was unable to consciously absolve himself of his mother’s loss and this paved the way for his experiments on selfhood and willingness to offer himself as a sacrifice on the altar of social psychological and political experimentation to bring about a more just and aware social order. Reich’s critique of fascism emerges in Corrington’s chapter on communal vistas in Nature’s Sublime where Corrington correctly argues that “the demonic genius of fascism is that it already has the key ingredients in place in the natural community and the patriarchal family as its instrument.” 33 In this chapter and in this work, Corrington applies Reich’s insights to the challenges we face today in our global society with all of its social ills. Corrington’s psychobiography is, therefore, a perfect example of the development of ecstatic naturalism in American psychological biography. It inspires investigation into the figures, like Reich, who are deeply complex and very much misunderstood whether they are celebrated or not. These psychological biographies enrich our communities and force us to confront the inadequacies of theological frameworks, sexual education of the young, and political policies, among other things. The writing and reading of these works informed by the ecstatic naturalist perspective also makes our lives less lonely and more meaningful. CONCLUSION: POLITICAL CRITERIA IN THE CONTEMPORARY KNOWLEDGE ECONOMY FOR RECEIVING ECSTATIC NATURALIST SCHOLARSHIP The contexts that made Emerson and Erikson memorable were ones that were rife with socio-political conflict. As Emerson and Erikson, among others, struggled with the question of what it meant to be an American, they were also working out their own personal identities and how to be authentic. The answers they came up with seized the imagination of many and helped forge a socio-political ideology of modern liberalism that some might argue saved the nation.

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Why should not the same be true today? A critical difference resides in the power of the written word and the way in which information is received and processed today as opposed to the turn of the twentieth century. Psychobiographers today, especially of the ecstatic naturalist camp, do emphasize the relationship between personal weakness and vulnerability to political crisis and struggle in the social order, however they are often unable to publish their work. This is because to write in such a manner violates much of the code of acceptable scholarship as it is defined by publishers and the academic disciplines that are prioritized over philosophy and religious studies. Ironically, in a world of great flux mirrored in academic departments across the country and a world that emphasizes interdisciplinarity, there is an equally powerful force to categorize and market products to audiences with distinct traits that can be quantified and measured. Publishers must do this in order to insure against losses in an incredibly volatile market and extremely poor book industry. Interdisciplinary psychobiography, which is a great way to describe psychobiography influenced by ecstatic naturalism, will be difficult to identify to one specific audience that has measured interest in a given author or figure that that author is attempting to study. This means that the current Gilded Age we are in has marked differences from the first, mainly centering around advances in technology. I would argue that the distinction may be found in the way information today is processed (visual over written word), so as to limit interpretive possibilities and achievements in the arts or sciences that would threaten the gilded values of rampant individualism and ever-increasing gaps between social classes. This difference directly impacts the viability of psychobiographers influenced by ecstatic naturalism to carry out their work in this methodology. In order to do so, they will have to either select figures with wide ranging attraction in the marketplace (such as Emerson) or they will have to disguise their work in some other kind of discipline, such as intellectual history or philosophy, which Corrington’s psychobiography on Reich could be disguised and marketed as. Either way, I shall press on guided by the metaphysics and hermeneutics of the ecstatic naturalists past and present. NOTES 1. Robert Corrington, Nature’s Religion (Lanham, MD and Oxford, England: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 1997), 2. 2. Corrington, Nature’s Religion, 2. 3. Ralph Waldo Emerson, “On Compensation,” in The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, ed. Brooks Atkinson (New York: Modern Library, 2000), 155. Original published in 1841. 4. Emerson, “On Compensation,” 166. 5. Emerson, “On Compensation,” 168.

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6. Emerson, “On Compensation,” 164. 7. Emerson, “On Compensation,” 167. 8. Robert Corrington, The Community of Interpreters: On The Hermeneutics of Nature and The Bible in The American Philosophical Tradition (Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1987), 24. 9. Corrington, The Community of Interpreters, 11. 10. Corrington, The Community of Interpreters, 41. 11. Corrington, The Community of Interpreters, 77. 12. Chris Hedges, Death of The Liberal Class (New York: Nation Books, 2010), 84. 13. Hedges, Death, 84. 14. Corrington, The Community of Interpreters, 52. 15. Corrington, The Community of Interpreters, 58. 16. Corrington, The Community of Interpreters, 58. 17. Susan L. Roberson, Emerson in His Sermons: A Man Made Self (Columbia, MO and London, England: University of Missouri Press, 1995), 161. 18. Roberson, Emerson in His Sermons, 161. 19. Roberson, Emerson in His Sermons, 164. 20. Roberson, Emerson in His Sermons, 172. 21. Roberson, Emerson in His Sermons, 176. 22. Roberson, Emerson in His Sermons, 176. 23. Roberson, Emerson in His Sermons, 177. 24. Roberson, Emerson in His Sermons, 177. 25. Corrington, The Community of Interpreters, 89. 26. The thesis of this chapter is consistent with insights I derived from my research on Emerson while I wrote a psychobiography of Emerson and was also teaching American history courses at John Jay College (CUNY). 27. Robert Corrington, Wilhelm Reich: Psychoanalyst and Radical Naturalist (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003), xi. 28. Corrington, Wilhelm Reich, xiii. 29. Corrington, Wilhelm Reich, xiii. 30. Erikson, Gandhi’s Truth, 250. 31. Corrington, Wilhelm Reich, 7. 32. Corrington, Wilhelm Reich, 11. 33. Robert Corrington, Nature’s Sublime: An Essay in Aesthetic Naturalism (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2013), 106.

REFERENCES Capps, Donald. The Decades of Life: A Guide to Human Development. Louisville, KY and London, England: Westminster John Knox Press, 2008. Corrington, Robert S. The Community of Interpreters: On The Hermeneutics of Nature and The Bible in The American Philosophical Tradition. Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1987. ———. Nature’s Religion. Lanham, MD and Oxford, England: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, Inc., 1997. ———. Wilhelm Reich: Psychoanalyst and Radical Naturalist. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2003. ———. Nature’s Sublime: An Essay in Aesthetic Naturalism. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2013. Emerson, Ralph Waldo. “On Compensation.” In The Essential Writingsof Ralph Waldo Emerson, edited by Brooks Atkinson, 154-171. New York: The Modern Library, 2000. Original published in 1841. ———. Representative Men: Seven Lectures. Boston: Phillips, Sampson and Co., 1850.

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———. “Napoleon; Or, The Man of The World.” In The Essential Writings of Ralph Waldo Emerson, edited by Brooks Atkinson, 449-468. New York: The Modern Library, 2000. Original published in 1850. ———. Representative Men. Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 1996. Original published in 1850. Erikson, Erik H. Childhood and Society. New York and London: W.W. Norton and Co., 1950. ———. Young Man Luther: A Study in Psychoanalysis and History. New York: W.W. Norton & Co., 1958. ———. Gandhi’s Truth: On the Origins of Militant Non-Violence. New York and London: W.W. Norton & Co., 1969. Freud, Sigmund. New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis. New York: W.W. Norton, 1989. Original published in 1933. Hedges, Chris. Death of The Liberal Class. New York: Nation Books, 2010. Homans, Peter. “The Significance of Erikson’s Psychology for Modern Understandings of Religion.” In Childhood and Selfhood: Essays on Tradition, Religion, and Modernity in the Psychology of Erik H. Erikson, edited by Peter Homans, 231-263. Lewisburg, PA: Bucknell University Press, 1978. Kramp, Joseph M. Ralph Waldo Emerson: A Psychological Biography. Lewiston, NY and Lampeter, Wales: The Edwin Mellen Press, 2014. McAdams, Dan P. George W. Bush and The Redemptive Dream: A Psychological Portrait. New York: Oxford University Press, 2011. Phillips, Adam. Darwin’s Worms: On Life Stories and Death Stories. New York, NY: Basic Books, 2000. Roberson, Susan L. Emerson in His Sermons: A Man Made Self. Columbia, MO and London, England: University of Missouri Press, 1995. Schultz, William T. “Introducing Psychobiography.” In Handbook of Psychobiography, edited by William T. Schultz, 3-18. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.

EIGHT Robert Corrington’s Ecstatic Naturalism and the Social Construction of Reality Wesley J. Wildman

INTRODUCTION N. Scott Momaday is one of the great contemporary American writers, a Kiowa-Cherokee who won the Pulitzer Prize for his breakthrough 1968 novel House Made of Dawn. In Ken Burns’s majestic documentary The West, Momaday describes the American West in the following intriguing terms: “To the Native American, it’s full of sacred realities, powerful things. It’s a landscape that has to be seen to be believed. And I say on occasion it may have to be believed in order to be seen.” The second half of this provocative maxim, I believe, receives insufficient attention in Robert Corrington’s ecstatic naturalism. Corrington describes the encounter with nature and its impact on our beliefs about reality in compelling and moving terms: we see it and then we believe it. But nature’s sacred folds must also be believed to be seen— these special places must be socially constructed as special to become cognizable as sacred. It is not that sacredness is wholly a way of seeing, as if there were no axiological depths and flows of nature to confront. But neither is the axiological presentation of nature so decisively spatially and temporally structured that it unambiguously overflows with meaning in one situation and not in another. Rather, the sacredness of nature is a collaborative hermeneutical achievement, with nature and conscious social interpreters contributing their distinctive forms of creative genius. Emphasizing one side of this collaboration at the expense of the other 89

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inevitably leads to a reductionistic and ultimately misleading account of sacred nature. In this chapter I argue that Corrington’s ecstatic naturalism favors one side of this collaborative hermeneutical venture at the expense of the other, thereby underplaying the social construction of reality, overemphasizing the self-interpreting quality of natural complexes, and positing greater structuralist consistency in human experience of the natural world than is actually present. I argue that the proximate sources of this one-sidedness of interpretation are an allergy to the influence on modern thought of Immanuel Kant’s categories of the understanding and an overreaction to the tireless and seemingly timeless tendency of religious interpreters to mistake their longings toward ultimacy for the thing itself. I further argue that the ultimate sources of this one-sidedness of interpretation are diagnosable and correctable by paying attention to the findings of the scientific study of religion, particularly the social construction of reality. Ecstatic naturalism is an important variety of religiously and axiologically non-reductive naturalism. Corrington’s view deserves careful analysis and evaluation in light of many fields, including the theoretical edifice of the social construction of reality, which is the source of illumination for this essay. While this particular aspect of the scientific study of religion does not have the final say on religion or psychology or metaphysics, it has proved to be a fertile conversation partner for all manner of interpretations of religiously relevant themes and it is an intriguing exercise to assess Corrington’s ecstatic naturalism through its lens. ECSTATIC NATURALISM: FOLDS, INTERVALS, GROUND Just about the most succinct statement I have read of Corrington’s ecstatic naturalism is included in the introductory material for the First Annual Congress on Ecstatic Naturalism: An ecstatic naturalism is a perspective that seeks to move toward an aesthetic phenomenology of nature’s “sacred folds”—special centers of numinous meaning and power that may be found throughout nature. . . . From nature’s sacred folds emerges a fierce self-othering, nature naturing, where “it” moves ecstatically ejecting semiotically dense momenta. Nature naturing is the inexhaustible well of nature’s atemporal creating underconscious. 1

There is something magnificent about Corrington’s prose when he is describing nature naturing as manifest in sacred folds. He recklessly plunders other realms of experience to cobble together a poetics of indirection that coheres and becomes beautiful after absorption and reflection. So we read here juxtaposed images of numinosity, power, finding, pervasiveness, emergence, ferocity, self-othering, ecstasis, ejection, semi-

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osis, density, momentum, inexhaustibility, wells, atemporality, creation, and the underconscious—and that is just in a couple of sentences. Corrington transforms the mixed metaphor into a blessed tool for phenomenology and metaphysics. I take this to be not merely a literary accomplishment but a philosophical triumph, forging a conceptual web of expression to draw our attention to elements of experience that all too easily escape our attention. We find in this description, and throughout Corrington’s writings, a realist depiction of the objectivity of the inexhaustible creativity of nature naturing as it ejects semiotically dense momenta into and through sacred folds. 2 Corrington’s description of these ejects and our role in their reception is phenomenologically sound. They are indeed semiotically dense, beyond the threshold of ready intelligibility, and thus they shatter into perspectival shards upon reception. Their semiotically impossibly dense momenta are amplified by the projective fields that mark the interaction between, on the one hand, the unconscious-conscious dynamics of every human life and their analogues in the creative chasm dividing the unruly fecundity of nature naturing and, on the other hand, the manifest orders of nature natured. This is just right as a description of the most intense forms of the human encounter with ultimacy. Any apophatically inclined philosophical theologian, which is what I am, rejoices to have such flexible and robust conceptual resources at his or her imaginative fingertips. I doubt there has ever been a psychodynamically more intuitive reading of the way projective fields intensify and distort the human reception of semiotic density in the sacred fold. Sigmund Freud’s The Future of an Illusion seems simplistic by comparison. Unlike a host of philosophical theologians before him, Corrington refuses to oversimplify or understate the power of projective longing in interpretations of sacred encounters. In this respect, Corrington is an impeccable student of the scientific study of religion: he makes the most of the lessons he learned at the feet of the great analysts of the human underconscious and its unstable yet potent ejects into conscious feeling and understanding. Even Paul Tillich, who shared these same intuitions, never achieved anything remotely approaching Corrington’s depth and subtlety when striving to describe these processes. In fact, Tillich’s efforts to develop a theology of nature in the third volume of his Systematic Theology are little more than shy gestures when compared to Corrington. 3 Corrington also gives intervals between and around sacred folds their due, and not merely as empty spaces whose significance derives wholly from the way sacred folds interrupt them. Invoking Justus Buchler’s principle of ontological parity, Corrington insists that the interval is as real as the fold, without thereby trivializing their differences. 4 The interval humbles the interpretative grandiosity prompted by the fold. Like a semiotic black hole that absorbs meanings and stresses energetic structures to the breaking point, the interval tames and critiques insights derived from

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sacred folds. Because of this, the presence of an interval facilitates the accurate interpretation of the semiotic momenta ejected in sacred folds. In spatial and temporal intervals we see that our sacred place is not the only sacred place, that our pregnant moment of opportunity also marks the end of someone else’s dreams, that our cognitive and emotional captivity to the manic energy of participation in a sacred fold can and should yield to a patient parsing of meanings across a host of phenomenological data points. Beneath it all there is the unruly ground. A careful reader of Corrington gets the sense that he feels jittery reading a lot of philosophical theology, annoyed at the careless handling of human projective longing as it happily distorts the nature of nature, first taming it, then making it useful for the projects of social life and civilization building, and finally customizing it for the avoidance of cognitive dissonance—an energy-saving protocol that all civilization-building projects demand. This brutal twisting of the truth offends his ecstatic naturalist piety. First it trivializes the momentous by “theorizing evil” and by pretending, with fairy-tale innocence, that there is no chasm between the unruly ground and the orders of nature that it ejects. Then it invests great moment in the trivial through misjudging the presence of pattern in natural processes in preparation for succumbing to the greatest of all human pretenses, supposing with delirious, delicious confidence that there is rational and moral purpose behind it all. We picture Corrington, now thoroughly nauseated by the repetition of the same suite of careless errors, about to collapse onto the couch, there to refresh himself with aromatherapy while swearing off philosophical theology forever. And then along comes a Benedict Spinoza, a Friedrich Schelling, an Arthur Schopenhauer, or one of a small handful of other thinkers. At last we sense Corrington’s restlessness yield to relaxation. These saints of the phenomenology of the unruly ground feel what he feels, complain the way he complains, and like him fight in vain against the tsunamis of human delusion. He knows he is not alone after all, that he speaks from a minority position of great integrity, and that his philosophical calling is honorable. This resoluteness in the face of the tragically deluded confidence of the brightly lit topside of all theological traditions bespeaks courage, in one respect, but perhaps also a kind of resentful outrage—an outrage possessing an energy that only violated piety can ever really muster. One senses this ressentiment lurking when Corrington tries to explain Schelling’s and Schopenhauer’s imperfections by blaming them on Kant’s influence. The primary and rather pervasive defect of both thinkers lies in their ensnarement in the Kantian epistemological framework, a perspective that has done as much damage to the aspirations of a healthy naturalism as any in the tradition. Our contemporary neoKantianism, which

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privileges the manipulative over the assimilative aspect of semiosis, has put nature into eclipse and has been one of the primary mechanisms by which the postmodern narcissistic self has protected itself against genuine (rather than paper) otherness. Insofar as grounds remain viable for the neoKantian self, they are self-legislated categorical projections that give the self the illusion that it rests on something other than desire. 5

There is considerable wisdom in this analysis of Kant’s influence. Kant’s categories of the understanding, his view of the imagination, and his relegation of God, freedom, and immortality to regulative ideas or postulates of moral reasoning does indeed deflate nature’s potent ejects in the name of epistemological modesty—one senses that the phrase of LeRon Shults, “epistemic prudery,” would be equally apt. 6 One of Kant’s impacts was certainly to magnify the constitutive (Corrington calls it “manipulative”!) element of interpretation, at the expense of the receptive (Corrington calls it “assimilative”) element. And ontological grounds for Kant are indeed categorical projections or rational postulates justified by their supposed necessity for making sense of human reason and experience. What a dressing down Kant gave to nature, in his attempt to properly establish metaphysics! And how tidy and properly Königsburg-like the result! This is a far cry from the unruly ground whose semiotic ejects are unfathomably present in sacred folds, filling us with manic energy, flooding us with surplus meaning, spawning exquisite entanglements of joy and despair, and serving up gloriously chaotic semiotic momenta for eager selection, fragmentation, magnification, and consumption in the projective fields we bring to their reception. THE UNRULY GROUND IN COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE If one allows oneself to be thoroughly seduced by Corrington’s depiction of the unruly ground that spontaneously ejects the orders of nature along with their delicious disruptions—and I have tried—Kant’s metaphysics comes to seem oddly and perversely austere. Even Robert Neville’s creation ex nihilo metaphysics, with its Crazy Yahweh theism conjoined with its thoroughly atheistic realism about there being no determinate contrast to being, can seem weirdly serene by contrast to Corrington’s vision. 7 Over the years, if Kant has been Corrington’s philosophical nemesis, Neville has been the ghost that haunts him, a religious naturalist whose crystalline conception of ultimate reality contrasts with the unruly depths that Corrington so highly prizes. The contrast illuminates what most matters metaphysically to Corrington. Imagine the Great Gallery of Metaphysical Fantasies. Standing before Neville’s contribution, as it hangs there on the wall, we are confronted with the artistic portrayal of an eternal creative act-without-an-agent that

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yields both a determinate created reality and a creator God as ontological ground of that reality. We are intrigued by the idea that there cannot be a God apart from everything determinate so we are deeply impressed by how fundamental is the solution to the problem of the One and the Many that Neville depicts with his eternal creative act. A more fundamental solution is, in fact, logically impossible. We are captivated by how rational this vision of reality is: not rational in the sense of springing from a divine mind but rational in the all-important sense of construing all parts of reality together in one theoretic vision. We are amazed at the fact that such a view could be rendered consistent with any other alternative view of ultimate reality, so long as that which is made determinate in the eternal creative act is precisely what the alternative view postulates. Whiteheadian cosmoi, pratītya-samutpāda visions, and even supernatural personal theism are all consistent elaborations of Neville’s ex nihilo framework, though Neville goes his own way as he elaborates a tractable crazy-Yahweh theology from his ex nihilo theory of the eternal creative act. In due course this vision of multiple compatibility drives us to wonder what we get from the idea of an eternal creative act-without-an-agent that makes any difference to life as we live it. So long as we confine ourselves to this creation ex nihilo phase of Neville’s metaphysics, the ex nihilo framework eventually takes aesthetic shape as the perfectly neutral host, infinitely polite toward many less expansive and more robustly opinionated metaphysical visions, and telling us nothing about nature as such, nor about God as such. Everything remains to be said (and Neville himself goes on to say many things, employing premises not present in the ex nihilo metaphysics itself). What an amazing accomplishment! How serenely indifferent to the mighty struggles of less general and more colorful metaphysical visions! How effortlessly it assimilates, Borg-like, every alternative metaphysical account into its view of the God-world relation! How perfectly jewel-like, eternally pristine. Blissfully elated, and yet oddly far from sated, we feel an aesthetic tug for something more debased. We turn to our right and behold a mural wall full of the most violently vibrant images depicting one possible way in which reality might in fact be determined in Neville’s eternal creative act. It is not what Neville predicts but his creation ex nihilo theory by itself can’t rule it out, either. Here we see Corrington’s picture of nature naturing ejecting into and through nature’s sacred folds, yielding the orders of nature in conflicted, semi-rational, and sometimes obsequiously well-organized ways. This is reality wholly unscaled to human interests and yet incorrigibly seducing one after another of us through appeal to our projective longings—all this before deconstructing every moment of manic empowerment with the relentless juxtaposition of alternative semiotic trajectories, which come to us in the calm moments of the interval. The mural tries to conjure the chasm that these experiences under the tsunamic onslaught of semiotic density seem to demand: the chasm between

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nature naturing, which never hides and yet is never available for rational assimilation, and nature natured, which testifies in its manifold orders and disruptions to its character as always and only ejected from an unruly ground. We know Neville’s jewel lies just in the periphery of our vision and yet we can’t tear our eyes away from Corrington’s magnificent depiction of the chaotic underconscious of nature pressing into joyful, abysmal manifestation. At the end of his extraordinary foreword to Corrington’s Nature’s Religion, Neville expresses his disagreement in a poignant way: “Can we give thanks to the Ground for the brief life of a dead child? Corrington says no and I say yes.” 8 But Corrington does not say no. His depiction of nature’s grace and cosmic jouissance opens the possibility of offering heart-felt thanks to the unruly ground for the brief life of a dead child. And Neville’s “yes” derives from another phase of his metaphysics, whereas his ex nihilo doctrine, considered by itself, cannot settle the question either way, yes or no. Just as Corrington is appalled by Kant’s demotion of nature to a side story in the sacred life of our species, so he seems to be profoundly wary of Neville’s all-too-neat ex nihilo backdrop for the drama of human life, which somehow neutralizes nature, along with our joyous and tragic engagements with it. Jointly, though in very different ways, Kant and Neville appear to drive Corrington back to nature, decrying the agnosticism of the Kantian construction of reality and the neutrality of Nevillian ex nihilo metaphysics, and embracing the unruly ground of everything as the last word to be spoken. THE SOCIAL CONSTRUCTION OF REALITY AND METAPHYSICS Given his hearty grasp of nature, it makes sense that Corrington would deeply engage the science, especially the sciences of human experience, human sociality, and religion. In fact, Corrington has an ambivalent relation to these sciences, especially as they affect religion and metaphysics. On the one hand, he thoroughly absorbs and even extends the idea of projection, gifting us with the idea of a projective field through which we engage, amplify, and become ecstatically overwhelmed by semiotic momenta arcing through and from sacred folds. No philosophical theologian has ever presented a richer or more honest appraisal of human longing and its opportunities and distortions. Corrington also seems alert to our tendency to hyperactive agency detection, which has become so important in recent theories of the origins of religion, and especially of the origins of belief in supernatural religious agents. He does not name it in these terms but he instinctively recognizes our tendency to see patterns where there are none and to attribute intentionality and agency where none is operative. Indeed, he makes hearty use of this insight to explain the human insatiability for gods and God. In these respects, Corrington

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seems highly attuned to what has emerged in the last century or so about cognitive biases in human beings. On the other hand, Corrington seems less well versed in, or perhaps less convinced by, other domains of the scientific study of religion, and the social construction of reality in particular. My main critique of Corrington’s metaphysics, especially his concept of sacred folds, is at this precise point: his incomplete engagement with the social construction of reality. From Émile Durkheim through Peter Berger to varieties of poststructuralism and beyond, there has been adduced powerful evidence that human beings create a social reality in such a way that (1) it orients individuals to their identity and obligations, (2) it operates smoothly when its artificial character is not recognized, (3) it cosmologizes itself in religious narratives and practices in order to deflect the inevitable arising of dangerous cognitive dissonance, and (4) it preserves itself through the religious exercise of ritual and social control. This social construction of reality is not completely relativistic; it can accept that there might be structural commonalities across cultures and even universal features of human cognition and culture—indeed, the social construction of reality itself is one such cultural universal with numerous implications for more fine-tuned cognitive and emotional universals. It follows that the social construction of reality when properly developed need not be liable to the critique Corrington levels against Kant, which I quoted above; it can still be a realistic approach to nature’s power and need not reduce nature’s ground to a mere rational postulate. Despite this promise of congeniality to robust realism in accounts of nature and its ground—virtues that Corrington clearly prizes—Corrington does not give the social construction of reality its due. In one vital way, Corrington’s thought embodies a persistent refusal to acknowledge the central claims of the social construction of reality, and does so without an effective argument to justify the move made. This unjustified resistance to the social construction of reality is supported by a risky bet on phenomenology’s capacity to tell us what nature is—in itself and to a significant degree apart from any construal of it that arises through the projective fields by which we engage it. So where is the problem? In a nutshell, the problem is that Corrington knows too much about where and when sacred folds arise and allows too little for the way that human beings participate in constituting them as sacred and as folds. He locates the superfluity of signification in sacred folds, regarding them as nature naturing’s ejects, springing forth from the unruly ground. They are where they are in time and space and not elsewhere. Nature naturing spews its creative testimony to creativity whether we notice it or not, indeed whether we exist or not. Corrington takes with great seriousness the imaginative and creative ways by which human beings receive the manifestations of power in ecstasy, magnified and

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distorted by projective fields. But he says almost nothing about the sacred folds we build—and this is the all-important insight of the social construction of reality. We help to constitute the sacred; we don’t just discover it. We create venues for ecstasy; we are not just grasped by ecstatic power from out of the blue. Whether we create them or we stumble across them—and it is probably both at once in most cases—we encounter with thankfulness these awesome manifestations of nature’s depths, with perspectivally fractured testimony, and with superfluity of meaning channeled through the structures of our own underconscious, as those dark structures limn the interstitial spaces of the underconscious of nature itself. Can Corrington really be right, despite the power of the explanatory framework deriving from the social construction of reality? Within the tradition of ecstatic naturalists, there has been a slightly reticent subtradition of hermeneutically locating our contribution to intense experiences wholly on the side of reception, and not at all on the side of constituting these moments of revelation. This anti-Kantian gesture toward Real Nature with Real Values beyond our manipulation is understandable, particularly after the extension of the phenomenological method from its origins in tracing meanings in human experience to interpreting axiological structures in nature more generally. For example, Paul Tillich, who deserves to be honored as an ecstatic naturalist despite his suspicion of the naturalism of his time, places most of the weight of human constructive imagination on the subjective, receptive, ecstatic side of revelation. He leaves what he called the objective, miracle side wholly to God, and thoroughly marginalizes the constitutive role of human beings in creating such miracles. 9 This served to suggest that Tillich’s God was always the primary agent of revelation, which Tillich required to make sense of the New Being as something historically realized rather than merely a regulative idea to guide human striving. This conviction seemed to be weakening toward the end of his life, due to greater exposure to the world religions and sincere absorption of their wisdom, and Tillich regretted not having time and energy to reconstruct his theology in accordance with his emerging viewpoint. Tillich’s precedent is helpful for understanding Corrington’s way of elaborating axiological realism about nature but Corrington approaches the issue differently. Corrington has no interest in preserving the residual traces of telic personality that remained in Tillich’s thought after his incomplete purging of them in the name of a ground-of-being theology. Thus, Corrington does not have Tillich’s reason for thoroughly marginalizing the constitutive role of human beings in the collaborative creation of sacred folds. But Corrington still performs the same heroic feat as Tillich, for different reasons. Surely it is in part an inflamed protest against Kant’s privileging of “the manipulative over the assimilative aspect of semiosis” or an overly hopeful appraisal of the powers of phenomenolo-

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gy to tell us what nature is in itself, without taint from our projective fields. My bet is that this all-important preference in Corrington’s version of axiological realism also derives in part from his own experience of nature. I say this mostly because my preference for a more balanced approach also derives from my experiences. I prefer to distribute the effects of human creativity on the constitutive and receptive sides of the scale evenly, on average. This honors what I have learned both from analytical psychology’s insights into the vast wellsprings of the human underconscious and from the formidable intellectual accomplishment of self-realization that we call the social construction of reality. And I want to do this while remaining a realist about variations in axiological intensity in nature. EVIDENCE FOR AN ALTERNATIVE VIEW? How can I be confident that Corrington is one-sided in the way he interprets the disposition of human creativity in our engagement with the axiological depth structures and flows of enveloping nature? It is not just because of the marginalization of one or another aspect of the scientific study of religion—in this case the social construction of reality—but also because I think careful phenomenological work does not bear out his account of the determinate geography of sacred folds as well as it does his account of the encounter with the sacred fold itself. While only modest in phenomenological powers compared with Corrington, in preparation for writing this chapter I performed an informal experiment in axiological depth perception, on myself, and aimed at testing the validity of Corrington’s phenomenology of sacred folds. I wanted particularly to evaluate the pattern in the examples he considers, whereby each example has the quality of a sacred place encountered or a sacred moment confronted—rather than human creations of sacred depth. This experiment involved trying with all the openness I possess, and with thorough spiritual and intellectual preparation, to be ecstatically overwhelmed by semiotic density in a famous and ancient sacred fold that still functions as such for some people. Thanks to some priceless connections, I was honored to be the guest of two leading figures in traditional Hawai’ian religion as it is still practiced on the less developed northwest side of the island of O’ahu. Almost completely obliterated by the rise of Christianity among native Hawai’ians, traditional Hawai’ian religion is, roughly speaking, polytheistic shamanistic nature religion in which traditional knowledge of plants and animals is passed down the generations, along with rituals and stories that explain human life and situate it safely and harmoniously in relation to its proximate and ultimate contexts. I spent hours with one of these men, driving up and down the coast, frequently stopping to walk to a sacred site, listening to the

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associated story, and sometimes participating in a prayer or some other act of deference and devotion. I spent another hour with the main priest and shaman of a heiau (temple) who, having carefully prepared the spirits for our arrival so that we would not be harmed by being in that sacred place, walked us around the centuries-old site and explained the meanings, practices, protocols, and metaphysical underpinnings of their view of the world. Greatly honored and deeply moved by their generosity and openness, I sought to understand the ways in which they recognized and experienced the sacred fold that was the entire area, and the particular sacred folds of special sites such as the heiau. The shaman-priest explained how the site of the temple would have been instantly recognized as sacred and as the ideal site for the construction of a lava-rock heiau for the agricultural deity Lono: the valley structure, the creek to the left, the poised rock to the right, the steep mountains behind, the variety of trees. I could train myself in these habits of recognition but I was also struck at how culturally inculcated the intuitions were. I saw other heiaus, no longer in use (the Christians are definitely winning the battle for the heart and soul of native Hawai’ians) and memorialized only by the National Park Service or rendered almost invisible by tall grasses and neglect. They were located using a different set of culturally conditioned axiological intuitions—high up above the sea affording fabulous vistas, or actually in the shallows of the water—different intuitions for different deities. Similarly, the caves and ridges, the rock-worn slippery slides on the edges of mountains and the blow holes to which they lead—each had special meaning because of a story. I drank in the stories, I was deeply moved by the plight of those for whom this dying religion is a tragedy, and I felt a powerful connection to new friends. But I was not overwhelmed by semiotic momenta because I was not culturally prepared from birth to construe the axiological structures in this way. Other people were so prepared: I saw offerings at the heiau. I also listened to the priest’s explanations of what was ritually proper and improper about the way the offerings were made, and the corresponding spiritual benefits and dangers. I thought I saw the decline of the requisite axiological sensitivities even in the frequency with which the priest had to intervene to correct an improperly offered gift. At one point while walking around the heiau, I described to my guides the meaning of a sacred fold, as this is spoken about “in my business,” thinking of Mircea Eliade, Corrington, and others. I likened the sacred fold to a whale breeching the surface of the ocean and thereby momentarily manifesting invisible flows of power beyond the reach of ordinary perception. They seemed moved at this exhibition of empathy for their way of seeing the world, and one of them returned several times to the image I had offered in an attempt to explain the sense in which some special place was sacred to him and to those of his people who still know how to see like he sees. But I was not experiencing their special

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places as sacred folds. I wanted to, and I understood how they did, but I could not. By the same token, I sincerely doubt that places sacred to me would have been so for my new friends. I think of the plunging arc of the Vietnam War Memorial on the Mall in Washington DC, the incomparable tragic beauty of Taj Mahal, or the barrenness of the Birkenau death camp in Poland—all human creations, each utterly overwhelming me with semiotic intensity by virtue of place, history, geometry, and scale, all intensified and also muddled and fractured by the projective field I brought with me to those places. This intensity was every bit the equal of seeing the Grand Canyon from below, flying around the interior of the similarly majestic Waimea Canyon on the Garden Island of Kawai’i, or seeing the edge of my home continent at last arriving over the horizon after a long flight across the Pacific Ocean. For both phenomenological and philosophical reasons, I contend that we constitute the sacred in our environment in just the way that the social construction of reality describes, and that we do this creatively, in concert with axiologically ambiguous potentials present in the depth structures and flows of nature itself. Semiotically potent ejects from the unruly ground of nature call upon creatures like us to realize their axiological significance both through construction and encounter. And we need to construct and encounter sacred folds in time and space in order to perceive the revelatory manifestation of nature naturing within the manifold orders of nature natured. We don’t just do these things spontaneously; we teach one another how to read the axiological signs and how to make real the axiological potential that surrounds and pervades our bodies and our groups, our heritages and our histories. CONCLUSION I have argued that, in conversation with the social construction of reality, ecstatic naturalism looks impressively robust in many respects. These include its view of ultimacy (the evidence appears to demand nothing more than ecstatic naturalism supplies), its insistence on the axiological relevance of the depths of nature for human experience (the evidence suggests that ecstatic naturalism correctly emphasizes this aspect of the human-world relation), and its recognition of the projective fields that human beings bring to any encounter with the potentially sacred (projection does indeed seem to lie at the root of persistent anthropomorphism in religion). In one respect, however, I have argued that Corrington’s form of ecstatic naturalism appears somewhat conceptually fragile. This is its interpretation of the objective locus in nature of sacred folds and other venues of axiological intensity. Specifically, the social construction of reality sug-

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gests that Corrington’s form of ecstatic naturalism makes insufficient allowance for the reality-constituting power of human social understandings of reality and thus treats human interaction with sacred folds too much like unanalyzable encounters that are self-explanatory, self-justifying, and self-confirming. The social construction of reality, as well as the analysis of religious and spiritual experiences, urge recognition that our experiences of the axiological potentials of nature are mediated not only by the projective fields springing from the human underconscious (which Corrington analyses beautifully) but also by the social embedding of each human person in habits of living and seeing that constitute the axiological potentials of nature in culturally distinctive ways. An important question for those who appreciate ecstatic naturalism in Corrington’s or any other form is whether the analysis of sacred folds, intervals, and their unruly ground can be framed so as to comport better with findings from the social construction of reality without sacrificing axiological realism and without losing the existential vibrancy and psychological potency that has made ecstatic naturalism so important as a way of interpreting reality. I think this framing is possible. N. Scott Momaday has it right. Our world is full of sacred realities, powerful things. Sometimes we have to see it for ourselves to believe it. And sometimes we have to believe it to see it at all. NOTES 1. First Annual Congress on Ecstatic Naturalism, 2011. www.drew.edu/ theological/faculty-and-research/ecstatic-naturalism. Dated April 1-2, 2011. Accessed September 30, 2011. 2. See especially Robert S. Corrington, Nature and Spirit: An Essay in Ecstatic Naturalism (New York: Fordham University Press 1992); Robert S. Corrington, Ecstatic Naturalism: Signs of the World (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1994); Robert S. Corrington, Nature’s Self: Our Journey from Origin to Spirit (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1996); Robert S. Corrington, Nature’s Religion, with a Foreword by Robert Cummings Neville (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 1997); Robert S. Corrington, Wilhelm Reich: Psychoanalyst and Radical Naturalist (New York: Farrer, Strauss and Giroux, 2003); Robert S. Corrington, A Semiotic Theory of Theology and Philosophy, second edition (Cambridge, UK and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2009); Robert S. Corrington, Nature’s Sublime (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2013). 3. See Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology, vol. 3. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1963). 4. Corrington, Nature's Religion, 63. See also Justus Buchler, Metaphysics of Natural Complexes, second expanded edition, edited by Kathleen Wallace and Armen Marsoobian with Robert S. Corrington, introduction by Kathleen Wallace (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1990). 5. Corrrington, Nature's Religion, 98. 6. See LeRon Shultz, “Religion and Spiritual Supremacy: Toward a Naturalist Theology of Religions,” in Patrick McNamara and Wesley J. Wildman, eds., Science and the World Religions, vol. 3: Religions and Controversies (Westport, CT and London: Prager; forthcoming).

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7. See Robert Neville, God the Creator: On the Transcendence and Presence of God (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968). 8. Corrington Nature's Religion, xv. 9. See Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology, vol. 1. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1951).

REFERENCES Berger, Peter. 1967. The Sacred Canopy: Elements of a Sociological Theory of Religion. Garden City, NY: Doubleday. Buchler, Justus. 1990. Metaphysics of Natural Complexes, second expanded edition. Edited by Kathleen Wallace and Armen Marsoobian with Robert S. Corrington. Introduction by Kathleen Wallace. Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. Corrington, Robert S. 1992. Nature and Spirit: An Essay in Ecstatic Naturalism. New York: Fordham University Press. ———. 1994. Ecstatic Naturalism: Signs of the World. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. ———. 1996. Nature’s Self: Our Journey from Origin to Spirit. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. ———. 1997. Nature’s Religion. With a Foreword by Robert Cummings Neville. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield. ———. 2003. Wilhelm Reich: Psychoanalyst and Radical Naturalist. New York: Farrer, Strauss and Giroux. ———. 2009. A Semiotic Theory of Theology and Philosophy, second edition. Cambridge, UK and New York: Cambridge University Press. ———. 2013. Nature’s Sublime. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books. Durkheim, Émile. 1995 [1912]. The Elementary Forms of Religious Life: A Study in Religious Sociology. Translated with an introduction by Karen E. Fields. New York: Free Press. First Annual Congress on Ecstatic Naturalism, 2011. www.drew.edu/theological/ faculty-and-research/ecstatic-naturalism. Dated April 1-2, 2011. Accessed September 30, 2011. Momaday, N. Scott. 1968. House Made of Dawn. New York: Harper & Row Neville, Robert. 1968. God the Creator: On the Transcendence and Presence of God. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. Shults, F. LeRon. 2012. “Religion and Spiritual Supremacy: Toward a Naturalist Theology of Religions,” in Patrick McNamara and Wesley J. Wildman, eds., Science and the World Religions, vol. 3: Religions and Controversies (Westport, CT and London: Prager; forthcoming). Tillich, Paul. 1951. Systematic Theology, vol. 1. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. ———. 1963. Systematic Theology, vol. 3. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

NINE Nature’s Spontaneity and Intentionality Ecocracy, Doing Non-Doing Principle of Donghak [Eastern Learning], and Ecstatic Naturalism Jea Sophia Oh

Donghak is the first indigenous religion of Korea (1860~) which was influenced by the three major East Asian philosophies (Confucianism, Buddhism, and Daoism) as well as by Christianity as a religious hybrid along with the unique Korean cultural life-centered cosmology that stands for reverence toward life and creation. The philosophy of Donghak is summed up in “the Ten Negativities.” This negative golden rule was written according to the Daoist notion of “doing non-doing” [wei-wuwei] which negatively restrains evil things for life. In this chapter I argue that Donghak’s notion of “doing non-doing,” as it is interpreted by the Korean poet Kim Ji Ha, is a way of nature which that is able to embrace both “spontaneity” and “intentionality” in a way useful for ecocracy, a process of decision making which emphasizes the interest of nonhuman species, and local and global ecosystems. The spontaneous and intentional power of nature, called salim, “enlivening” in Korean, I argue, is similar to the notion of natura naturans [nature naturing, “nature doing what nature does”] in ecstatic naturalism. To make such a comparison I focus on ecstatic naturalism’s notion of “selving” as it relates to the principle of “doing non-doing” understood by Kim Ji-Ha in Donghak. Specifically I consider “doing non-doing” as a new living principle of ecocracy (as the ecocentric worldview) that transcends the anthropocentric worldview. I 103

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suggest that we need to move from a democracy with its focus on the people to an ecocracy as the ecocracy’s “action through non-action,” encompasses all individual entities. While democracy suggests the rule of people, ecocracy suggests the rule of nature which is based upon the “doing non-doing principle.” HANUL AND NATURE: THE ENCOMPASSING Nature itself is an encompassing that has no outer shape or circumference. The understandable human need to find an outer edge for the world, thus giving us some illusory sense of a center, must be undermined by a throughout going naturalism that fully grasps the elliptical nature of our categorical structures. 1 Hanul [the divine] reflects the cosmic life as one organic body which is the whole encompassing macrocosm and microcosm of salim [enlivening] without boundaries. 2

Hanul is the word for God in Korean. The Korean concept hanul [the divine] in its etymology means “one bound.” Han means “oneness” as well as “greatness” and ul means “bound.” 3 Han of hanul functions as an adjective that describes “ul” meaning “one,” “infinite,” and/or “gigantic.” The Korean letter, han, has no end and connotes the infinite in process. That is, all different boundaries are becoming, together, and do so endlessly, as one, according to the letter, han. Hanul for Korean literally means a magnificent unity [ul, we]. Therefore, when we use the term hanul, it indicates neither the physical sky nor the transcendental God who is beyond us, but the whole cosmos as one organic body, the whole process of the cosmic life. The notion of hanul in Donhak is not that of an ontological God, an object of worship, but the movements of life itself. Also, in Donghak, HaeWeol’s notion of reverence is first directed toward heaven and human beings, the organic and the nonorganic, including the divine hanul. Following Hae-Weol’s definition of hanul, not only can hanul be recognized in human subjects, and in animals, but it can also be recognized in nonorganic things. For, Hae-Weol, the working subject (nonhuman nature or nonorganic things) is “godding,” living the divine as hanul. The notion of hanul in Donhak is comparable to Robert S. Corrington’s nondualistic understanding of nature as the encompassing of “nature naturing” and “nature natured,” as articulated in his philosophy of ecstatic naturalism. For Corrington, “nature” does not refer to anything, but is the dynamic entirety, an extremely wide and deeply vast reality that creates itself out of itself alone. As an all encompassing micro- and macrocosmic organism, hanul indwells everything and everything is, therefore, hanul. Likewise, there is nothing outside of nature and nature is

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the sacred in ecstatic naturalism. Corrington stresses that “the sacred is the holy of nature,” and, as epiphanies, nature’s sacred folds “show forth something that is extrahuman, although not extranatural.” 4 Corrington argues that nature manifests “sacred folds,” as “epiphanies of power,” that invite us to “a glimpse of the mysteries of nature itself.” 5 He further argues “as manifestations of power they stand out from their natural and enabling ground to show the self-transcending potencies within nature.” 6 Corrington states that, “nature’s folds come and go outside of any principle of sufficient reason or any structure of intelligibility,” and they are beyond good and evil, or better put, to the emergence of good and evil traits within the human order.” 7 Thus, in Corrington's ecstatic naturalism there is no supernatural realm but only dimensions and orders within nature. Nature is, therefore, the sacred and I may call Corrington’s nature, hanul. Hae-Weol called people who serve rice (traditionally women) hanul as well as rice hanul. DO NOT HARM HANUL Do not deceive hanul. Do not ignore hanul. Do not hurt hanul. Do not disturb hanul. Do not kill hanul. Do not contaminate hanul. Do not starve hanul. Do not destroy hanul. Do not hate hanul. Do not defeat hanul. 8 (translation mine) The Donghak notion of “doing non-doing” as active passivity, the negation of negation was concretized in Hae-Weol’s Sip-Moo-Cheon [the ten negativities for hanul as the sacred]. The expression is negative but there is a positive motive of life. Doing non-doing negatively restrains evil things for life. The declaration starts from the word “do not” rather than “do” something. Hae-Weol’s Sip-Moo-Cheon not accidentally echoes the form of the Ten Commandments from the Hebrew scripture in its negative conveyance, “Thou shall not. . . .” 9 The Ten Commandments are actually a negative golden rule similar in meaning to Sip-Moo-Cheon in its non-hurting principles. Both suggest that one cannot harm others just as one would not want to be harmed. Thus, the negative conditions of Sipmoo-cheon are actually based upon the notion of doing non-doing. While the Ten Commandments are focused on two relationships, God and human beings, Hae-Weol’s Sip-Moo-Cheon has broadened its boundary to nonhuman nature and non-organic things beyond God and human beings. The important thing is to know the categories of hanul (the

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sacred) that includes cheon (heaven), saram (human), and mool (everything that includes organic and non-organic). Through Sip-Moo-Cheon (the ten negativities for hanul), Hae-Weol teaches us how we can practice the points of non-hurting hanul. Donghak’s negativity of Sip-Moo-Cheon (doing-non-doing principle) resembles Corrington’s interpretation of Kristeva’s semiotic chora (material maternity) as “negativity” since it implies symbiotic conviviality, an interconnected becoming. For Kristeva, negativity permeates all dialectical moments within the human process. “The denial relation is a form of this negativity insofar as it entails an absolute no in the face of the strong desire to return to the presemiotic and preordial womb that spawns all signification.” 10 For Corrington, negativity refers to a self-denying ground which makes signification possible while holding back its deeper powers as they circulate within the heart of nature. Thus, the notion of negativity for Corrington is in the concept of “betweenness.” 11 “Betweenness” refers to the self-othering momentum of nature—the betweenizing of nature into nature naturing and nature natured; the self refers to the self-transcending selving process. Nature naturing cannot be referred to by any terms. It is only known by nature natured. Nature natured is the manifested nature through the naturing force. Corrington states that nature natured can be defined as a term for the sum of all orders within the world. 12 The betweenness is formed and maintained by nature naturing’s force of chora. By withdrawing, nature naturing “compels nature natured into its own complex forms of interaction.” 13 Nature naturing is the oneness of everything in the universe; nature natured is its innumerable manifestations in the world. Thus, nature naturing and nature natured are not two. Rather, they are “betweenized” by the selfothering of nature. It is neither nature naturing nor nature natured. It is between nature naturing and nature natured, maintaining the form of betweenness by denying the return to the lost origin, nature naturing. In other words, the active force of chora is “negativity” that frees the chora from the return of now alien material. 14 The self-othering process as the negativities of life follows the way of nature as doing non-doing. Sadly, there are destructive life forms, which are against the principle of nature within the aspects of Sip-Moo-Cheon (the ten negativities for hanul): abandonment, betrayal, murder, rape, violence, deceit, discrimination, destruction, etc. and which do not represent life as salim (enlivening) but rather, life as jugim (violence). Therefore, salim is a way of life which should be chosen intentionally in order to overcome the culture of jugim (violence). Therefore, salim is an intentional effort to overcome jugim so as to enliven life following the movement of nature’s spontaneity. The salim movement comes out of the practice of doing non-doing, confronting jugim (violence), yet living through the way of life. Salim must become intentional and active much like jugim (killing). Therefore, they both have power and an effect, yet salim is countering jugim. Jugim is not

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natural but exists contrary to nature and the unnatural activity of life which engages in violence. Salim thus represents all diverse activities of life which include intentional efforts to overcome jugim and thus restore life and all its spontaneous changes and natural growth. Humans often go against the way of nature by assuming that they can control nonhuman nature as something inferior. Human’s jugim culture has devastated more than human nature which is against nature naturing but nature ”unnatured.” Among many examples of jugim activities, I need only cite two eco-unfriendly projects in South Korea, the Grand Canal Project of Four Rivers and the Naval Base Construction in Jeju Island. Nowadays, Korean ecological activists resist the Grand Canal Project mandated by the Lee Myung-Bak government that will involve disrupting four rivers that flow throughout South Korea. Regarding this project, there is a discrepancy between two sides. From the perspective of the government, this project is publicized by the government as a salim project for the four rivers; on the other hand, from the Korean ecological activists, it is known as a jugim project that will destroy the ecosystem of the four rivers. This project got underway in 2008 by the Lee Myung-Bak government, as the so-called “The Korean Green New Deal Project.” In the name of economic progress, this project has destroyed the beauty of nature and threatened the circle of life. In order to carve out the waterway, already numerous trees have been cut down. 15 The Grand Canal Project in Korea focuses on the economic development rather than on the ecological aims according to Lee Myung-Bak’s presidential manifesto. In January 2011, the South Korean Navy began construction on a $970 million base in the Gangjeong town of Jeju. Once completed in 2014, it will be home to twenty warships, including submarines, that the navy says will protect shipping lanes for South Korea’s export-driven economy, which is dependent upon imported oil. It will also enable South Korea to respond quickly to a brewing territorial dispute with China over Socotra Rock, a submerged reef south of Jeju that the Koreans call Ieodo. Both sides believe it is surrounded by oil and mineral deposits. Villagers from Gangjeong have been protesting against the construction of a naval base on Jeju Island for several years. As the military project would impact the ecosystem of a UNESCO’s World Heritage sites, 94 percent of Jeju residents have voted against the base in a referendum. Nevertheless, the South Korean government has insisted on carrying out the project. On March 7, 2012, the South Korean navy together with the construction company Samsung Corporation, started blasting out Gureombee rock foundations in the coastline. By the next day, hundreds of activists had arrived on the island to stop the navy from blowing up the coastline further for the construction of the docks. Many have been arrested. 16 The people of Gangjeong have believed that Gureombee rock is the body of Halmang (the Eternal Grandmother) and is the foundation of

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their living. Gureombee rock is one of the most beautiful natural objects in Jeju. In the center of Gureombee rock, there is a natural fountain, Halmang Mool (the Eternal Grandmother’s water, the sacred living water). Traditionally the people of Ganjeong have used Halmang Mool for rituals (weddings and funerals) and healing. Now, people cannot even enter into Gureombee rock which has been exploded by dynamite (more than 10 tons) many times (more than 100 times). The Jeju people have lost their spiritual ground and natural connectedness by this jugim project which goes against the negative golden rule of nature. Jugim is intentional killing that violates nature. Jugim means not only killing an organism of life but also all the attitudes that are contrary to the natural process of life. Violence, in many different expressions and forms, can be recognized as jugim which harms the symbiotic living for all. SELF-SO-ING: NATURE NATURED “The negativity of chora maintains the mystery of betweenness.” 17 The term nature, jayeon (tzu-jan), is a combination of ja (self) and yeon (as it does). Thus, the idea of nature is “becoming-so” or “of-itself,” the natural state. Jayeon is “self-so-ing.” This term is used to refer to “spontaneity” as well as “spontaneous act as against artificiality.” Thus, nature has both intentionality and spontaneity. While salim as a social movement should reflect an intentional effort, salim as the process of life happens spontaneously by nature. The Korean minjung poet Kim Ji-Ha discovered the spontaneity and omnipresence of life in his prison cell by looking at a tiny dandelion budding and growing between the bars, as we see weeds grow in between cement blocks of sidewalks which barely contain soil. Life is everywhere in everything. Life extends and grows in quantity and evolves and seeks to be better, that is, to be qualitatively abundant and happy. Without the disruption of living jugim, life, with its power of salim, continues to grow beautifully and fruitfully. Kim’s dandelion seed metaphor for salim does not seem like a vertical movement or a top-down structure, but a horizontal one, a “rhizomatic movement,” in the Deleuzian language. Dandelion seeds blow rhizomatically without a program or a plan and create multiplicities. Deleuze (and Guattari) assert that multiplicities are rhizomatic and expose arborescent pseudo-multiplicities for what they are. 18 Deleuze and Guattari present the “rhizome” as a nomadic and fluid movement that rejects a pivotal center. Through this figure of the “rhizome,” they envision structurefree-movements that spread toward the multiple exteriors and become unpredictably permutated by coming into contact with whatever lies in their exterior. The rhizome is an achronological system where non-categorizable singularities and multiplicities traverse the fixed boundaries without being arranged and schematized by any central order. 19 Kim’s

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“dandelion seed” analogy is a good example of Deleuzian rhizomatic movements as Deleuze and Guattari observe that there are neither points nor positions but only lines in a rhizome such as those found in a structure of “tree or root.” 20 A dandelion flower blooms by a seed among thousands of seeds and creates numerous seeds that again blow away in to the air through the continual process of convergence and dissemination. A singularity creates a multiplicity, which is the source of transformation composed of configurations of fuzzy, flexible, and vibrating lines with indeterminable trajectories. In other words, a multiplicity is necessary for regeneration. Because nature is differentially interrelated rather than unifying in any absolute sense, it produces itself through new combinations with heterogeneous elements. Yet, there are particular finite compositions of elements and relations produced in the continuous movements of becoming. 21 In this respect, both Kim’s dandelion analogy and the Deleuzian rhizome correspond with Corrington’s naturalism. According to Corrington, in the dimension of nature natured we can speak of nature as the sum of all complexes. In the second dimension of nature in its naturing, nature lives as the active source from all of the complexes in the first dimension. “The innumerable complexes manifest as nature natured are themselves located and ordered by the sheer power of nature in its naturing.” 22 Corrington recognizes nature natured as equivalent to the orders of creation. Like Kim’s dandelion seeds and Delueze’s rhizome, Corrington’s nature natured has a certain autonomy from the creative impulses that sustain them. “Nature in its naturing can be understood as the continuing acts of creation by and through which the world is sustained against the recurrent threats of nonbeing.” DOING NON-DOING: THE PRINCIPLE OF ECOCRACY As mentioned above, God is godding. Godding is living according to the way of nature. The Way of nature is non-doing rather than doing. It suggests the active passivity by negation of violence against life’s spontaneity. Therefore, it is negation of negation, double negation, because doing non-doing is the negation of violence which is negation of nature’s way (Dao). Non-doing means not doing intentionally but doing spontaneously in its natural way. Change and spontaneity reflect the nature of life. When one follows own nature, one does not need forceful interaction to intervene and support the action. Non-doing (wuwei), therefore, refers to “doing non-doing” which proceeds freely and spontaneously from one’s own nature. A bird’s non-doing is to fly. Attempting to crawl would be a forced action for a bird. 23 For a cow, eating grass is natural; it is its non-doing. When people artificially engage in the diet of cows and distort their natural way of feeding by feeding them anything but grass

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(such as cow meat and bones), it may result in problems such as mad cow disease. Mad cow disease is a manifestation of human’s jugim (killing) culture. Instead of grazing and eating grass as the animals do naturally, they are fed diets that include products made from their own species. We have turned vegetarian animals into carnivores and cannibals, a gross violation of the way of nature. Therefore, jugim includes systemic violence against the way of nature. However, non-doing could be understood as a passive attitude toward life. If so, how can our intentional effort of salim be justified? According to Kim’s interpretation of non-doing, acting through non-action is the primary worldview of symbiosis that is self-realization of life. 24 Thus, non-doing does not mean mere passive immobility but rather an active practice of the way of life. Corrington points out that “nature struggles to give birth to selves.” 25 Corrington uses Gerard Manley Hopkins’ term, “selving” to make this point. As the selving process is found through the orders of nature; it follows that this precarious gift must itself be nurtured from a source outside of itself. He writes, “Selving is a gift of that dimension of God that drives toward the future and the manifestation of greater actuality and consciousness.” 26 I understand Corrington’s selving as godding, for it manifests the divine (hanul) through a self (an embodied hanul). For Corrington, the depth dimension of autonomy is the theonomy that is rooted in the divine. Thus, a self attains theonomy when its self-law is rooted in the divine (theos) law (nomos). 27 Similarly, Kim Ji-Ha, a Donghak scholar and minjung poet, calls the process of self-realization of life through non-action, “ecocracy.” 28 As democracy suggests people’s rule, ecocracy suggests nature’s rule which is based upon non-doing principles. As a principle of ecocracy, non-doing is a kind of paradoxical concept. Thus, non-doing as the principle of ecocracy should be “doing non-doing.” Kim’s suggestion of ecocracy offers a key to transferring the passivity of non-action to the active movement of life, salim. For Kim, “action through non-action means ecocracy by which all individual entities satisfy and realize the rules of nature without coercion but by spontaneous movements.” 29 In this symbiotic life of the web in the ecosystem, everything we do to others, including to animals and plants on the earth or earth, itself, is what we do to ourselves. We have to apply the golden rule, “Do to others as you would have them do to you” (Luke 6:31, NIV), that is, to everything on the earth not only to other human beings. Traditionally, the Christian golden rule has been accepted as a rule for the way in which we engage in human relationships. Beyond the anthropocentric golden rule, we need to set up an ecocentric golden rule which can be understood as a negative golden rule, based upon the principle of (wei) wuwei (doing nondoing): “Do not hurt others as you do not want to be harmed.” Corrington envisions an eschatology of “autonomy as theonomy” which is rather practical than mere abstract. The divine lure is most fully

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manifest in the eschatological core of personal and social transformation. Corrington hopes that the movement of God toward the community of selves in which all heteronomy (alien law) is transformed into a true theonomy. 30 “God is still finite in this dimension of its nature. . . . God can provide a lure within which the finite self may find strength to overcome its previous limitations, but God cannot force the self toward a transformed and deepened autonomy. . . . The divine lure is persuasive rather than coercive.” 31 Thus, theonomy is indeed nature’s rule. In this regard, I suggest ecotopia not as an ideal static world but as this world which is becoming better in process. Thus ecotopia is an unfinished divine symphony (nature’s chorus) unceasingly played by “the infinite creativity of life” (salim). And certainly it would help if they tried to make music with other animals and the earth honoring the unique voices of the more-than-human world. Ecotopia literally reflects an ecological eutopia. When eutopia meets eco, it overcomes anthropocentric idealism and becomes a cosmocentric process. If we shift our anthropocentric paradigm to an ecocentric one, an ecotopia can be practiced and constructed one step further. We should view our planet as an ecotopia, and thus practice our vocation and responsibility toward nonhuman forms of nature through doing non-doing. Everything lives a way of life, transforming, managing, deciding, and creating spontaneously (betweeninzing nature naturing and nature natured) which means that non-governing is the best practice of politics based on natura naturans (nature naturing, “nature doing what nature does”). NOTES 1. Robert S. Corrington, Ecstatic Naturalism: Signs of the World (Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1994), 9. 2. Jea Sophia Oh, A Postcolonial Theology of Life: Planetarity East and West (Upland: Sopher Press, 2011), 125. 3. Han of hanul does not mean suffering. Han in hanul used as an adjective while han (恨) as a noun means suffering, though they are pronounced in the same way. 4. Robert S. Corrington, Nature’s Religion (Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 1997), 10, 23. 5. Ibid., 25-26. 6. Ibid., 23. 7. Ibid., 135. 8. Kim Ji-Ha, Sangmyeonggwa Pyeongwhaeui Gil [The Way of Life and Peace] (Seoul: Moonhakgwa Jiseongsa, 2005), 31. 9. Exodus 20:2-17 and Deuteronomy 5:6-21. 10. Corrington, Ecstatic Naturalism, 132. 11. Ibid., 132-133. 12. Ibid., 122. 13. Ibid., 129. 14. Ibid., 131. 15. Along the riverside of the Nak-dong River, about 120 apple trees which are 4050 years old (diameter 30-40cm) were cut and the beautiful white sand was replaced

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with dirt. In addition, the water of the river has been contaminated by metallic and oxide, and is no longer drinkable (reported by Oh My News March 3rd, 2010). 16. Asia Pacific, The New York Times, August 19, 2011. 17. Corrington, Ecstatic Naturalism, 133. 18. According to Deleuze and Guattari, puppet strings as a rhizome or multiplicity are tied not to supposed will of a puppeteer but to a multiplicity of nerve fibers which from another puppet in other dimensions are connected to the first. Gilles Deleuze and Felix Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia, trans. Brian Massumi (Minneapolis MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1987), 8. 19. Ibid., 7. 20. Ibid., 8. 21. Patrick Hayden, “Gilles Deleuze and Naturalism: A Convergence with Ecological Theory and Politics,” in Bernd Herzogenrath ed., An [Un]Likely Alliance: Thinking Environment[s] with Deleuze Guttari (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2008), 26. 22. Robert S. Corrington, Nature and Spirit: An Essay in Ecstatic Naturalism (New York: Fordham University Press), 349. 23. John M. Koller, Asian Philosophies, 5th Edition (Upper Saddle River: Pearson, 2007), 247. 24. Kim Ji-Ha, Sangmyeonghak II (Seoul: Moonhakgwa Jiseongsa, 2005), 191. 25. Corrington, Nature and Spirit, 353. 26. Ibid., 354. 27. Ibid., 356. 28. Kim Ji-Ha adopts this Western term, ecocracy, in order to explain non-doing (wuwei). Ecocracy is a form of governance in which all life has participation. It is a concept that recognizes nature as the force regulating the physical universe. 29. Kim Ji-Ha, Sangmyeonghak II, 193. 30. Corrington, Nature and Spirit, 356. 31. Ibid., 356.

REFERENCES Corrington, Robert S. Ecstatic Naturalism: Signs of the World. Bloomington and Indianapolis: Indiana University Press, 1994. ———. Nature’s Religion. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 1997. ———. Nature and Spirit: An Essay in Ecstatic Naturalism. New York: Fordham University Press, 1992. Deleuze, Gilles and Felix Guattari. A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia. Translated by Brian Massumi. Minneapolis, MN: University of Minnesota Press, 1987. Hayden, Patrick. “Gilles Deleuze and Naturalism: A Convergence with Ecological Theory and Politics,” 23-46. In An [Un]Likely Alliance: Thinking Environment[s] with Deleuze and Guttari. Edited by Bernd Herzogenrath. Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2008. Ji-Ha, Kim. Sangmyeonggwa Pyeongwhaeui Gil [The Way of Life and Peace]. Seoul: Moonhakgwa Jiseongsa, 2005. Koller, John M. Asian Philosophies, 5th Edition. Upper Saddle River: Pearson, 2007. Oh, Jea Sophia. A Postcolonial Theology of Life: Planetarity East and West. Upland: Sopher Press, 2011.

TEN Ecology Re-naturalized Leon Niemoczynski

“Nature is intricate, overlapped, interweaved, and endless.” —Ralph Waldo Emerson 1 “This isolated line and the isolated fish alike are living beings with forces peculiar to them, though latent. . . . But the voice of these latent forces is faint and limited. It is the environment of the line and the fish that brings about a miracle: the latent forces awaken, the expression becomes radiant, the impression profound. Instead of a low voice, one hears a choir. The latent forces have become dynamic. The environment is the composition.” —Wassily Kandinsky 2

INTRODUCTION Philosophies of nature, reacting against the view that nature is a “whole” or a “container,” have become obsessed with the items of the world in an ontological “discretism,” which is to say, for these object-oriented ontologies only discreta are real. While “nature” does not exist per se, particulars of the world do. This may be true, however such a reaction has placed so much emphasis on the particulars of the world that it is claimed that there is nothing but particulars in the world. Excised from these ontologies (in favor of the object alone) are internal and external relations; the complexity of nature founded by the reality of aggregates and compositions that group together agencies into meaningful societies or wholes; the future-oriented temporal nature of any agent’s identity; the contours of nature which are established by nature’s orders and forms; the very 113

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powers and agency of the particulars of the world which draw upon a sustaining a-temporal ground of natura naturans (or, at the very least, the nature of agency that is exhibited in the activity of agents themselves); the semiotic processes that govern the communication of perspective between and among agencies; or even the variable relationships or laws that govern agents within larger-scale ecological networks of identity. These rich facets of the natural world all have been lost when absolute preference is given to the objects of the world alone. In short, looking at the fecund agents of the world as nothing more than isolated objects hinders one from accomplishing a truly ecological metaphysics. All of this is to say that philosophical ecology is no longer truly ecological—it has become categorically “naturalized” in the scientistically pejorative sense of the term, as in nature is “nothing but” (nature is nothing but Matter; nature is nothing but Spirit; nature is nothing but Monads; etc.) where nature within contemporary metaphysics is “nothing but” Objects. Then, what of these objects? One notices that “Objects” (capital O) is a monistically reductive stand-in for the opposite of Nature (capital N). One form of reductionism has been traded for another. Any object-oriented ontology that sees already-individuated objects of the world as its sole focus misses out on what nature is: an ecological network of processes, relationships, and agents drawing on sources of generativity, including the ultimate a-temporal ground of natura naturans. Indeed, these agents’ perspectives may be plural and diverse in the sense that each agent’s perspective is uniquely its own, however for a truly ecological metaphysics to be in place those perspectives must be recognized to be always subsisting within larger common networks of activity and relationship; that is, as agents of the world located by other agents as much as they actively locate other agents in turn. Thus, one must always transcend the nature of a particular agent’s identity to establish a more general conditioning feature that establishes particularity qua particularity. Indeed, containing transcendental features, nature is overlapped and interwoven: it is endless in capacious scope of relation, identity, and activity; it contains within it features that are common among and between all or that support and sustain all. While there may be no “container” of nature it is impossible to establish that for any agent which exists that that agent is absolutely unrelated or unsupported by at least some other agent or more generally by a cosmic environment (something that is not a particular). Thus, even though nature is not a “thing,” an absolutely relationless universe cannot be. The dangers of the object-oriented view and the pernicious form of pluralism it espouses (as opposed to an open and ecological process form of pluralism) are numerous. Whatever is is already individuated and stamped as an object standing ready for data collection and analysis. The perspective of a said agent is always filtered through and spoken for by

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the ontologist orienting their perspective toward that agent (which is just as observer-oriented as the phenomenologies that these ontologists critique). Moreover, agents of the world are cut off from other agents in any meaningful relationship to affect positive ethical or political change. It is difficult to see how things affect other things (“magical” forms of vicarious causation must be imported if internal and external relations cannot be accounted for), and it is impossible to establish how communication is possible, for a minimum of some kind of relation must exist for information to transfer from one to any other. From my perspective, I cannot say that this a truly ecological metaphysics—one that allows environmental philosophy and ethics and politics to proceed in any positive way where change is accomplished in the world—at least according to a view which recognizes objects and nothing else: not the relational features of the universe, not the processive nature of identity that is agencies in process, not the transcendental and generative aspects of the non-particular that enables particulars to be what they are. This is all to say that one must account for relationships and all that relationships entail in their ontological diversity. This not only means accounting for any diversity of agents in relation, the processes that structure and permit that agent to be as a particular among other particulars (natura naturata), but understanding those relationships to sources of generativity that permit agents to be (natura naturans). Of the problems just mentioned, this chapter seeks simply to articulate the transactional, related, and nested form of identity that constitutes any particular agent in the world in hopes of providing a fuller ecological metaphysics of nature. Given the form of identity adopted in this essay, then, it may be better to use the label “process” (as in “human process,” or “creaturely process”) rather than “object” in order to describe the nature of agency and actors within the natural world. I wish to understand agencies in the world as processes, as embedded creatura or organisms, as living “actors,” rather than as inert objects with some isolated, substantial, or essential fixed nature toward which one ought to orientate their ontology. In order to “re-naturalize” ecology, then—in order to better describe nature as an ecological network of agents—I will turn to the value of recognizing relationships and their reality within an ecological metaphysics. My goal is to analyze what these relationships may afford and discern why opting for the reality of relational universe actually may enhance and affirm the notion of agency and identity rather than detract from it. FINITUDE AND TRANSCENDENCE Quentin Meillassoux has stated, “What is strange in my philosophy is that it’s an ontology that never speaks about what is but only about what

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can be. Beyond the divisions of sensual and real, of experience and ideation, of possible and actual, even of self and environment, metaphysics seeks to transcend finitude and indeed proceed “after” it. 3 According to Robert S. Corrington, transcendence is not something from the otherworldly that lifts us out of our finite condition. Rather, transcendence is always available within finitude as it is the condition of what can be. It does not cancel or annul the finitude of existence but always works to proceed beyond it. 4 Thus transcendence and finitude are bound, yet finitude may be surpassed immanently. Meillassoux’s remarks should remind the reader that the particularities of existence, metaphysically speaking, yield to the ontological conditions of those particular’s very possibility for being. To transcend means to proceed after finitude toward transcendental conditions. The plurality of agents in the world secure their very identity according to these conditions and thus are finite being conditioned by them. To move “past” or proceed “beyond” and therefore transcend the finite is to move past the limits which enclose the particular toward that which establishes the particular transcendentally. In order to relocate the self vis-à-vis these general conditions is to see the self as the beginning place of transcendence, to take the self as partially transcendent, partially immanent, qua ontological ground. Any agency or actor may be a site for transcendence, an opening for the potential of natura naturans. In this the existentialists were correct and could be construed in today’s twentyfirst-century metaphysics as agentialists. “Existenz,” to use the phrase of Jaspers, means, in today’s parlance, to be a site of “intra-action” and networked agency. 5 In Sartre’s words, agents are “a pillar of freedom.” 6 To be an actor within an ecological network is to be a “free agent.” Therefore, to a common ground of ontological freedom or potentiality, all beings are tied, even as they are immersed within their finitude and embodied environments. Whether the conditions of existence, natura naturans for Corrington, or the surcontingent ground for Meillassoux, the ultimate object of metaphysical speculation establishes whatever is in general and transcends particularity whatsoever. This metaphysical ultimacy carries with it a deep mystery in its conditioning existence for the fact that it establishes existence as such. Corrington notes that “insofar as we are sign using organisms, we can secure and stabilize regional values and meanings in the face of a deeper mystery that lies just beyond all of the semiotic richness of our interpretive life.” 7 Surely the particulars of this world are dependent upon, and related by, that which secures the nature of finitude. As a philosophical naturalist, Corrington is right to advise that nature’s generating conditions ought not to be portrayed as caring or concerned for the beings it produces. Natura naturans is an establishing, generative productive ground without any telos or supra-personalized intel-

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ligence. Or, to follow Schelling, nature’s “whence” or “whither” is not definite. With respect to nature naturing agents are not entirely self-sustaining as the apparent sovereignty enjoyed by creatures is not absolute. Nature’s establishing, ultimate, or transcendental conditions penetrate and render finite the very agency that seeks to assert itself. As Corrington writes, “Our vulnerability to disease and bodily decay serves to remind us of the constant penetration of alien structures and powers into our seemingly sovereign self-consciousness.” 8 Thus, agents, creatura, organisms are not absolutely isolated, even within their own seemingly isolated essential self-identities of thought. As Karen Barad puts it, there is “infinite alterity” within all self-conscious beings. 9 Even to one’s “self,” there is always another in terms of the possibility that one can be, afforded by a sustaining ground of the possible—thus an “always other self,” a “possible future self” that necessarily and inevitably relates to the self which one is now. With the death of any agent’s body comes the death of possibilities. In this way, Corrington notes that we “lose part of our self’s future contour. Bodily death is the most striking instance of the pervasive logic of finitude.” 10 Particularity also means embodiment. To be an agent, to be an identity, is, given the conditions of natura naturans and the innumerable instantiations of natura naturata, to suffer the conditions that accompany “this” side of the ontological divide—the divide between the mysterious silent ground that generates nature’s agencies (natura naturans) or the surcontigent, atemporal realm of virtual potency and the actualized, incarnate semiotic processes of those agencies (natura naturata), the semiotic “orders of the world,” whatever is incarnated and individuated). Both realms are robustly natural. As Descola summarizes, “One may resort to the distinction between ‘nature natured’ (natura naturata) and ‘nature naturing’ (natura naturans). . . . Between the rigorous naturalists of nature naturing and the staunch culturalists of nature natured, one might attempt to follow the path that conjoins the two sides [and articulate a mere concept of ‘nature’].” 11 What is it about agency that can be grouped together under the banner of an organic creature navigating its environment, using signs and symbols to communicate, and attempting to, for as long as possible, sustain itself according to the logic of finitude? Simultaneously a creature creates its future according to the possibilities afforded to it, creating an identity that is never fixed or determined, yet which is ultimately finite. As we come to find out, in Nature and Spirit Corrington reminds the reader that, as we are told by Hegel, “all alien and destructive forces are grist for the mill of an evolving spirit and serve to enhance the generic reach and internal complexity of the human process. Consequently, all otherness is reduced to a mode of monetarily hidden sameness.” 12 For Corrington, as for Hegel, perhaps even for process philosophers who consider the nature of individuation such as C.S. Peirce or Gilles Deleuze,

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there is spirit or a unifying soul, where transcendental conditions could be associated with a “Spirit” that overarches all others. Here, unification is not strictly a material affair. As Leibniz put it, “An organic body does not remain the same for more than a moment; it only remains equivalent. And if no reference is made to the soul, there will not be the same life, not a ‘vital’ unity either.” 13 For these thinkers, spirit is said to move matter in the process of individuation restlessly, and contemporaneously. In the words of Dewey, “Spirit is absolute unrest.” 14 Spirit is always embodied, and it may only come to rest when it reunites with its origin. All creatures’ agency is limited by embodiment, by the environment, and by those common conditions that have enabled the creature to be a living, actual organism within an environment. From the center of this agency there reaches out a scope that spans an indefinite web of relations among natura naturata. The identity of creatures found within nature’s orders has that identity ramified by the conditions that negate certain possibilities for the future. This is the basis of environmental resistance, and any “self,” in fact, is defined as a center of resistance that ekes out its existence according to the possibilities afforded to it, limited now by the contours of its environment and others, over time (or as Aristotle titled this trajectory, the “career” of the living thing). For these reasons it is not advised to refer to the agents of the world as “objects” but as processes. Objectuality connotes deadness, inertness, utter particularity, and definiteness. The world is anything but. Lines of resistance, centerpoints of experience that span indefinite identity and scope, relations that traverse various boundaries, and the continual arising of possibilities and negation of others, characterize a fluid, moving materialspiritual process. Embodiment is ecological in this way—it is spread out rather than internally centered at one stable fixed point. For this reason Corrington, following his teacher Justus Buchler, adopts the term “human process” to describe human beings, but the label could be applied to whatever agents are in question. All orders of the world are continually in process. PROCESS ECOLOGY AND ORDINAL METAPHYSICS: THE “PLACE” OF THE CREATURE AND THE PROCESS OF INDIVIDUATION Leibniz wrote in his New Essays on Human Understanding (1704), rebutting John Locke, that “relations are . . . not foreign to the material to be known, but are organic to it.” 15 These relations are internal and external: internal in the sense of temporality and an indefinite future self; and external in the sense of the aesthetic semiotic means of expression that communicate a becoming self that is in process to other becoming selves. External relations are multiple, however. As much as there is an inner expression to the world from within the creature taken to be an experiencing subject,

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that subject for example, there are, as Buchler describes it, “indefinite boundaries of the self.” 16 Embodiment means a precarious life, one that is bound up with an environment, where there are no clear boundaries of where the self begins in its process of individuation, or where it ends, despite there being that self, individuated as a center of agency within the world. There is a certain permeability in the ecology of bodies given that agents are always located within webs of relations, and as much as they are subject to the internal temporal relations that shape who those agents shall become, external relations factor as well. If this is true, Corrington is right to say that individuation is “multi-layered.” 17 But what does this mean, exactly? To state categorically, reductionistically, that nature in broad scope is metaphysically simple seems to betray the sheer complexity of the natural world. In place of metaphysical simples (objects, monads, ideas, sensations), Corrington’s ecstatic naturalism draws from Justus Buchler’s ordinal metaphysics. Within an ordinal metaphysics, whatever is is governed by two principles. The first principle is that of “ontological ordinality.” Ontological ordinality states that the category of a “natural complex” is the most capacious. While perhaps being a cumbersome phrase, a natural complex simply means that whatever is, is fully natural (nothing is unnatural) and that whatever is is indefinitely complex. 18 Thus, “natural complex” signifies the items of the world which are natural complexities rather than metaphysical simples. These natural complexities may group together in “cooperations of processes” that we may call “orders.” 19 In a Russian doll nesting effect, natural complexes may belong to larger groupings or orders, and any natural complex (within an order) may, itself, serve as an order locating other complexities. So there are complexes within orders, and orders within complexes. Reality becomes infinitely “deep” and indefinitely “broad.” Essentially, nothing is a sheer particular. All particulars, themselves, may serve as organizing generalities—grouping other complexities together that are relevant in sharing the traits of that order. This nesting effect can be summarized within what Buchler calls “the principle of ontological ordinality,” hence his “ordinal” metaphysics. The second governing principle in ordinal metaphysics is “ontological parity.” It states that no type of complex is more fundamental or “real” than any other. “Relations, structures, processes, societies, human individuals, human products, physical bodies, words and bodies of discourse, ideas, qualities, contradictions, meanings, possibilities, myths, laws, duties, feelings, reasonings, dreams—all are natural complexes.” 20 In this way reality is ontologically flat (broad), yet contains depth in the sense that while everything is equally real (no one thing is any more real or less real than anything else), all things are indefinitely composite as much as they are indefinitely aggregate. Let us use an example to make these two principles clear.

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Take a book, for instance. Rather than looking at the book as a metaphysical simple, an “object” that has some essential features or essence of “bookness” (as in the substance metaphysics of Plato or Aristotle), a book is both a natural complex (belonging to various orders) and is itself an order (locating other complexities). For example, a book belongs to the orders of things one reads, teaching instruments, items in a library, or gifts for those who enjoy reading. There are an indefinite number of orders to which a “book” belongs, so long as the traits of “book” are relevant to the order (so for an example “book” would not be relevant to the order of, say, scuba gear, unless it were a book about diving). However, a “book”—being complex—also contains orders as the book is naturally complex. The complexity of the book can be broken down into the orders of number given the numbers on the pages, the order of text found in the body of the book or in a table of contents, the multiple orders of letter (presumably each letter of the alphabet could constitute its own order), the order of the color black for ink, and so on and so on. Therefore, a “book” serves to locate other “smaller” or subaltern complexities within it (ink, color, number, letters, various particular ideas in the book) further ordering its parts; but simultaneously is located by “larger” or superaltern orders of magnitude, general groupings that help to determine the identity of the book as an item in the world (kinds of books depending on the general topic, the purpose of the book, whether gift or instruction, etc.). Thus, ontological ordinality. Still further for our example, the ideas that the book communicates are, claims Buchler, no more real (nor less real) than the book itself. The ink of the book is real, as is the meaning of the words that the ink expresses. What this means is two-fold: one, that whatever is is an identity that is thoroughly ecological (things exist in relationships as they locate others but are also located by others). Two, as part of an ecological network, all identities are equally reality-legitimate being part and parcel of the natural world. The advantages to ordinal metaphysics are numerous. First, it defeats any notion of atomicity while retaining a thorough metaphysical pluralism. Atomicity reduces nature’s complexity to discrete individuals where individuality is in fact the opposite: a process of individuation that is always in process and in relation to other individuations. Further, individuals are not assumed to be essential natures independent of the contexts that help determine their traits. There are no separate “predicates” or “qualities” to somehow attach to an essential fixed nature. It is not as if substances need nothing else to exist. If there are simples at all they cannot change (Leibniz), or, they must contain all change within them. This, however, betrays the notion of a changing experience or subject who undergoes experience. Second, ordinal metaphysics defeats reductionism in terms of substance metaphysics. There is no metaphysical substance to privilege above others, there is no category (object, idea) to

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priviledge above others. Nothing is foundational, and no categorical determinations can “sum up” reality in its vast complexity and being. “PROCEPTION” AND IDENTITY AS TRANSACTIONAL EXCHANGE IN ECOLOGICAL NETWORKS Still, we have not yet fully accounted for what constitutes an individuated self. If self is not object but process, what further might we say of process so as to better characterize what a self is, even in the process of individuation? If a self is individuated as that self, what organizes a minimum degree of whatness so as to characterize that self, that agency as that and not some other? Buchler and Corrington both suggest that selves are always in transit and transaction, as much as they are in semiotic translation. This is to say that other than engaging in sign processes, and subsisting as signs (as expressivities of inner experiences undergone by that creature), there is, indeed, a transformational element and self-individuating process that characterizes the organism within its environment—thus, a being-in-relation to its environment. The radical stance advocated by the ordinal metaphysical perspective and by ecstatic naturalism alike is that ultimate teleologies are swept away within any process of self-individuation. If this is true, we cannot say, on the other hand, that organisms are strictly passive, given what we have established about freedom. Rather, Buchler and Corrington offer that organisms are “forward moving” (following Dewey) in the process of individuation; there are, afterall, “short term” teloi or small-range goals that creatures struggle toward and fulfill before moving on to the next respective goal. According to Gelber, commenting on Buchler, “The recognition of the forward-moving character of the self in time is intimately bound up with the self’s unique achievements and directed energies.” 21 The concept used to describe this propulsive character of the organism—a reaching out to obtain nourishing goals and a corresponding propulsion that goes beyond those goals once obtained—is called “proception,” according to Buchler. Proception is the moving union of seeking and receiving that is the living agent/organism in its process of individuation, the creature that is the interplay of “motion, organization, and development . . . propulsion and patent absorption.” 22 Ecologically proception means creatures are knit within their environment chiasmically— interwoven and intertwined—and that they “swim” through varying relations, ingesting and absorbing, propelling forward in a cumulative motion. The motion is undulatory, it is never complete but always moving as a “self-in-process” that uses achievements and culminations to propel toward an indefinite future. 23 Thus, the proceptive domain is neither here nor there but is a “floating domain.” 24 In this, traditional dualisms

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between creature and environment are broken down; distinctions between nature and culture are broken down. There is simply the proceptive domain of nature either producing proceptively (nature naturing) or the accumulations and accretions of that producing in produced artifacts (nature natured). Creature and environment, real and ideal, thing and idea—all are ingredients in the process of nature. CONCLUSION: RE-NATURALIZING ECOLOGY In order to “re-naturalize” ecology, or in order to better describe nature as an ecological network of agents, I analyzed relationships and their reality within an ecological metaphysics, focusing on Buchler’s ordinal metaphysics and Corrington’s ecstatic naturalism. My goal was to analyze what these relationships may afford and discern why opting for the reality of a relational universe actually may enhance and affirm the notion of agency and identity rather than detract from it. The image that the agencies of nature are in transit and in transaction, permeable with their environment, is certainly at odds with the theory of a nature that is already an individual object. And the response of Corrington and Buchler seems more adequate given the reality of transactional exchanges in the natural world. I would like to conclude with the thought that, certainly, not all transactional exchanges are positive. Global warming, mass extinctions, and ecological collapse are but a small portion of how a processual-relational and proceptive nature, where creatures are necessarily affected by and in turn affect the environment, demonstrates precarious consequences. Proception therefore is characterized by interplay, where agency takes on a fuller meaning, ecologically speaking, yet this meaning cannot be said to be strictly positive or negative in any moral normative sense. Agents truly affect change in the world, for better or worse. If reality is nothing but stable, portioned, absolutely isolated objects, then nothing can be affected or change others, for better or for worse. Affect is left unexplained. In the end we might state that agents in networks (for example as advocated by Bruno Latour in his Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network Theory or Philippe Descola in his The Ecology of Others) can be understood as processes within environments, and cast as creatura within proceptive domains. There are “multiple domains” for whatever creatures that happen to inhabit them—various worlds of proception that interweave and overlap. 25 This notion resonates deeply with the agential character (the freedom to affect change, spontaneity, potentiality) attributed to living creatures within large-scale ecological networks, where these networks contain multiple agents affecting each other as well as the environments within which they subsist or “float.” Nature thus is truly “multinatural,” to use the expression from Eduardo Viveiros de Castro,

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whose “universal relationism” and “cosmological perspectivism” emphasizes the plurality of proceptive perceptual universes. 26 Further, it is Buchler who insists, along with Latour, Descola, and de Castro (all radical naturalists), that affect is correlative with what it means to be an agent within a network; that is, to be an agent, a creature or organism, is to not only assimilate the environment, but to relate to it by affecting it and changing it in process and relation. 27 As Bernstein puts it, “Anything that affects our proceptive direction can be said to be assimilated by the proceiver. Manipulation and assimilation are involved in all proception, and they are ontologically inseparable. . . . [Organisms] are never simply agent or patient, but are always both together.” Re-naturalizing ecology means undertaking a thoroughgoing ecological metaphysics that recognizes the agents of the world as processes, not objects. We cannot achieve an adequate understanding of nature in its robustness until we have learned that the creatures or organisms of the world are truly agents in that they are free not only to semiotically communicate but to affect change in their environments, despite the human tendency and desire to objectify those agents as inert, static objects. Renaturalizing ecology means to recognize that there are various proceptive domains, a “multinature” that is the composition of varying perceptual universes, that nature is indefinitely complex as its orders struggle to achieve consummation despite the perpetual frustration that goads all entities toward living. NOTES 1. Ralph Waldo Emerson, “The Conduct of Life: Fate,” in Emerson's Complete Works, vol. VI (Cambridge: Riverside Press, 1892), 40. 2. Wassily Kandinsky, Kandinsky: Complete Writings on Art, ed. Kenneth Lindsay and Peter Vergo (Boston: Da Capo Press, 1994), 774. 3. Quentin Meillassoux, After Finitude, trans. Ray Brassier (New York: Continuum, 2006). 4. Robert S. Corrington, Nature and Spirit (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1992), 40. 5. Karen Barad, “Intra-action,” Mousse 34 (2012) and Bruno Latour, Modes of Existence (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2013). 6. See for example Jean Paul Sartre, Transcendence of the Ego, trans. Forrest Williams and Robert Kirkpatrick (New York: Noonday Press, 1962) and Jean Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology, trans. Hazel E. Barnes (London: Noonday, 1958). 7. Corrington, Nature and Spirit, 41. 8. Ibid., 41. 9. Barad, “Intra-actions,” 81. 10. Corrington, Nature and Spirit, 41. 11. Philippe Descola, The Ecology of Others, trans. Genevieve Godbout and Benjamin Luley (Chicago: Prickly Paradigm Press, 2013), 28-29. 12. Ibid., 41. 13. G.W.F. Leibniz, New Essays on Human Understanding, trans. Peter Remnant and Jonathan Bennett (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 233.

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14. John Dewey, John Dewey’s Philosophy of Spirit with the 1897 Lecture on Hegel, ed. John Shook and James Good (New York: Fordham University Press, 2010), 114. 15. Leibniz, New Essays, 394. 16. Justus Buchler, Toward a General Theory of Human Judgment (New York: Columbia University Press, 1951), 8. 17. Corrington, Nature and Spirit, 41. There are subjects within subjects as much as there are objects within objects. A better vocabulary seems needed, then, to describe the complexity of nature. For this reason Corrington follows Buchler’s metaphysical vocabulary. 18. Justus Buchler, Metaphysics of Natural Complexes, second expanded edition with editor’s introduction and editor’s endnotes, co-edited with Kathleen Wallace and Armen Marsoobian, (Albany: SUNY Press, 1989), 1, 30-31, 40. 19. Ibid., 6-10, 93-95. 20. Ibid., 1. 21. Sydney Gelber, “Radical Naturalism,” in Nature’s Perspectives: Prospects for Ordinal Metaphysics, ed. Robert Corrington, Armen Marsoobian, and Kathleen Wallace (New York: SUNY Press, 1991), 24. 22. Buchler, Toward a General Theory, 4. 23. Gelber, “Radical Naturalism,” 24. 24. Ibid., 24. 25. Bruno Latour, Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network Theory (New York: Oxford University Press, 2005) and Philippe Descola, The Ecology of Others, trans. Genevieve Godbout and Benjamin Luley (Chicago: Prickly Paradigm Press, 2013). 26. Eduardo Viveiros de Castro, “Cosmologies: Perspectivism,” HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, 1 (2012): Open-Access, retrieved June 17, 2014 www.haujournal.org/ index.php/masterclass/article/view/106/134. 27. This idea also may be attributed to John Dewey’s instrumental naturalism. Recent French theory, as put forward by Latour or Descola, or by other theorists such as de Castro, admits a significant indebtedness to American naturalism and pragmatism, e.g., James, Dewey, and C.S. Peirce.

REFERENCES Barad, Karen. “Intra-actions.” Mousse 34 (2012): 76-81. Buchler, Justus. Metaphysics of Natural Complexes. Co-edited by Robert S. Corrington, Kathleen Wallace, and Armen Marsoobian. Albany: SUNY Press, 1989. ———. Toward a General Theory of Human Judgment. New York: Columbia University Press, 1951. Corrington, Robert S. Nature and Spirit. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1992. Dewey, John. John Dewey’s Philosophy of Spirit with the 1897 Lecture on Hegel. Edited by John Shook and James Good. New York: Fordham University Press, 2010. Descola, Philippe. The Ecology of Others. Translated by Genevieve Godbout and Benjamin Luley. Chicago: Prickly Paradigm Press, 2013. Emerson, Ralph Waldo. “The Conduct of Life: Fate.” In Emerson's Complete Works Vol. VI. Cambridge: Riverside Press, 1892. Gelber, Sydney. “Radical Naturalism.” In Nature’s Perspectives: Prospects for Ordinal Metaphysics. Edited by Robert Corrington, Armen Marsoobian, and Kathleen Wallace. New York: SUNY Press, 1991. Kandinsky, Wassily. Kandinsky: Complete Writings on Art. Edited by Kenneth Lindsay and Peter Vergo. Boston: Da Capo Press, 1994. Latour, Bruno. Modes of Existence. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2013. ———. Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network Theory. New York: Oxford University Press, 2005.

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Leibniz, G.W.F. New Essays on Human Understanding. Translated by Peter Remnant and Jonathan Bennett. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. Meillassoux, Quentin. After Finitude. Translated by Ray Brassier. New York: Continuum, 2006. Sartre, Jean Paul. Being and Nothingness: An Essay on Phenomenological Ontology. Translated by Hazel E. Barnes. London: Noonday, 1958. ———. Transcendence of the Ego. Translated by Forrest Williams and Robert Kirkpatrick. New York: Noonday Press, 1962. Viveiros de Castro, Eduardo. “Cosmologies: Perspectivism.” HAU: Journal of Ethnographic Theory, 1 (2012): Open-Access, retrieved June 17, 2014 www.haujournal.org/ index.php/masterclass/article/view/106/134.

ELEVEN Ecstatic Nature and Earthly Abyss An Ecofeminist Journey to the Icelandic Volcano Sigríður Gudmarsdottir

INTRODUCTION Nature naturing has no opposite according to Robert Corrington´s ecstatic naturalism. Thus, nature naturing represents the vastness of nature that human mind cannot contour nor grasp, the encompassing, “a measureless measure that makes all measure possible.” 1 How does one describe that which has no opposite? Why would one even attempt to speak of it, build metaphysical constructions around it? Any attempt to describe the indescribable needs to negate its own language. As Corrington explains in The Community of Interpreters, “The only access we have to the Encompassing is through a kind of via negativa that shatters all categorical projections.” 2 Such problems of the liminality of language are hardly new in philosophy and theology. One of Corrington´s favorite theologians, Paul Tillich, spoke about divinity as a concept of wholeness as the “ground and abyss of being,” much in line with the way Meister Eckhart described Gottheit in relation to Gott. 3 Meister Eckhart famously linked abyss language and birthing metaphors together in his mystical theology. Corrington frequently likens nature naturing to this abyss tradition: “One of the central tasks of semiotic cosmology is to describe or evoke the traces within the products of the self to gauge how they may, or may not, point to the ever-receding, yet ever-spawning, abyss of nature naturing.” 4 Thus via Tillich and Meister Eckhart, Corrington has inherited a mother 127

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tongue of abysses and births that he has used to denote his nature naturing. If Tillich and Corrington move in similar abysmal directions, “the abyss of nature naturing” in Western thought poses some particular problems for feminists. For example, Grace Jantzen has in the article “Eros and the Abyss: Reading Medieval Mystics in Postmodernity,” shown how abyss language in the Western tradition, medieval as well as modern, has been a mixed blessing for women. Jantzen argues that the concept of the abyss is crafted in gendered language in its symbolic womblike and tomblike connotations. 5 Thus, if Jantzen is right and abyss language is closely linked to the maternal in all its nourishing and dreadful ramifications, how does such language work and affect the images of nature naturing in ecstatic naturalism? In a move both similar and prior to Grace Jantzen’s critique of abyss configurations, Nancy Frankenberry wrote a review in 1998 of Corrington´s Nature Self: Our Journey from Origin to Spirit, where she criticized the latent structures of maternality in Corrington’s work. If Jantzen claims that the abyss language in modernity is highly gendered and eroticized, Frankenberry argues that the language used to describe nature naturing is deeply problematic for feminist theorists. Frankenberry writes: What could be called the pre-Oedipal texture of Corrington's hymn to nature naturing carries some disturbing symbolic freight that critics may read as not entirely pre-Symbolic. It is a tableau that comes into play only as an after-the-fact construction that permits the subject who has already entered into language and desire to dream of maternal unity and primordial plenitude. This may strike some readers as a regressive fantasy, through which the male subject pursues both the Oedipal mother and the wholeness lost to him through symbolic castration. 6

In line with Frankenberry and Jantzen´s questions, I am tempted in this chapter to probe into female morphology in Corrington´s nature naturing/abyss configurations. From an ecofeminist perspective one might like to stress the symbolical relationship between women and nature, which has been a part of the Western tradition at least since Aristotle. Can ecstatic naturalism be viewed as a helpful approach for the emancipation of women and the wellbeing of the planet? Is a non-disturbing “symbolic freight” even possible? Can its metaphysical framework serve as a sound grounding for an ethical perspective of justice for all, nature included? Or is ecstatic naturalism as a whole too “disturbing,” too “regressive” for ecofeminist ethics? Ecstatic naturalism is a deep part of my philosophical makeup and this perspective has enabled me to find new ways of expressing humans in relationship to world and divinity for and on which I am both grateful and dependent. My thesis comprises two parts. Like Frankenberry, I

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want, in the first part, to put a finger on language of nature naturing in Corrington´s text that I find too reliant of distorted maternal metaphors. I propose another set of texts existent in the Corringtonian corpus, metaphors and language of volcanoes and ejects to balance some of the more distorted images of maternality in Corrington’s texts. In the second part I turn to two Icelandic philosophers, Páll Skúlason and Sigríður Þorgeirsdóttir. Skúlason wrote an essay on his travel to the volcano Askja, and Þorgeirsdóttir has written an ecofeminist critique of Skúlason´s meditation. Thus, to put my project succinctly, I propose to read Corrington´s volcanic language, his sacred folds, intervals, ejects, and magmas, against his more abjected maternal language in order for ecstatic naturalism to serve better as groundwork for ecofeminist ethics. TEETHED AND PENETRATED VAGINAS IN ECOFEMINIST CONTEXT Why does Corrington rely so much on the images that so disturbed Frankenberry, images of birth, burst, womb, foundlings, ejects, and the verbs of spewing, spawning, fissuring, in his writing on nature that has “no referent”? 7 Interestingly, maternal metaphors are rare in Corrington’s earliest texts. In his first monograph, The Community of Interpreters, maternal language is almost nonexistent. In his second book, Nature and Spirit, Corrington has come to rely more on Meister Eckhart’s abyss metaphysics grounded in birthing metaphors for explaining the idea of nature naturing. Corrington writes on the divine life in Nature and Spirit: “The encompassing allows God to constantly give birth to itself, so that divine evolution is forever guaranteed. In the lure held open by the encompassing, the divine becomes a child to itself and renews its innumerable relations with the world.” 8 Thus the language of the maternal in Corrington’s work has a deep foundation in mystical theology, albeit in the birthing or teethed form. There is little need to “prove” the overabundance of the abjected maternal in Corrington´s writings, since Corrington has done some of the work himself by acknowledging the presence of devouring mother symbols that Frankenberry criticized in his work. In the article “My Passage from Panentheism to Pantheism,” in 2002, Corrington describes a religious experience in Chennai, India where nature naturing suddenly revealed herself to him in the form of a Great Mother. The great lost object of Nature’s Self, the material maternal, serves as yet another metaphor for nature naturing. However, unlike the metaphor of the encompassing, my image of the lost object contains traces of the abjected and distorted maternal, as was noted by Nancy Frankenberry at the time. The ejecting and rejecting material maternal ground of the selving process is a haunting presence/absence dimly luminous

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Sigríður Gudmarsdottir as the vagina dentate-a devouring castrating force that operates in patriarchal consciousness, no matter how allegedly emancipated. 9

It seems that in 2002, Corrington´s teethed vaginas have now lost their dentures. The material maternal has morphed into one in Corrington´s image of nature naturing, thus balancing creation and destruction more successfully than in earlier writings. Corrington ascribes this newly found awareness of the maternal to a revelatory experience. In meditation a warm white light suddenly seized me from my heart chakra. Out of this light a presence appeared that did not speak in words, but somehow managed to convey images and something akin to ideas. The center of this cluster of unfoldings was the unambiguous presence of the Great Mother who is eternally present within, underneath, and throughout nature. . . . Further, I realized that the chthonic ground of Shiva/Shakti was only a devouring mother on the surface or edges of experience, never at the center or infinitizing periphery. Like so many others, I had been found by the nunc stans in which the tridimensionality of temporality is gathered up into the eternal now. 10

By linking his religious experience of the maternal into the “nunc stans” or “the eternal now” Corrington firmly writes his new found balance of ejection and rejection as a theological intertext to the mystical traditions of Eckhart and Tillich. Corrington claims in his 2002 article that “the great maternal had shown only one of its many faces,” 11 and that his melancholic vision of nature naturing has hitherto been too simplistic and negative. A methodological question immediately arises, what should one do with such a confession? My aim here is not trying to discover or prove the existence of devouring mothers in the canon ecstatic naturalism or psychoanalyze Corrington on my textual couch. While probing into this Eckhartian/Tillichian fold in Corrington through my ecofeminist lens, I want to amplify and explore the different aspects of maternality that are already in the text. By grounding this recent aspect of the encompassing maternal further in Corrington´s writing and by finding distinct yet related metaphors and images of the nature naturing, I hope to balance and convey the mystery of creation, destruction, symbolic revelation, and unknowability of the naturing abyss, which in turn will serve as building blocks for my ecofeminist ethics. In order to explore this ambiguous maternal fold in Corrington´s texts, a visit to former encounters of ecofeminism and ecstatic naturalism would be helpful. Corrington has criticized ecotheologians for having too romantic views of nature. 12 He has, in particular, challenged ecofeminist methodology for being shallow and nostalgic in yearning for a long lost matriarchy. Corrington is less comfortable with maternal, feminine, or goddess language in his 2000 book than in the 2002 article, and argues forcefully in A Semiotic Theory of Theology and Philosophy against ecofeminist narratives of the motherhood of nature.

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The underlying narrative is quite obvious and rather precious in its simplicity: nature, who was once the great mother or queen, has been betrayed by her subjects and imprisoned in a dungeon of language, technology and a culture driven by addiction and consumption. 13

According to the 2000 Corrington, contemporary perspectives of ecotheology and ecofeminism need to be shriven from their glottocentric and anthropomorphic traits. However, as feminist theologian Elizabeth Johnson succinctly reminds us, “Symbols function.” 14 Human language is not the beginning and end of all thinking, there is semiosis outside human interaction. However, humans need language in order to analyze and define their thinking and to challenge and reinvent the ways in which phrases and words are used to form a world. Thus, pace Corrington´s distrust of glottocentrism, if one wants to pursue Frankenberry´s intuition that Corrington´s nature naturing “carries some disturbing symbolic freight” one might have to ask whether some kind of glottocentrism (in the sense on focusing on biases in human language) is not needed precisely in order to challenge the latent anthropocentrism in one’s own metaphysics. I would argue that ecofeminist methodology is more subtle and varied than the description Corrington provides. While arguing for the benefits of using the perspective of ecstatic naturalism to frame concepts of world, signs, nature, divinity, and relations, I also think that ecofeminist reading of nature naturing might be beneficial for drawing out some problems and “symbolic freight” that plagues ecstatic naturalism. The proposed resemblance between the domination of woman and nature has raised objections for some later ecofeminists. Like Corrington, ecofeminist Chris Cuomo feels uncomfortable with the close symbolic connection of motherhood, nature, and women. In her Feminism and Ecological Communities in 1998 and in a fashion similar to Corrington´s argument of the metaphysical poverty of ecofeminism, Cuomo observes that “not all ecofeminist treatments of dualistic thinking cuts as deeply as it ought.” Instead she argues that feminists should shy away from maternal images of nature and that the personalization of “mother nature” intensifies the oppressive binaries of patriarchy, which deems women inferior to men. For Cuomo, the hope of ecofeminism “lies not in its critique, but in what it discloses about the possibilities within, beneath, and beyond domination.” 15 I am less averse than Cuomo to maternal images. However with Cuomo, I am hoping that an ecofeminist reading of nature naturing may help to disclose new possibilities to speak about nature. If we continue to look for the evolution of maternal metaphors in Corrington’s work the metaphorical landscape has changed dramatically in Ecstatic Naturalism published in 1994. In Ecstatic Naturalism Corrington teams up with Julia Kristeva´s work on the material maternal and from that book onward maternal language becomes Corrington’s primary

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metaphor for nature. Nature naturing in Corrington’s Nature’s Self (published in 1996) is basically equated with the maternal and this “mother” has grown more forceful and indifferent in this book. 16 If Jantzen argued that abyss language has changed over time in Western thought, but is still eroticized and gendered, one might argue that Corrington’s maternal images have traveled from its positive Eckhartian metaphysics of birth into a mother most scary. If, as Johnson says, “the symbol functions,” it is important to analyze the way in which such symbols change over time and how root symbols tend to “swallow” weaker metaphors, to use an image dear to both Tillich and Corrington. Frankenberry took issue with the maternal language of Nature’s Self, which for her might suggest a “regressive fantasy.” 17 The ontological difference has become an “ontological wound,” and the self has become a “foundling” thrown into the world by the maternal. In the preface of A Semiotic Theory of Theology and Philosophy, Corrington goes even further in this direction when he quotes Guy Woodward´s depiction of nature naturing in his work. For Corrington Woodward has grasped the notion of nature naturing accurately when Woodward writes: Natura naturans are at once in these chaoses the self-fissuring, thus the rending. Differences crackle through them, like lightening through a night, quartering the darkness. Differences thus fissure (ceaselessly) natura naturans in all their magnitudes, and thus fissured, constitute them as domains (as mappings constitute once “uncharted” lands into domains by rending them (as the plough blade did the prairies), thus rendering them seed beds, seminaria. 18

Woodward´s text, so approvingly cited, is filled with imagery of thunders and lightning that light up the skies, mixed with eroticized metaphors of penetration of land and bodies and the planting of semen/ seed, the mixture of production and reproduction, along with colonialist dreams of terra nova. Such descriptions do not sit well with those who carry the stigma of colonialization, have experienced the sublimation, denigration, and utilization of women´s wombs or work with ecofeminist criticisms of the plough blade rending earth. 19 Since Corrington has decided to open his magnum opus with Woodward´s text and commending him with having “clearly grasped my intent,” 20 one might argue from an ecofeminist perspective that nature naturing should be sometimes more elusive than Corrington (and Woodward) often envision. THE SHE-BOX ASKJA If I have criticized Woodward´s depiction of nature naturing for sexist and colonialist language and criticized Corrington for prefacing his book with such images of dominion, I also want to confess some attraction to Woodward´s images of lightings and darkness. At the risk of playing the

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devil´s advocate as someone who has just argued for the case of glottocentrism, I claim that it would enhance the case for endosemiosis (semiosis that is stronger and wider than human interaction) to express nature naturing not primarily in terms of human relations but also in language that emphasizes the work and power of nonhuman nature. I find it interesting that the fecund birthing images of Nature and Spirit (1992) go hand-in-hand with language of ejects. Metaphors of ejects and ejecta are similar to birthing metaphors in that something is squeezed out of something, but there is a clear difference between birthing and ejecting. A mother usually does not eject her child (except in a Heideggerian fantasy), rather she gives birth. To eject literally means to “throw out” and volcanos are among those phenomena who eject stuff from their insides. More specifically, a volcano ejects volcanic ash, tephra, pumice, and other forms of lava. Obviously there are more ways to interpret “eject” other than being related to volcanic ash. However, taking my cue from the volcanic ejections of Nature and Spirit rather than the maternal rejections in Corrington‘s later works, I propose an interpretation that balances the maternal metaphors of ecstatic naturalism with volcanic ejecta. Corrington refers to nature naturing as a volcano at least twice in his texts, in the Semiotic Theory from 2000 and in his recent article from 2010, “Evolution, Religion and Ecstatic Naturalism.” The symbol of the volcano is used in the 2000 book to explain how the self can be opened up to natura naturans under certain conditions: Then the self is brought into the unique position of living on the volcanic crest where the categorial and the precategorial come into the sphere of human awareness. The volcanic cone provides a receding and open clearing within which the magma traverses the domain of the great between. 21

I am not pretending that images of volcanic activity are free of any “disturbing symbolic freight,” to cite Frankenberry once more. Perhaps pace Frankenberry, I am not convinced that a language without such freight is possible, steeped as we all are in the binaries of Western thought. However, if Chris Cuomo hopes that the ecofeminist argument “lies not in its critique, but in what it discloses about the possibilities within, beneath, and beyond domination,” 22 I am arguing for a way in which myriads of metaphors and symbols can help to break the hegemony of one. And in order to do so, I want to take a quick trip to Iceland, to a land filled with volcanos. I propose using Icelandic philosopher Páll Skúlason´s account of his visit to the volcano Askja to create a space, a symbolic volcano space, in order to destabilize the maternal imagery of nature naturing. What language is more appropriate for such unruly, decentralized ground than volcano talk?

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The Eurasian and North American plates form a voluble union in the fragile crust of the volcanic island Iceland and frequently stretch and slit the land through earthquakes. This highly active volcanic piece of land on the Atlantic ridge managed to wreak havoc on a great deal of the Northern hemisphere, when the fifth-largest volcano in Iceland Eyjafjallajökull rose from its slumber and spew an ash cloud that closed down most of Europe´s airspace for some time. Another volcano under a glacier, Grímsvötn, erupted in 2011. Askja, the 4,794-foot caldera Páll Skúlason visited and wrote about a philosophical treatise, lies in the north east of Iceland, in an uninhabited and dry area north of glacier Vatnajökull. Its many craters have lain dormant for fifty years now, but there seems to be some new seismic activity going on at the moment. Askja is a stratovolcano, with series of craters. The mountain has a conical form and is built up of different layers of hardened lava and ash, and it is surrounded by a caldera lake, Askja Lake. Askja Lake is the seconddeepest lake in Iceland, at 220 meters deep. The caldera is only 136 years old, and it was formed in the eruption in 1875 when magma chambers were emptied underground; the fragile crust of land collapsed and the landscape was lowered by 250 meters. 23 Unruly ground indeed! “Askja” means “box” in Icelandic, and Aska has unleashed tremendous volcanic activity upon the island. After the 1875 eruption and the resulting death of livestock and poisoning of land, numerous Icelanders from the north and east coast emigrated to Canada and the United States to look for an easier life. Askja is thus both a desolate place and beautiful place in a way that is neither sweet nor cozy, where fecund life and gruesome death are part of the same reality; an example of natural activity where the forces of nature are highly active regardless of any action of humankind. And because Askja takes a feminine gender, the volcano is always referred to as a she in Skúlason´s text, while Eyjafjallajökull is definitely a he-volcano and Grímsvötn holds a neuter and plural gender. As I said earlier, I am not looking for images devoid of symbolic freight. I am rather toying with them and disclosing their gender in order to rob them of their ultimacy. After all, nature naturing has no referent. In his meditation, Skúlason describes that he came to Askja without a fixed clear picture of it. He writes: “I hadn´t formed any clear idea ahead of time about that astonishing volcanic formation; and indeed, I was at that moment preoccupied with thoughts of an up-coming trip to a foreign city.” 24 While Skúlason visits Askja, Askja visits him as a notion of totality and wholeness, underscoring a knowledge that can only come as a surprise, when one is otherwise engaged and notices something by peripheral vision that confounds one´s traditional gazing. For someone who proposes to write a meditation on a spectacular place, Skúlason quickly glosses over his encounter and dives into reflection: “I won´t dwell much here on my experience but rather upon the questions that were awakened in me at that place.” 25 It is almost as Skúlason is trying to

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protect himself with words and philosophical questions from another visitation from Askja. Perhaps the experience at the she-box has turned out to be too large for words. If Corrington experienced a wider perception of nature naturing in Meenakshi Temple, Skúlason likewise undergoes a strange experience of wholeness in the Icelandic volcanic desert. For Skúlason, Askja represents the nature that is everywhere, wholeness behind every other being, independent, untouched, untouchable by humans. In this sense Askja also represents the nature that is nowhere and nonexistent in the human world, because it cannot be situated unless as a symbol of a world outside human experience, a ground or premise ejecting the human world in all its multiplicities. Skúlason writes: When I came to Askja, I found myself in a unique and independent world, the Askja-world, a clearly-delimited whole that embraced everything and completely filled the mind, so that one had the sense of having encountered all of reality, past, present and future. Beyond the horizon lay an unknown eternity—a great, silent emptiness. When one encounters such a world, one has come to the end of the road. One has come into contact with reality itself. The mind opens itself to perfect beauty, and one grasps at last what life is all about. 26

Trying as Corrington at Meenakshi Temple to make sense of his experience of “wholeness and totality” 27 that destabilizes fixed idea of temporaneity, Skúlason continues: Askja is the symbol of objective reality, independent of all thought, belief and expression, independent of human existence. It is a unique natural system, within which mountains, lakes and sky converge in a volcanic crater. Askja, in short, symbolizes the earth itself; it is the earth as it was, is and will be, for as long as this planet continues to orbit in space, whatever we do and whether or not we are here on this earth. Thus, coming to Askja has—at least in my mind—a clear and simple meaning; the discovery of the earth and feeling one´s identity as an earthling. 28

If Corrington describes human awareness of the precategorial as “living on the volcanic crest,” Skúlason´s visit to Askja points to the experience of being an earthling, belonging to a particular location, on a blue globe, which in turn belongs to a planet system and a galaxy in the community of other galaxies. Hannah Arendt once spoke of natality as the experience and identity of having been born. 29 Such “birthness” is never far away from maternal imagery, but carries a connection, too, to the nonhuman world, to chthonic place and time, to the notion of being alive in the sheer availability of what Corrington refers to as “living on the volcanic crest.” Icelandic feminist philosopher Sigríður Þorgeirsdóttir would concur with Corrington in naming such an experience as maternal. For

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Þorgeirsdóttir, Skúlason´s account of the trip to Askja reflects too easily of Askja as a world of still harmony. Þorgeirsdóttir argues that Skúlason´s sense of belonging to the earth as earthling can more closely be affiliated with the tragic Heracleitian worldview than the quiet harmony of Parmenides that she finds emanating from the account from Askja. 30 Þorgeirsdóttir points out that even though Skúlason´s account of his revelatory experience at Askja is highly personal, he tends to downplay the sense of maternality around the place. Þorgeirsdóttir writes: Women´s oppression in culture has continued, partly because the abilities attributed to women have been considered less important than the abilities attributed to men. If we want to apply this domination model to Askja we could say that experiencing Askja help us to becoming aware of earth as a mother and source of all life. . . . Askja has geologically just been born and the nature all around, not to mention the glacier Vatnajökull is like an ongoing creation story, constantly moving and living. 31

After pointing out the agency of nature as mother, Þorgeirsdóttir commends Skúlason for being willing to turn his philosophical gaze down from the skies to the self-creating earth below his feet, however, in her view; he is not looking closely enough. Here, one might argue that a dash of ecstatic maternality could have helped to define Skúlason intuition of wholeness at the she-box. The wholeness and vastness Skúlason conveys after a still day in Askja portrays a revelation of the unrevealable, something akin to the precategorial and pre-semiotic nature naturing. While these images are not free of gender implications, the maternal freight of domination is not as prevalent as in Corrington´s often devouring material maternal. Askja in Skúlason´s account is alive, active, and unruly. Corrington once remarked that “the preference for desert landscapes is an extreme anthropomorphism that refuses to let nature be anything more than a barren waste on which human forms of semiotics can be projected.” 32 As Þorgeirsdóttir has pointed out, the desert may be far more alive and active than Corrington envisions. Corrington makes clear that by the nature naturing he is not referring to an idea of a Platonic substance, but rather something like the inexhaustibility of meaning. Humans encounter such storehouses of meanings in different forms, shapes, and textures. Corrington calls them “folds” and makes use of catastrophe theory where the fold is one of the shapes of instability. 33 This semiotic “magma” also emerges in relation to Corrington´s sacred folds at the end of the 2010 article, when he writes: “Sadly of course, sacred folds are quickly hijacked for tribal purposes. But in the power, shock and magma of these deep semiotic folds religious tribalism, deep in our evolutionary bones, can begin to loosen its grip.” 34 Curiously, the sacred folds of nature that frequently show up in Corrington´s writing starting with Nature´s Religion in 1997 come originally from

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catastrophe theory, but seem to have moved to a more volcanic imagery in 2010. Likewise, the intervals and unruly ground which Corrington picks up in Nature´s Religion and refers frequently to in latter writings can be read as hovering close to volcanic symbolism. Corrington defines folds in the context of ecstatic naturalism in this way: “[T]he concept of fold is used in a fully generic sense to cover any dramatic increase in semiotic density and scope of plane surfaces around points of tension.” 35 The folds are sacred according to Corrington, not in the sense of having anthropocentric traits of a theistic conscious God, but rather they are pre-semiotic, numinous powers coming from the heart of nature naturing, powers which attract and repel the human selves. Corrington’s folds are never conscious agents, since the human process and the vastness of nature cannot be measured on the same scale in any way. However, Corrington also suggests “intervals” which balance the semiotic instability of the folds. “The interval,” Corrington writes, “can humble the fold in a way that religious consciousness cannot. It bounds it and sets limits to its actual infinite pretensions by less directly manifesting an open infinite that is not filled with manic power.” 36 Þorgeirsdóttir seems to hover close to Eckhartian Gelassenheit when she writes on the Icelandic wilderness: “Could it be the case that the healing power of such a nature comes from giving room (‘tóm’ in Icelandic)? To be nowhere? What a luxury it is to be nowhere and to be no one in particular. . . . One listens to silence and grows stronger.” 37 For Corrington, folds give numinous, maternal, and symbolical powers to the powerful ejecta of human life and the intervals punctuate this semiotic abundance. For Þorgeirsdóttir, the Icelandic wilderness likewise gives rise to meanings of wholeness and multiplicity that are closely connected to place and earthiness. However, Þorgeirsdóttir’s gift of “tóm,” emptiness, the luxury of being nowhere, emerges in my view from something distinct from the dialectic between the creation and destructions of symbols. In Nature and Spirit Corrington denotes four dimensions within the divine life, where the first two correspond to the plenitude and collapse of symbols, while the third one is equated with the tranquility of Meister Eckhart’s Gottheit and ground 38 and the fourth with the abysmal nature that sustains, births, and ejects everything, and even God. 39 It seems that the ecstatic (or should we say eckhartic naturalism?) has come a full circle in its abysmal journey through birth. CONCLUSION I have in this chapter probed into some of the foundations of maternal language in Corrington’s work in order to explore Frankenberry’s claim that Corrington’s nature naturing is too reliant on devouring maternal images. While concurring with Frankenberry on the “symbolic freight” of

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some of Corrington’s later works, I have focused on the difference between the earlier Eckhartian images of birth and the later psychoanalytical images of the material maternal that gradually have become darker in his texts. In order to balance what I find to be a problematic imbalance of metaphors for that which has no referent, I have chosen to emphasize volcanic language in Corrington’s work by traveling to the Icelandic desert of Askja, a place terrifying and enticing, empty and full of meaning. With Skúlason and Þorgeirsdóttir we have explored the sacred folds and intervals of Askja, the wild and ejecting side of nature naturing, wholeness, “Askja-world.” This finding is akin to what Corrington once described in the temple: “The center of this cluster of unfoldings was the unambiguous presence of the Great Mother who is eternally present within, underneath, and throughout nature.” For me, such maternal and mystical unfoldings of divinity and nature bear multiple promises for ecofeminist thinking. NOTES 1. Robert S. Corrington, Nature and Spirit: An Essay in Ecstatic Naturalism (New York: Fordham, 1992), 125. 2. Robert S. Corrington, The Community of Interpreters: On the Hermeneutics of Nature and the Bible in the American Philosophical Tradition (Macon, GA: Mercer, 1987), 65. 3. Robert S. Corrington, Nature´s Religion (Lanham, Rowman and Littlefield, 1997), 111. On Eckhartian themes in Paul Tillich, see the second chapter of my doctoral dissertation, Sigríður Guðmarsdottir, Abyss of God: Flesh, Love and Language in Paul Tillich (Drew University, May 2007). 4. Robert S. Corrington, A Semiotic Theory of Theology and Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 41. 5. Grace Jantzen, “Eros and the Abyss: Reading Medieval Mystics in Postmodernity,” in Literature and Theology 11, no. 3 (2003): 244-263. 6. Nancy Frankenberry, “Nature's Self: Our Journey from Origin to Spirit by Robert S. Corrington,” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 66, no. 1 (Spring, 1998): 171–173. 7. Robert S. Corrington, “Evolution, Religion and Ecstatic Naturalism,” American Journal of Theology and Philosophy (May 2010): 124-137. 8. Corrington, Nature and Spirit, 189. 9. Robert S. Corrington, “My Passage from Panentheism to Pantheism,” American Journal of Theology and Philosophy (May 2002): 152. 10. Corrington, “My Passage,” 152. 11. Ibid., 152-153. 12. Corrington, A Semiotic Theory, 61. 13. Ibid., 23. 14. Johnson, Elizabeth, She Who is: The Mystery of God in Feminist Theological Discourse (New York, Crossroads, 1992), 47. 15. Chris Cuomo, “On Ecofeminist Philosophy,” Ethics and the Environment, www. jstor.org/stable/i40014550, 7, no. 2 (Autumn, 2002 6–7.) 16. Robert S. Corrington, Nature’s Self: Our Journey from Origin to Spirit (Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 1996), 2. 17. Frankenberry, “Nature’s Self,” 173 18. Corrington, A Semiotic Theory, x.

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19. See for example my article, “Rapes of Earth and Grapes of Wrath: Steinbeck, Ecofeminism and the Metaphor of Rape,” Feminist Theology 18, no. 2 (2010): 206-222. In the article I read John Steinbeck´s Grapes of Wrath to craft some of the characteristics of contemporary ecofeminist theory. 20. Corrington, A Semiotic Theory, x. 21. Ibid., 18. 22. Cuomo, “On Ecofeminist Philosophy,” 6–7. 23. Ari Trausti Guðmundsson, Íslandseldar: Eldvirkni á Íslandi í 1100 ár. (Vaka-Helgafell, Reykjavík: 1986). 24. Páll Skúlason, Meditation at the Edge of Askja (Reykjavik: University of Iceland Press, 2005), 5. 25. Skúlason, Meditation, 5 26. Ibid., 7. 27. Ibid., 5. 28. Ibid., 21. 29. Hannah Arendt, The Human Condition (Chicago: The University Press, 1958). 30. Sigríður Þorgeirsdóttir, “Heild sem gerir mann heilan: Um siðfræði náttúrufegurðar” (“A Whole that Heals: About the Ethics of Natural Beauty”), lecture at Pálsstefna, University of Iceland, April 8, 2005. 31. Þorgeirsdottir, “Heild sem gerir mann heilan.” 32. Corrington, Ecstatic Naturalism, 161. 33. Corrington, Nature’s Religion, 27. 34. Corrington, “Evolution,” 12. 35. Corrington, Nature’s Religion, 27–28. 36. Corrington, Nature’s Religion, 69. 37. Þorgeirsdóttir, “Heild sem gerir mann heilan.” I have chosen to translate Þorgeirsdóttir´s phrase “að gefa tóm,” as “to give room” but “að gefa tóm” in Icelandic has the connotation of emptying out both space and time to which I cannot find an equivalent in English. 38. Corrington, Nature and Spirit, 183. 39. Corrington, Nature and Spirit, 189.

REFERENCES Arendt, Hannah. The Human Condition. Chicago: The University Press, 1958. Corrington, Robert S. A Semiotic Theory of Theology and Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000. ———. Nature´s Religion. Lanham, Rowman and Littlefield, 1997. Corrington, Robert S. “Evolution, Religion and Ecstatic Naturalism.” American Journal of Theology and Philosophy (May 2010): 124-137. ———. “My Passage from Panentheism to Pantheism.” American Journal of Theology and Philosophy (May 2002): 152. ———. Nature’s Self: Our Journey from Origin to Spirit. Lanham: Rowman and Littlefield, 1996. ———. Nature and Spirit: An Essay in Ecstatic Naturalism. New York: Fordham, 1992. ———. The Community of Interpreters: On the Hermeneutics of Nature and the Bible in the American Philosophical Tradition. Macon, GA: Mercer, 1987. Cuomo, Chris. “On Ecofeminist Philosophy.” Ethics and the Environment 7, no. 2 (Autumn 2002): 6–7. Frankenberry, Nancy. “Nature's Self: Our Journey from Origin to Spirit by Robert S. Corrington.” Journal of the American Academy of Religion 66, no. 1 (Spring, 1998): 171–173. Guðmundsson, Ari Trausti. Íslandseldar: Eldvirkni á Íslandi í 1100 ár. Vaka-Helgafell, Reykjavík: 1986.

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Jantzen, Grace. “Eros and the Abyss: Reading Medieval Mystics in Postmodernity.” Literature and Theology 11, no. 3 (2003): 244-263. Johnson, Elizabeth. She Who is: The Mystery of God in Feminist Theological Discourse. New York, Crossroads, 1992. Skúlason, Páll. Meditation at the Edge of Askja. Reykjavik: University of Iceland Press, 2005.

TWELVE Cleaving the Light The Necessity of Metaphysics Guy Woodward

It was once a given that metaphysics offered the ultimate explanatory framework for the human experience of, for want of a better word, “reality.” Metaphysics seeks to somehow evoke a sense of that which (or those which) is or are the fount and foundation of a seemingly inexhaustible “reality.” An authentic philosophy must of its nature be metaphysical, if it is to successfully address the unutterable richness of “reality.” To demonstrate this assertion the ecstatic naturalism of Robert Corrington will be briefly introduced. Corrington’s powerful metaphysics will be enhanced through a consideration of the philosophy of Erich Pryzwara. Only a system as capacious and complex and daring as Corrington’s ecstatic naturalism can address the sheer unabatableness of reality, and only a consideration of Pryzwara’s system can demonstrate the necessity of such a metaphysics for any philosophy to be properly philosophical, as metaphysics addresses a ceaselessly semiosing reality. The two systems therefore shall be considered together. METAPHYSICS A definition of metaphysics requires the isolation of that salient characteristic which best exemplifies the metaphysical with utter clarity. This characteristic must succeed in defining the metaphysical structures that are found throughout human history in their totality (thus attaining to 141

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certain salience and universal scope). This characteristic is best formulated (in this required clarity and scope) by Leibniz’s query: Why is there something rather than nothing? 1

Metaphysics, no matter what form it takes, whether it is deliberate metaphysical reflection (of whatever manner) or some unacknowledged, unintended, yet implicit neo-metaphysical structure (again, of whatever sophistication, scope, and purpose) is driven by Leibniz’s query, consciously, subconsciously, or unconsciously. And thus it is authentic philosophy seeking to somehow account for reality. Metaphysics is therefore coextensive with human reflection and the ultimate expression of that reflection. But what benefit does such reflection bring? Metaphysics in the resolution of Leibniz’s query attains to meaning; meaning here is defined as that which resolves Leibniz’s query in whatever efficacious manner. Therefore, in all of the varied manners and styles of metaphysical resolution there occurs some form of “meaning.” Thus, reality in its incommensurable scope and complexity is funded with meaning in metaphysical query. Reality, as therefore electric with meaning, is reality armored against the nothingness which threatens when Leibniz’s query goes unresolved. Given, therefore, that metaphysics, as defined as that which resolves Leibniz’s query, is coextensive with the human, and that even though there are endlessly manifold forms and manners of metaphysical resolution of Leibniz’s query, each attains to a meaning efficacious to its own unique resolution, and that only in such metaphysical resolutions is authentic philosophy to be found, it is in Robert Corringtion’s ecstatic naturalism that one discovers the incomparably capacious system in which the integration and constellation of these limitlessly varied metaphysical resolutions find their propriety. THE ECSTATIC NATURALISM OF ROBERT CORRINGTON Robert Corrington, who teaches philosophical theology at Drew University, has created a metaphysics of singular import. Very complex, only certain aspects of his system can be considered here, but it must be that these aspects decisively demonstrate the richness of his metaphysics with respect to the inexhaustible nature of reality. It is through Corrington’s understanding of the human that access will be made to his system. For Corrington, the human is the human process. 2 As process, the human process explores, restlessly and with never-failing vigilance, reality in its intractable limitlessness of scales and complexities: it is an ecstatic exploration of reality. In this, ecstatic exploration the human process establishes those innumerable formal and informal, sophisticated and naïve, resolutions to Leibniz’s query that are

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metaphysics. The human process is therefore the ens metaphysicarum. As ens metaphysicarum, as human process, how is reality disclosed in this ecstatic address? It is as nature. Corrington defines “nature” thusly: It is impossible to give a definition of nature . . . nature has no location, that is, it is not in anything. It is the nonlocated location within which all container relations obtain, as well as innumerable relations that are not container relations. 3 (Nature) is an unending providingness of actualities and possibilities, as well as the sum of all these ejects. 4 . . . nature (is) . . . the preformal “locus” for an indefinite series of intersecting ellipses. There is no center nor is there a circumference for these ellipses. 5 Nature prevails as . . . constant, open-ended availability . . . nature has no contour or shape . . . it is the ultimate clearing. 6

It is thus clear that “nature” is the sheer unabatableness of reality, the endlessnesses of scopes and scales and complexities of which the human process is but an utterly infinitesimal aspect; yet the ecstatic address of the human process discloses nature, inexhaustibly and limitlessly. Corrington uses the “ordinal” metaphysics of Justus Buchler 7 to describe the manner of nature. Ordinal metaphysics, as proposed by Buchler and refined by Corrington, is a metaphysics built upon the structures of complex, order, contour, and relevance. These structures, fundamental to Buchler’s system, are modified by Corrington through the establishment of an ordinal phenomenology (a reading Buchler’s system given preliminaries and modifications of Husserl and Heidegger) 8 and a cosmopsychological semiotic (using selected elements of Peirce and Kristeva). 9 To appreciate the manner of Corringtonian metaphysics including his ordinal phenomenology, a précis of “complex,” “order,” “contour,” and “relevance” ensues. A “complex” is the most basic structure. Complexes are quite simply everything: relations, processes, being and beings, possibilities, meanings, and so on. All structures and manners of structuration, all manifestations and manners of manifestation, all refusals and manners of refusal are thus complexes. 10 Complexes are of all possible magnitudes and compasses: incomprehensibly infinitesimal and unspeakably vast. Yet each complex is also itself of incomprehensible complexity. Each complex has: innumerable subaltern traits. . . . Buchler stresses the utter complexity of each and every complex. 11

Complexes, therefore, are innumerable; the complexity of each complex is indefinable. It would be well here to introduce a notion not employed by Corrington, but one that will prove helpful in grasping the degrees of complexity

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employed in Corrington’s ordinal metaphysics. The mathematician Georg Cantor’s theory of transfinite numbers offers a tool by which Corrington’s system might be better appreciated. Cantor taught that infinities are hierarchical: the set of odd numbers, though infinite, is of a lesser degree of infinity than the set of all numbers; indeed, the set of odd numbers is an infinite subset of the yet more infinite set of all numbers. The hierarchy of infinities is therefore itself without end: infinities, each truly infinite, are embedded within still vaster infinities, an endless hierarchy of hierarchies of infinities. 12 Thus each Corringtonian complex is a Cantorean infinite. These complexes are then embedded in Cantorean hierarchies. The image is one of Cantorean magnitudes, and seeing each complex thusly makes possible a sense of the utter density of complexity that is Corringtonian nature (“reality”). How are then these complexes rendered tractable? Recall the characterization of Corrington’s system: ordinal metaphysics. It is thus a metaphysics of orders. The rendering tractable of these complexes is had through their ordering. “Order” and “complex” are intimately related: the manner of rendering a complex tractable is had through the emplacing of a complex within its relevant orders: The principle of ordinality insists that complexes are part of a densely ramified nature that has no predetermined shape or boundary . . . in order to understand any given complex . . . it becomes necessary to rotate it through its vast relational chains so as to gain some sense of its overall shape. 13

Order, thus, is the phenomenology of a complex: its internal structure (the definition and articulation of the internal, or subaltern, traits that constitute that complex), 14 and its external location or emplacing within and among those complexes with which it is contiguous and within which it is embedded. 15 This external location is the “horizon” of a complex, which is indefinitely ramified and of infinite complexity. 16

Conceive of Corringtonian order in Cantorean terms: order is as the embedding of Cantorean infinities as subsets to sets. The manner of their embedding, the Russian doll nestings of infinites one within the next, offers insight into the manner of Corringtonian order. Corringtonian order is as the toplogical description of the embedding or nesting of Corringtonian complexes and their horizons: it is the description of their contiguous and hierarchical embeddings and nestings. Orders nesting complexes (via relevance), and complexes themselves (via relevance) establishing orders, leads to an immediate consideration of an order/complex’s contour. Here, a description of the order of a complex is also the description of that complex’s contour. Thus Buchler:

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A complex has an integrity for each of its ordinal locations. The continuity and totality of its locations, the interrelation of its integrities, is the contour of the complex. The contour itself is an integrity, the gross integrity of which is plurally located, whether successively or simultaneously. 17

Corrington adds: Each complex will be located in more orders than be defined or known to finite human agency . . . ordinal rotation moves . . . toward . . . the “more” that serves as the contour for any complex. 18

With succession as hierarchy and simultaneity as contiguity, the “contour” of each complex is thus the ever-opening, ever-more-densely embedded topologies of hierarchical and contiguous location within that non-located location that is nature (or reality). Contour is established by semiotic densities of hierarchical and contiguous location, further shaped by the established order’s relevance (strong or weak) to other orders. “Relevance” therefore is the “phenomenality” of all varied topological, hierarchical, and contiguous locations. 19 That is, orders of relevance are the contours of a complex in that complexes’ appearance ranked and related to other appearances (orders); orders of hierarchical, and contiguous location are orders of relevance established by the sheer availability of phemonenality. 20 Orders of relevance are therefore strong or weak, of varying clarity or ambiguity, and no order of relevance is wholly self-evident or self-sufficient in its semiotic structure, phenomenality. 21 Complex, order, contour, and relevance are thus the structures of Corringtonian metaphysics. How then does the human process, as one such complex among innumerable others, and as possessing its own particular orders of relevances, contours, hierarchical, and contigual topologies of location, come to its own unique constitution? The “human process,” as noted, is a restless ecstasy of exploration. Indeed: the human process gives shape . . . to innumerable orders of relevance . . . and will continue to do so. 22

Though the human process is in no sense privileged, 23 it is unique. The unique character of the human process is had in its ceaseless generation of horizons: human intelligence, as ecstatic and ceaseless inquiry and quest, is the engine opening these horizons. In a very real sense, the horizons generated by the human process are processes which: serve as the clearing…in (the) interplay of gift and absence (the horizon) provide(s) unity and coherence to all dimensions of the human process . . . all horizons are orders occupied by humans . . . are humanly occupied orders . . . not all orders function within human horizons; nor can human orders encompass all complexes . . . (yet) the human

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The human process as constitutive of orders of relevance thus ceaselessly generates and deploys horizons. These horizons are the media through which the human process renders those topologies in which it is embedded (hierarchically and contigually) to relevance, to phenomenality. Such a process is rooted in the human as an intelligent creature: the human process is invested with access structures that open it to topologies in which it is embedded: “access structures” is meant to refer to the ultimate enabling conditions of human awareness . . . all access structures are . . . ways I which beings funded with mind open to orders. 25

Foremost among such access structures is intelligence. Intelligence is that dynamic access structure which constitutes the human process as that generator of horizons and their deployment in Cantorean densities: these horizons ceaselessly address and explore the topologies within which the human process is embedded. The manner of this address and exploration may be characterized as “rotational” (according to Corrington’s own usage, previously noted when considering the structure of a complex); 26 the human process rotates its address as the ceaseless generation and deployment of horizons in and through those topologies in which it is embedded. This rotation constitutes the human process as a vast regime of discovery, a vast engine of relevance and phenomenality. 27 What then does the human process create through its regimes of discovery, its engines of address? These horizons generated and deployed through the topologies in which the human process is embedded are rendered relevant and thus are themselves rendered transformative matrices: The human process transforms the pre-thematic environment into a meaning horizon . . . signs and sign systems portray and render intelligible the orders of the world. 28

The human process through its horizons and its intelligence renders the addressed topologies in which it is embedded to unceasingly complex and meaning-full orders of signs, systems of signs: semiologies. The semiological character of the human process now allows the final qualification of the human process: metaphysics . . . as the . . . systematic description of orders of relevance . . . is (the) reaching down into the more basic enabling conditions . . . that make semiosis possible . . . metaphysics is the careful description of orders of relevance . . . (and) signs are among traits discovered in any order of relevance. 29

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Thus the human process through its address of all topologies in which it is embedded, renders these topologies as semiologies of relevance, of phenomnenality. In this the human process is the processus metaphysicarum. The human process is intelligent, and thus capable of the ceaseless address of those topologies in which it is embedded. The human process as intelligent discovers endless regimes, each regime composed of innumerable horizons. These horizons constitute those complexes and topologies of complexes they address and appropriate as orders of relevance, as phenomenalities. These relevances-as-phenomenalities are the rendering of complexes to semioses, semiologies. Thus the necessity of metaphysics: it is the humanity of the human process as processus metaphysicarum. PROCESSUS METAPHYSICARUM The human process as processus metaphysicarum is a dynamic of limitless rendering-to-relevance: it rotates tirelessly, relentlessly, through the supra-Cantorean densities of available topologies; it is a limitless attention, a limitless address, a limitless assimilative generation and deploying of horizons of relevance-phenomenality-semiosis. The decisive character of Corrington’s philosophy in the assertion of the necessity of metaphysics should be apparent: though decidedly untraditional in its structure, Corrington’s profoundly metaphysical thought is itself an argument for the inevitability of metaphysics, a metaphysics that, if authentic to the nature of reality, is truly capacious in its scope. The sheer capaciousness of Corrington’s ordinal metaphysics allows for the inclusion of all metaphysical systems and structures. Indeed, Corrington’s system is trans-epochal: the various metaphysical systems and their symbologies of the epochs of metaphysical traditions function as “cosmoplexes” within Corrington’s thought (Cantorian ordinality). Moreover, the scope of the human process as processus metaphysicarum gives the human process a profoundly unique role as engine of address, discovery, and semiosis regarding these complexes. The human process is the locus of the rendering to metaphysical availability of Corringtonian nature (reality). Via Corrington, it is clear that the human process as processus metaphysicarum is endowed with a dignity fully consonant with the scope of its address: the full metaphysical demonstration of the human process as processus metaphysicarum is the demonstration of the inherent dignity of the human. NATURE AND GOD Employing a conceptual and terminological apparatus unique to his own project Corrington sees nature as a two-fold: natura naturans (nature na-

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turing) and natura naturata (nature natured). Of medieval origin and central to Spinoza’s metaphysics, the distinction of natura naturans and natura naturata become pivotal in Corrington’s metaphysical enterprise. Natura naturans is . . . a measureless measuring that makes all measure possible. 30

It is pervasive and manifest in all orders, even though not an order itself . . . nature naturing preserves the innumerable possibilities that prevail. 31

As thus prevailing, pervading and manifesting natura naturans is ejective at its very heart . . . (it) contains both origin and “not-yet.” 32

In its structure as that which prevails and ejects, is at once origin and promise of fulfillment, natura naturans is that which mediates The uttermost depths . . . the restless birthing ground of the potencies that lie beneath all form and content . . . (it is that which) moves outward to the innumerable orders of relevance. 33

Natura naturans is thus that which prevails, pervades, apportions (as ejective), and potentiates from the uttermost depths which are the matrices of the potencies. What then are the potencies, and to what does natura naturans mediate these potencies in its prevailing and apportioning? The potencies (are) ejective of potential power and meaning. 34

and thus are that which afford natura naturans its prevailing and apportioning as mediating; natura naturans mediates (as ejective) that which the potencies empower to the betweenness: the betweenness is that which obtains between nature naturing (natura naturans) and nature natured (natura naturata). 35

Betweenness is the realm of mystery; it is the realm of mystery in that it . . .points to the depth mystery that . . . remains reticent about its products . . . all mysteries point to the ultimate mystery that is . . . the consummation. 36

Betweenness, as that realm in which natura naturans ejects its products, as that realm in which ultimate mystery is intimated in the prevailing and apportioning of the potencies, is the realm of god (or the gods). God (or the gods) is or are of the betweenness, sustaining natura naturata, nature natured, structuring natura naturata, while holding open this betweenness to empower natura naturata. Thus (keeping in mind it is possibly a single god, or Cantorean infinities of gods):

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God is both a complex and the power that sustains all orders of creation. 37

As such, god (or gods) is both a product of (natura naturans) and the ground that sustains the sheer prevalence of all orders. 38

How is this god (or other gods) structured? Corrington’s god is of four dimensions; yet it is certainly possible that all such Corringtonian gods, as any other complex, are of Cantoreanly infinities of dimensions. Each dimension is of both natura naturans and natura naturata. Here is the fourfold structure of Corrington’s god: The first divine dimension is to be understood as the fragmentary and fitful presence of god in the orders of nature . . . god lives as the nonunified ground of the holy . . . the second (dimension) is also . . . fragmentary . . . god lives as the lure for . . . transformation . . . the third dimension is . . . the sheer prevalence of the orders of the world (natura naturata) . . . made possible by the quiet power . . . that is the fullest expression of divine love . . . god secures each complex . . . no orderor complex is bereft of the sustaining power of the divine . . . (yet in this dimension) in the face of that which is neither an order nor the divine itself, god must experience its own travail and eternal growth . . . the fourth dimension . . . is the domain . . . (of) access to the self-surpassibility of the divine . . . god faces its own “more” and “not-yet” insofar as the divine recognizes the clearing within which it must grow. 39

This lengthy excerpt serves to indicate the manner of Corrington’s thought: god (or the gods), of the between, is at once the mediating of betweenness and the power which permeates and provokes and sustains that which is ejected: natura naturata. And what is natura naturata? Natura naturata is the primal eject of nature naturing (natura naturans). 40

in that it is the “measure” for all complexes. 41

Natura naturata, therefore, is that “totality” of all complexes, all orders of complexes, all orders of relevance; natura naturata is that of which the human process is a part and in which it finds itself. The human process is lured by the structures of god (or the gods) through natura naturata where the totality of complexes god (or the gods) sustain and drive to perfection in that luring; the human process sharing in the tension of semiotic address (of the gods), even as the potencies are rendered via natura naturans. In its unfolding the human process shares in the mysteries that are of the betweenness and that beckon to ultimate mystery. Through the human process, the processus metaphysicarum, is at

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once perfected by god or the gods and opens further clearings for the godings of gods. Herein Corrington demonstrates by the breadth and originality and captivating intensity of his work that any attempt to philosophize is the attempt to resolve Leibniz’s query, and the only authentically resolution of that query is metaphysics. It may be said that Corrington grasps the necessity of metaphysics with a vengeance. ERICH PRYZWARA’S COMPLEMENTARITY TO CORRINGTON One of the most original and least appreciated metaphysicians is the late Jesuit, Erich Pryzwara (1889-1972). A figure of protean learning, daring scope, possessing an aphoristic, mystical-poetical style: in this he is indeed the perfect complement to Corrington. By isolating certain themes central to Pryzwara’s work and adapting them to Corrington’s thought both systems may be enhanced insofar as each addresses the unutterable richness of reality. Pryzwara’s central work is titled Analogia Entis: Metaphysik: Ur-Strukrur und All-Rhythmus (The Analogy of Being: Metaphysics: Originary Structure and All-Encompassing Rhythm). 42 Pryzwara’s work seeks to unfold the structure of being and beings according to the classic analogy of being: it is a unique and idiosyncratic unfolding, illustrative of Pryzwara’s allusive and complex style. As it is Corrington’s system that is central to this consideration, the details of Pryzwara’s metaphysics will be bracketed and the meta-structures of Pryzwara’s system will form the frame for Corrington’s system’s scope. Thus only the global characteristics of Pryzwra’s thought, these meta-structures, will be presented. The Pyzwara translations are my own. ORIGINARY STRUCTURE: ANALOGIA ENTIS For Pryzwara metaphysics is analogia entis, the analogy of being: the manifold ways in which all beings, finite and infinite, created and uncreated, possess being. Pryzwara defines metaphysics as: the stretching-spanning . . . balancing suspension. . . . The exigent unfolding in relatednesses (as manifestive) . . . origin and end. 43

Such a quote well illustrates the poetic density of Pryzwra’s style: each word is polysemic and polyvalent, each word a verbal universe of meanings and playing of meanings. The quote explicated is thus: Metaphysics, as structure, is a spanning tension, it is in other words a structure stretched taut to absolutes as absolute limits, an encompassing of all encompassing, but an encompassing vibrant with the completeness of its scope; and this spanning is the

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active manner of this encompassing as it restlessly and unabatedly includes ever more variant uttermost absolutes of absolute compass. Yet metaphysics is also a balance of uttermost absolutes, a concordance. Its stretching is always delicate and fine, it is a harmony, an accord, an attunement wherein tensions are never destructive but always enhancing and abounding. Within this metaphysics of harmonious and concordic encompassing all variant and variable constellations of absoluted uttermosts and uttermost absolutings are manifestive. Being is manifestive. Metaphysics, as such a concordic, fraught by manifestive Cantorean continua of being monstrate, is also an oscillation: the god-creation relation plays between summation and summa . . . god descending to creation and then creation “becoming god” . . . the oscillation between god and creation . . . (is) the becoming-oscillation of creation . . . the foundation of the (oscillation) of god-transcendingcreation (to) god-in-creation. 44

Metaphysics as concordic, harmonic encompassing and inclusion of uttermost absolutes freighted by continua, is thus the manner of metaphysics by oscillation. It is the very character of metaphysics to be incommensurably inclusive of all uttermost opposites and differences in a coherence and a concord without measure, where inclusion is always and all-ways fluid and plastic, inexhaustibly encompassing, and including even those differences and opposites animate to the most radical of alien irreconsibilities. How then is this oscillative encompassing, which is the ever-inclusive, ever-harmonic “gathering” of each and all absoluted uttermosts and uttermosts absoluted, electric with meaning, and thus revelatory? Analogy (is) a participative transcending-ordering-to-ends. . . . The sphere of always-enduring-in-movedness . . . is the always-moving. 45

The oscillative encompassing is an ever-inclusive, ever-harmonic inclusion of uttermosts of being, displayed always in an ordering motion. It arrays without ceasing, ordering uttermosts of compass and constellative reconciliations of differences and opposites to ensemble specific forms of relatedness. It is the always enduring inclusive movement that is the oscillative encompassing structure that is analogy as structure of relatedness in hierarchy, succession, and array. The oscillative encompassing is eternally an ordering motion, and this motion is given by analogy, the index of order. The manner of analogy is as a “sounding” and a suprapositioning of (Cantorean) orders: Sound is . . . the dynamic ordering-to-end(s)/ordering-to-origin(s) between supra-transcending immanence(s) and transcending-from-manifesting immanentizing transcendence(s). 46

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Thus Pryzwara’s analogical metaphysics signals the oscillative entwining of transcendences and immanences: from abyssal depths as uttermost depths, to ultra-transcendences as ultimate mysteries. Transcendences and immanences of the Cantorean continua reveal sounding pleromatic structures: the oscillative encompassing and ordering, the inclusive encompassing of the taut arrayals of absoluted uttermosts, all arrayed in latticed relatedness; ordering. CONCLUSION: CORRINGTON AND PRYZWARA Pryzwaran analogical metaphysics, though couched in deeply Germanic (and idiosyncratic poetically Germanic) philosophical usage, is yet strikingly akin to Corrington’s naturalistic capacious metaphysics. Both aspire to give an account to the sheer unabatable limitless of reality or nature; both limit and quarter this limitlessness through metaphysical systems unafraid and unbowed by nature’s unceasable intractability. Both create systems of inexhaustible and incommensurable capaciousness. And both can be stitched one to the other so as to establish a meta-Corringtonian metaphysic. Corrington’s metaphysical vision is in its bold scope and powerful originality an intrinsic affirmation that authentic philosophy is always metaphysical. Pryzwara’s metaphysical system is as bold and original. Corrington stresses complexity and vastness; Pryzwara concord and oscillation. The sheer ceaselessness of articulations of nature, uttermost depths and ultimate mysteries, natura naturans and natura naturata, gods and their dimensions, orders of complexes, the human process: these are the hallmarks of Corrington’s metaphysics. Through the human process some of these vastings are brought to semioses and full metaphysical explication. Corringtonian nature is the engine of Cantorean endlessness of orders: infinite complexes (themselves of Cantorean magnitudes of kinds and manners), which are yet again of the unfathomable and impenetrable and ever and always alien workings of Cantorean illimitableness: gods, natura naturans, and natura naturata. It is metaphysics so powerful, so profound, that it is breathtaking: and it is also as true a portrayal of reality as might be achieved. Through Pryzwara, and the meta-forms of his analogical metaphysics, the rhythm of oscillative encompassing and inclusive encompassing, the concordic enveloping of absolutes uttermost and uttermosts absoluted, the continua of being manifest and obtain and monstrate, and the fugal concordic motion and rhythm of variation and integration, reconcile differences and oppositions seemingly irrenconciliable—an achievement of oscillative inclusion. Through Pryzwara, Corringtonian nature becomes not a maelstrom but a fugal work of self-creating, self-recreating, a meta-

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physical cosmic art, whose vasted features of complexes and orders and gods and natura naturans and natura naturata, of uttermost depths and ultimate mysteries are but that fugal work in its effortlessly incommensurable expressions. Corringtonian ecstatic naturalism through Pryzwaran analogical metaphysics is Leibniz’s query answered. NOTES 1. This chapter is dedicated to Amy. 2. Robert Corrington, Nature and Spirit (New York: Fordham University Press, 1992), 3, 21. 3. Robert Corrington, Nature’s Religion (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1997), 3. 4. Ibid., 41. 5. Robert Corrington, Ecstatic Naturalism (Bloomington, IN: Indiana, 1994), 38. 6. Corrington, Nature and Spirit, 30. 7. Ibid., 2-3. Justus Buchler, Metaphysics of Natural Complexes (New York: Columbia, 1966). 8. Corrington, Nature and Spirit, 8-13, 17-19. 9. Corrington, Ecstatic Naturalism, 26-30, 67-115. 10. Corrington, Nature and Spirit, 23-24. 11. Ibid., 23. 12. Joseph Warren Dauben, Georg Cantor: His Mathematics and Philosophy of the Infinite (Princeton, NJ: Princeton, 1990), 126-146, 217-245, 290-294. 13. Corrington, Nature and Spirit, 23. 14. Ibid., 24. 15. Ibid. 16. Ibid. 17. Buchler, Metaphysics of Natural Complexes, 24. 18. Corrington, Nature and Spirit, 25. 19. Ibid. 2, 7. 20. Ibid., 3. 21. Ibid., 9. 22. Ibid., 10. 23. Ibid., 2-3. 24. Ibid., 17, 20-21. 25. Ibid., 12. 26. Ibid., 23, 25. 27. Ibid., 29. 28. Ibid., 29-30. 29. Ibid., 2-3, 13. 30. Ibid., 125. 31. Ibid., 127. 32. Ibid., 139. 33. Corrington, Ecstatic Naturalism, 109. 34. Ibid., 108. 35. Ibid., 192. 36. Ibid., 196-197. 37. Corrington, Nature and Spirit, 35. 38. Ibid., 31 39. Ibid., 32-35. 40. Ibid., 125.

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41. Ibid., 126. 42. Recently translated and published as Erich Pryzwara, Analogia Entis: Metaphysics—Original Structure and Universal Rhythm (Ressourcement: Retrieval and Renewal in Catholic Thought), trans. John Betz and David Hart (Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2014). 43. Erich Pryzwara, Analogia Entis: Metaphysik: Ur-Struktur und All-Rythmus Einsiedeln: Johannes, 1962 (Zweite Auflage), 28. 44. Pryzwara, Analogia Entis, 62-63. 45. Ibid., 118. 46. Ibid., 121.

REFERENCES Buchler, Justus. The Metaphysics of Natural Complexes. New York: Columbia, 1966. Corrington, Robert S. Nature and Spirit. New York: Fordham University Press, 1992. ———. Ecstatic Naturalism. Bloomington, IN: Indiana, 1999. ———. Nature’s Religion. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 1997. Dauben, Joseph Warren. Georg Cantor: His Mathematics and Philosophy Of The Infinite. Princeton, NJ: Princeton, 1990. Pryzwara, Erich. Analogia Entis: Metaphysics- Original Structure and Universal Rhythm (Ressourcement: Retrieval and Renewal in Catholic Thought). Translated by Betz & Hart. Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2014. ———. Analogia Entis: Metaphysik: Ur-Struktur und All-Rhythmus. Einsiedeln: Johannes, 1962.

THIRTEEN Unruly Gods Schellingian Approaches to Theology in Robert Corrington and Philip Clayton Austin J. Roberts

“This is the incomprehensible basis of reality in things, the irreducible remainder which cannot be resolved into reason by the greatest exertion but always remains in the depths. Out of this which is unreasonable, reason in the true sense is born. Without this preceding gloom, creation would have no reality; darkness is its necessary heritage.” —F. W. J. Schelling 1

INTRODUCTION Although postmodern theologians are generally critical of metaphysics, those who draw on philosophers like Whitehead, Deleuze, or Schelling are often an exception to this anti-metaphysical trend. While Schelling is by far the older philosopher of the three, I believe that his thought is equally relevant for constructive theology today. In this chapter, my initial goal is to explain how Schelling’s proto-postmodern metaphysics has influenced the ecstatic naturalism of Robert S. Corrington in important ways, particularly in regards to his key notions of nature naturing and nature natured. To better understand his ongoing significance for theology today, I will also show how Schelling quite differently influences the liberal Christian theology of Philip Clayton. While Corrington is primarily a philosopher, the center of this chapter will nevertheless involve a theological comparison of his deep pantheism with Clayton’s post-founda155

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tionalist panentheism. Despite their important differences, I believe that their positions can be brought into an illuminating relationship through an analysis of Schelling’s metaphysics and his theology of the abyss (Ungrund) and ground (Grund) of being. This provides an interesting way to consider the difficult distinction between pantheism and panentheism, particularly because Schelling’s thought can be differently appropriated in support of either position. I begin by providing a brief overview of certain relevant themes in Schelling’s philosophy, specifically in relation to its significance for both naturalist and postmodern philosophies. And before turning to a theological comparison of Corrington and Clayton, I will also examine Schelling’s historical importance for Christian theology in order to better situate this discussion. SCHELLING’S CONTROVERSIAL LEGACY Although often seen as a mere precursor to Hegel—a blip on the radar before we finally arrive at the true master of modern German philosophy with his great system—the notoriously difficult work of Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling (1775–1854) has recently been going through a revival of sorts among Western philosophers and theologians. At least to some extent, this resurgence in Schellingian scholarship arguably has something to do with the contemporary Slovenian philosopher Slavoj Žižek’s influential writings on him. 2 In some of his work, Žižek has related Schelling’s philosophy to Lacanian psychoanalytic theory in novel ways. Crucially, he argues that Schelling’s philosophy prefigured most of the central themes in continental philosophy and that one can find his fingerprints in the works of virtually every major continental thinker, including Kierkegaard, Marx, Nietzsche, Heidegger, and Derrida. 3 But is it not the case that Schelling was an idealist like his contemporaries Hegel and Fichte, all of whom were caught up in the doomed effort of constructing a supposedly “complete” metaphysical system? And if so, is this not precisely what continental philosophers tend to oppose in their endless critiques of totalizing and arrogant metaphysics that are naïvely claimed to be grounded in some sort of “Universal Reason”? As it turns out, Schelling’s thought has a variety of complex dimensions that makes it very difficult to pin down and dismiss so easily. As Andrew Bowie remarks in his study of Schelling’s relationship to contemporary continental philosophy, “Schelling remained faithful to many Idealist conceptions even as he was undermining them in other ways.” 4 In fact, Schelling’s overall thought is markedly different from both his early mentor Fichte and his later opponent Hegel, in part because of his unique philosophical emphasis on nature’s productivity that gives birth to reason and consciousness. Arran Gare points out that Schelling viewed his philosophy as “neither materialist nor spiritualist,

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neither realist nor idealist” but rather “contained within itself these oppositions.” 5 For an increasing number of philosophers today, Schelling does indeed point beyond the idealism of Hegel or anyone else—and not because he achieved a higher metaphysical synthesis than others, but because, especially in his later work, he revealed the impossibility of ever doing so. 6 A decade after Hegel’s death, Schelling took over what had been the former’s chair of philosophy in Berlin in 1841. In his Berlin lectures, he strongly influenced a generation of philosophers—especially Kierkegaard and the Young Hegelians—with his sharp criticisms of Hegel’s totalizing system. 7 Anticipating a great deal of future continental philosophical themes, both Kierkegaard and the Young Hegelians were some of the first to speak of “the end of philosophy.” Jürgen Habermas can therefore plausibly make the claim that “we are philosophically still contemporaries of the Young Hegelians.” 8 And of course, Heidegger was drawing deeply on Kierkegaard, and especially his critique of Hegel. But what exactly were Schelling’s divergences from and objections to Hegel’s philosophy? As William Franke explains, “Whereas Hegel rationalized everything by the Logos, fully identifying the real and the rational, Schelling attempted to think that which exceeds the furthest reaches of rational comprehension.” 9 Gare also notes that Schelling “charged Hegel with having produced a self-enclosed dance of abstractions dealing with essences without any place for existence.” In turn, Schelling argued that “a system of reason cannot explain the fact of its own existence.” 10 Instead of something that can be presupposed, as the idealists like Hegel or Fichte believed, Schelling argued that rationality emerges from an “original chaos” or the “unruly ground.” 11 As such, against any elevation of Reason to a quasi-omnipotent level, Schelling did not give up on reason but instead relativized it in relation to the mystifying depths of nature’s productivity. In his view, while reason truly does have a proper and viable place in human life, human beings are ultimately incapable of making the world fully comprehensible—not least because we are ultimately “what is most incomprehensible.” 12 As a romantic thinker, Schelling also emphasized the crucial role that intuition, art, and creative imagination play in any effort to understand reality—again, in striking opposition to the Enlightenment belief in the self-sufficiency of reason or cognitive reflection. 13 As such, representational thought was a derivative mode of thinking for Schelling. In these ways and still others, he differed sharply from Hegel, even going on to speak of the Absolute or Being as “unprethinkable,” as “self-disclosure,” and as “only ever in what is to come.” 14 For Schelling, this infinite principle that always escapes the grasp of reason, eluding all concepts and representations, is ultimately the differentiating “source” and groundless “ground” of every finite being. 15 From a theological perspective, the unruly ground can be named “God prior to God.” 16

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Heidegger’s existentialist phenomenology has obvious parallels with Schelling in many of the examples outlined above, as he was in fact very influenced by Schelling’s later, more existentially tinged “positive philosophy.” 17 Even Derrida’s notion of différance arguably functions in a similar way to Schelling’s concept of Being, 18 which the latter described as “that which never was, which, as soon as it is thought, disappears. . .” 19 Yet many philosophers like Heidegger and Derrida have been hesitant to admit the extent of Schelling’s influence on their thinking. Why is this the case? Although post-Heideggerian philosophy is clearly in Schelling’s debt, his reputation as an idealist who was too tangled up in metaphysics has apparently kept many continental philosophers relatively quiet about his immense importance for their thinking. According to Gare, Heidegger misinterpreted Schelling as a mere idealist, which then strongly influenced many poststructuralists’ views of him: Heidegger misrepresented the history of European philosophy by characterizing it as the triumph of metaphysics construed as the forgetting of Being. This involved identifying metaphysics with ontotheology and then with idealist philosophy, philosophy in which the subject is taken as the starting point. But Schelling had already argued against this approach and developed a metaphysics that took the self-conscious subject to be derivative. 20

Against the frequent poststructuralist dismissal of all metaphysics as difference-denying and naïvely foundationalist, Schelling’s metaphysics of nature is not so easily characterized in these terms. A few major continental thinkers have been able to appreciate this, perhaps especially Gilles Deleuze who “refers to Schelling sparingly but approvingly” in his writings. 21 Very much like Deleuze, in fact, Schelling can be interpreted as a philosopher who builds difference into his open-ended, non-foundationalist metaphysical experiment. This is especially the case if one folds his earlier philosophy of nature into his later philosophy of existence rather than seeing them as incommensurate aspects of a scattered philosopher. Gare helpfully provides a three-fold summary of Schelling’s approach to metaphysics as upholding “the primacy of Being over consciousness,” rejecting “the possibility of grasping Being as an object of thought,” even while also continuing the “quest for a philosophy of nature through which the emergence of humans would be intelligible and rationality could be appreciated as an emergent within nature.” 22 As Bowie further explains, Schelling’s metaphysics are constructed on “the fundamental principle of difference within identity” and assumes a view of nature in perpetual becoming and self-organizing activity. 23 Schelling was neither a mechanistic materialist nor a vitalist but instead tried to think of nature as intrinsically creative, agential, self-constituting, or productive. 24 On this point, Schelling drew on the Latin distinction between natura naturans (productive nature) and natura naturata (nature’s

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products). 25 Yet nature’s productivity, which is neither subject nor object, remains fundamentally unconscious and elusive for Schelling, so he did not advocate for panpsychism. He developed this metaphysical position between two poles: in partial opposition to Spinoza on the one side, who Schelling believed allowed nature to deterministically swallow the subject; and in partial opposition to Fichte’s effort to complete Kant’s project on the other side, which he believed resulted in seeing nature as completely subdued by the subject. 26 His metaphysics therefore allowed him to make critically realist affirmations of both an endlessly productive nature and conscious, reasoning human subjects that emerge from nature’s depths. Schelling’s influence on theology has also been significant. Although it is only rarely acknowledged, process theology is largely in Schelling’s debt, whose philosophy of nature indirectly influenced Whitehead’s philosophy of organism in numerous ways. For example, Schelling’s fundamental, self-constituting units of reality that he calls “Aktionen” are derived from nature naturing just as Whitehead’s actual entities derive from creativity. Furthermore, both of them understand God to be genuinely affected by the world process. 27 Gary Dorrien has also shown how nearly all of modern theology is in some way building upon the tradition of German idealism and post-Kantian philosophy more generally. However, in regards to Schelling, he makes it clear that theologians have generally read him as a type of absolute idealist rather than anything like the proto-postmodern naturalist view of him that I have been arguing for. 28 If there is one Schellingian non-idealist modern theologian who can also be described in these terms, we need look no further than Paul Tillich, who even wrote his doctoral dissertation on Schelling. 29 Indeed, a persuasive case can be made that both Tillich and Schelling should be viewed as proto-postmodern thinkers—and perhaps what Corrington calls ecstatic naturalists. 30 For Tillich as much as for Schelling, Being is the one concept like no other because it is the presupposition of every thought. As Tillich wrote, Being is the “content, the mystery, and the eternal aporia of thinking.” 31 However, it remains absolutely mysterious because it cannot be a direct object of thought. At the same time—and unlike many post-Heideggerian thinkers who “bracket” ontology—Tillich followed Schelling’s refusal to give up on a constructive philosophy of nature. In his ontology, Tillich agreed with Schelling that nature is intrinsically productive and agential as opposed to the alternatives of mechanistic materialism and vitalism. 32 And he understood “God” as both ground and abyss of being, which, as we will see below, also involved a modification of Schelling’s theological perspective. At this point, I want to turn to a discussion of Schelling in the work of two philosophical theologians who are within the Schellingian-Tillichian trajectory in their own distinct ways. I will begin with an analysis of Corrington’s ecstatic naturalist form of pantheism and then

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move into a comparative analysis of Clayton’s post-foundationalist panentheism. CORRINGTON’S DEEP PANTHEISM Drawing on the work of a wide variety of difficult thinkers, including Peirce, Schopenhauer, Schelling, Tillich, Heidegger, Schleiermacher, and Jung, Robert Corrington’s ecstatic naturalism is a truly unique combination of pragmatism, naturalism, phenomenology, semiotics, and psychoanalytic theory. However, despite his many influences, I want to argue that Schelling seems to be one of the two or three most significant inspirations for his development of ecstatic naturalism. This would appear to follow from the fact that Schelling is crucial for virtually all of the other thinkers that Corrington draws on, especially Schleiermacher, Tillich, Peirce, and Heidegger. In particular, Schelling’s early philosophy of nature resonates in many respects with the naturalist metaphysics that Corrington develops, while Schelling’s later “positive philosophy” seems to be especially significant for the existential elements in Corrington’s work. However, as we will see, his theological conclusion of “deep pantheism” is an area where Corrington departs from Schelling’s panentheism. Indeed, I believe that Corrington can be seen as a thinker who radicalizes Schelling through a more thoroughgoing naturalist metaphysics. In agreement with Schelling, Corrington insists on the necessity of developing an adequate metaphysics in order to avoid collapsing into a worldview “of sheer becoming with no generic features.” 33 Even so, he is extremely careful to avoid ontotheological hierarchies and placing an unjustifiable faith in reason. He argues that far too many contemporary philosophers wrongly equate all metaphysics with ontotheology, dismissing metaphysical speculation as “violent in its very nature” because it inevitably imposes a “closed set of genera on the flux of becoming.” For these postmodern philosophers, all forms of metaphysical thinking result in hierarchies of beings that in turn justify socially oppressive relations of all kinds. 34 However, Corrington develops what he calls an “ordinal metaphysics” that he believes is not subject to these kinds of critiques, largely because it does not posit a highest being beyond nature as its ultimate generating source. Furthermore, Corrington argues for the principle of ontological parity, which means that ordinal metaphysics does not permit “degrees of being [but] only diverse ways or kinds of being.” This sharply differentiates his ordinal metaphysics from almost every other metaphysical system, from Plato to Hegel, that are constructed on the basis of ontological priority rather than parity. In Corrington’s perspective, nothing in nature is more real or more foundational than anything else—everything is just “differently real” in certain respects. As such, Corrington rigorously develops a

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metaphysical perspective that is unusually democratic, non-hierarchical, and (very much like Schelling) difference affirming: For the ordinal perspective there is no such thing as a privileged order or complex that is paradigmatic for all other orders . . . there is no search for some foundational ur-phenomenon that would ground all other phenomena . . . [and] no drive to find a trans-temporal or transordinal essence that would be the true phenomenon underneath all modes of its semblance. . . . There is no bottom and no top to the orders of nature. 35

As such, Corrington argues for a kind of postmodern naturalism, which is not unlike Deleuze’s philosophy of difference that has become increasingly influential in recent years. 36 The most important aspect of Corrington’s metaphysical perspective is the distinction that he frequently makes between nature naturing and nature natured, which for him marks the ultimate “ontological difference.” As we have already seen, Schelling also draws on this distinction in his metaphysics to distinguish nature’s productivity from its products, although it can be found in the thinking of many others, including Aquinas, Bruno, Spinoza, Emerson, and Deleuze. Corrington believes that this notion provides a truly capacious perspective of nature’s unfathomable complexity in which every natural complex and order is on the side of nature natured, or “the innumerable orders of the world.” On the other side is nature naturing, which is variously defined by Corrington as “nature perennially creating itself out of itself alone,” 37 “nature’s unconscious,” the “unruly ground,” and “the birthing ground of all complexes, divine or otherwise.” 38 Corrington argues that this distinction supports all of the basic positions of naturalism: that nature is all that there is, that there is no supernatural realm, that nature was not created by something outside itself, that there is no order of orders, that nature has no contour or inside, that the divine is fully within the one nature that there is, and that there is no overarching telos in nature. 39 Like Schelling, Corrington also rejects panpsychism within his naturalist position largely because it would undermine his strong emphasis on nature naturing as the unconscious of nature. Following Justus Buchler, Corrington instead argues that any “thing” that is within the orders of nature natured can be most adequately called a “natural complex.” He explains that this phrase, “is used to remind us that nature is ubiquitous and that whatever there is, in whatever mode it is, or in whatever sphere it is, it is fully and always a part of the one nature that there is.” 40 In this view, nature is not constituted by substances or static essences, which are traditional metaphysical ideas that Corrington regards as “both imperial and inept.” Instead, nature is composed of natural complexes with different “traits,” a word that he prefers because of its “striking metaphysical neutrality.” 41 In order to understand how Corrington maintains a strong

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sense of difference within this metaphysical perspective, this notion of traits as an alternative to essences is crucial. As Corrington explains, “Differences between and among orders are not differences in reality, but differences of location and of trait constitution.” 42 As such, Corrington has carefully constructed a powerful and open-ended metaphysical perspective that attempts to describe nature without homogenizing its immense differences. Whether Schelling is as successful as Corrington in building difference into his metaphysics is debatable, but they do have the same overall goal. Another way that Corrington’s perspective relates to Schelling is in his belief that reason and consciousness emerge from nature naturing and are thus incapable of grasping the whole of reality. This is especially clear in Corrington’s extended discussion of Schelling’s notion of the unruly ground in Nature’s Religion, which is certainly one of his most challenging and important works. As Corrington explains, No matter how hard reason works, it can never bring into the open that which is always receding from view. . . . Reason, whether in its ontological guise as the logos that governs the things of the world, or in its pale reflection in the human process, is a dependent product of the unruly ground, and cannot, as product, gain access to its indefinite and unconditional source. 43

Corrington describes nature’s unruly ground and its innumerable potencies as “beyond good and evil.” 44 It is the originating source of everything that is, a role assigned to God by traditional theists—and at least for a certain reading of his work, this includes Schelling. As such, Corrington’s unruly ground has little in common with anything that has been traditionally called God. It is not conscious, it lacks intentions, and “always turns away from what it sustains, while sustaining that from which it turns.” The unruly ground cannot be petitioned by our prayers, it does not provide a foundation for meaning, and as “providingness” it can “only make available a type of healing and transformation that is far more subtle than most that we desire.” 45 Yet Corrington maintains an important place for God in his metaphysical system. As we have already noted, whatever it is that “God” names cannot be transcendent to nature within the ordinal perspective. Corrington is also very clear that any claim that God is “personal” or an “intentional agent” of some kind is highly anthropomorphic. As such, quite unlike Schelling, there is no place for God as a responsive subject in Corrington’s ecstatic naturalism. Corrington believes that such views are human projections that must constantly be stripped away. For him, God is a natural complex that “is eclipsed by nature naturing and is emergent from it” like anything else—even if he also admits that “god is a highly complex natural complex.” 46

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Indeed, Corrington’s pantheistic God can be analyzed into four inseparable dimensions. He has developed this theological framework in critical dialogue with Charles Hartshorne’s dipolar theism by arguing that his scheme is incomplete without two additional natures of the divine. 47 The first divine nature is related to the sacramental, in that God appears in certain orders of nature as an epiphany of power and meaning. Following Rudolf Otto, this can be described as the experience of “the Holy.” This first dimension of God—the “fragmented origin”—is especially prominent in aesthetic works as humans experience the illuminating divine presence in uniquely powerful ways. 48 The second divine nature is the “grace of the spirit” or “the fragmented powers of expectation” for specific natural complexes. It is somewhat similar to Whitehead’s primordial nature of God, although Corrington strongly rejects his notion of eternal objects as constitutive of the divine mind. 49 As Corrington explains, this dimension of the divine is “perhaps best expressed in eschatological language” as “that of God in its role as lure toward justice.” 50 Yet there is nothing like a blueprint or any specific content to the divine lure, as in the initial aim that process theologians speak of. Instead, it simply provides a new opening into the future for natural complexes and thereby prevents the eternal return of the same. If the first two divine dimensions are correlated to nature natured, the third divine nature can be correlated to nature naturing. And unlike the first two divine natures, the third divine nature is in some sense infinite as well as both preordinal and pretemporal. It can be compared to Tillich’s ground of being or to Schelling’s Grund, although Corrington of course differs from them by denying that God is in any sense the ultimate Creator of nature. 51 If the second divine nature provides a specific grace that can alter natural complexes, the third divine nature provides a “natural grace” as a general sustaining power for nature’s orders. But this dimension of God is nevertheless subordinate to nature naturing and its innumerable potencies. As Corrington explains, “God sustains all the orders of the world and has its own potencies, but does not exhaust all the potencies of nature.” 52 Finally, even the fourth divine dimension remains distinct from nature naturing. In this divine nature, Corrington argues that God “finds its own lure” in its confrontation with nature naturing as the ultimate “beyond.” In the face of the ultimate mystery of nature naturing or the encompassing (Jaspers), God is lured toward its own “growth and transformation” which “enables God to be eternally self-surpassable.” 53 While Corrington’s notion of nature naturing as the beyond even of God in all of its dimensions is comparable to Schelling’s Ungrund or “God before God,” he does not identify this as a fifth divine nature. For him, it is simply nature perennially creating itself out of itself alone. It is this radically naturalist move in particular that makes Corrington’s position a type of pluralistic or deep pantheism, which is distinct

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from Schelling’s “pan + en + theismus.” 54 At least for many scholars, Schelling’s position is interpreted as panentheistic because it includes God as ground (Grund), abyss (Ungrund), and the emergent self-conscious Spirit in which the world freely participates. Tillich followed this basic scheme, also calling his position panentheistic in his later work, although he rejected Schelling’s third aspect of God as an emergently responsive being. Despite their differences, even if God is indeed unconscious in one of its dimensions, it is nevertheless God rather than nature for both Tillich and Schelling. For his part, Corrington insists on a thoroughly naturalist reading of the Ungrund, which for him is a more compelling appropriation of Schelling. Perhaps there is in Schelling’s thought a certain apophatic undecidability about the unconscious abyss: is it God without traits or the bottomless depths of nature itself? At this point, the line between panentheism and pantheism is no longer easy to discern. It does seem that Schelling’s Ungrund can be read very differently—or even rejected entirely, as our analysis of Clayton’s panentheism will now illustrate. CLAYTON’S POST-FOUNDATIONALIST PANENTHEISM In one of his most significant publications to date, The Problem of God in Modern Thought, the philosophical theologian Philip Clayton concludes his extremely detailed study of the history of modern metaphysics—from Descartes through the early development of German idealism—with a critical analysis of Schelling’s concept of God. It is here that Clayton most clearly reveals how his own impressive form of Christian panentheism is indebted to Schelling’s metaphysics, although in order to understand his position it will be necessary to look at some of his other works as well. For Clayton, Schelling continues to offer the constructive theologian many of the strengths of Hegel without his ontotheological certainties by “preserving the Kantian insistence that not all is (or can be) known, that no place would remain for freedom if everything were deducible from theoretical reason.” 55 Under the sway of Kant’s critiques, Clayton has continually attempted to avoid ontotheology, which he defines as “the attempt to derive as much knowledge of God as possible from human reason alone,” especially in relation to proofs for the existence of a highest and most perfect being. 56 He believes that postmodernity has released theologians from the burden of defending these proofs—even while it does not permit a careless descent into fideistic irrationality. Identifying his position as postfoundationalist rather than anti-foundationalist, Clayton argues that although theists must continue to offer reasons for their beliefs, “the claims of reason to universal validity . . . are now under severe challenge . . . multiple perspectives are the bottom line.” Contemporary theology must

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therefore proceed “in critical dialogue with the sciences and philosophy—yet without the sense that [its] truth has to be derived at the outset from more general foundations.” 57 As a pragmatist, Clayton attempts to evaluate truth claims on the basis of coherence and consensus rather than by attempting to ground them in indubitable first principles or upon a universal foundation. 58 And although metaphysical speculation remains necessary, he argues that it must be both “hypothetical” and “pluralistic.” 59 In his own emergentist metaphysics, Clayton is comparable to Corrington’s ordinal metaphysics in that he strongly rejects panpsychism and attempts to do justice to nature’s innumerable differences through what he calls an “ontological pluralism.” 60 His metaphysical perspective is uniquely developed through a deep engagement in the natural sciences. In fact, few contemporary theologians have so thoroughly engaged cutting-edge science like Clayton has, who readily interacts with everything from quantum physics and biosemiotics to emergentist theories and physical cosmology. 61 Like Corrington, Clayton also rejects supernatural interventionism and grounds his emergentist metaphysics in an evolutionary perspective. 62 Despite certain similarities, Clayton is not an ecstatic naturalist. He ultimately pulls back from a more radical reading of Schelling by rejecting the potentially pantheistic and strongly apophatic elements—precisely those aspects of Schelling that are uniquely appropriated by Corrington. Clayton begins his analysis of Schelling’s concept of God by arguing that Tillich was somewhat selective in using his mentor’s metaphysics. For Clayton, Schelling generally provides an adequate balance of the kataphatic with an apophatic humility about the limits of God-talk, while Tillich on the other hand was too extreme in his apophaticism. Clayton argues that Tillich’s relegation of virtually all theological language to the level of symbol makes constructive reflection on the nature of God unnecessarily difficult and abstract. 63 In the end, Tillich’s central notion of the “God above God” as an infinitely transpersonal principle is insufficient for Clayton who wants to be able to say something more about God in non-symbolic and personal language. If God were only the ground of being, he argues, then God would be “an empty absolute, lower than— because lacking qualities found in—finite subjects.” 64 Clayton’s ultimate goal is to follow Schelling by holding on to the difficult balance of kataphatic and apophatic God-talk. To do this, he looks to Schelling’s dipolar theism that he believes does justice to both the mysterious infinity and God-as-personal. 65 Clayton argues that Schelling’s first move in the direction of dipolar theism was to construe Spinoza’s infinite substance as subject, thereby eliminating his determinism and preserving a metaphysical ground for genuine freedom. This enabled Schelling to affirm creatio ex nihilo as a genuinely free act, “a choice” by the Absolute Ground to differentiate

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itself into self and (finite) other, 66 and then to see world history as an “open process of genuine and novel development.” 67 Yet if God as the Absolute is to be initially conceived as the infinitely all-encompassing subject, then it is logically the case that finite creation cannot exist apart from it but must instead somehow be “contained” within it. Following Schelling, Clayton argues that any adequate theism must therefore be dialectical: all finite, contingent beings participate in God as their necessary “ground of being” or “Being-itself.” In this description of God as ground (Grund) and the world as consequent, we have the first hint of a Schellingian (and basically Tillichian) form of panentheism. 68 In fact, Schelling was probably the first to use the term panentheism in 1809. 69 But does this minimalist “ground of being” God do justice to the actual experiences of theistic believers, Clayton wonders? Is it not the case that theists generally relate to God as a personal and intentional being—as “not-less-than-personal”? 70 Clayton is suspicious of philosophical attempts to impose categories upon believers in advance, dictating to them what they can and cannot authentically experience as “real.” He recognizes that philosophical theologians have often struggled with the dilemma of understanding God as the ground of being and as a personal being. For Tillich, God is the ground of everything personal and can be symbolized as personal but is not ultimately personal in any metaphysical sense. As Clayton points out, “a ground of being lacks the attributes for being personal, for example, being in relationship to something outside itself (there is nothing outside itself!).” 71 He believes that Tillich was at least partly right to point out that if God is merely a being, then God cannot be truly infinite. However, in Schelling’s thought, Clayton discovers a way to coherently affirm a robustly theistic view of God as both infinite and personal. This requires one to uphold a form of dipolar theism so that God is inseparably the ground of being (“the Godhead”) and the highest personal being or subject. 72 In other words, the responsive God-as-personal is the perfect manifestation of the eternal God-as-ground. For Clayton and Schelling, the necessity of dipolar theism logically follows from the need for a “third moment” of mediation between the infinite divine ground and consequent finite world in order to provide “common ground for the two,” thereby avoiding “absolute dualism.” 73 As Schelling wrote, echoing Augustine’s notion of the Spirit as the bond of love between the Father and the Son, God as ground and the world as consequent “should become one through love; that is, [the Ground] divides itself only that there may be life and love and personal existence.” 74 By the middle of Schelling’s career, Clayton argues that his thought can be described as dipolar panentheism. For Schelling, the infinite God is intimately involved in and affected by the world’s processes of becoming. God freely unfolds Godself into a world that is characterized by “different degrees of organization and development of living force.” 75 Schelling described the per-

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sonal aspect of God as “the self-manifestation of the Godhead” in order to sympathetically become with the world. 76 Yet we must be clear that neither Schelling nor Clayton are implying that at one point there was a transpersonal ground of being that only later objectified itself as an existing personal being. Instead, he argues that Schelling’s view is that the Grund eternally contained the potential for its own personal existence, which then became actual through God’s interactions with the world. 77 Therefore, God as both infinite ground and as personal subject have always existed, even though the personal pole variously exists in the modes of potentiality and actuality. Similarly, God has always been potentially though not actually conscious as ground. 78 As Clayton explains, “God was always the (potentially) self-manifesting God, and hence the creator God, even though there was a phase (metaphorically, a time) when God was not manifest in anything outside himself.” 79 Ultimately, both the finite world and God-as-personal emerge from the same infinite ground that contains every potential for becoming, yet only God-as-personal shares the same divine nature as the infinite ground. While it might appear at this point as if Clayton is uncritically appropriating another philosopher, it is important to see where he sharply diverges from Schelling on certain issues. In particular, Clayton is highly suspicious of Schelling’s occasional lapse into dualism, a “Gnostic or Zoroastrian” subdivision of God into two wills: “the will of love” and the dark, irrational “will of the deep.” On this rendering of his metaphysics, Schelling argued that the primordial ground divided itself into two essences of “dark” and “light” in order to eventually become a “unified self.” 80 But for Clayton, this is problematic because it makes God partly evil as well as making the real ultimately irrational. He also argues that there is no fully satisfactory explanation for “how a being with two distinct wills could ever be a single self or entity.” 81 Clayton notes that Schelling tried to reconcile this unmediated dualism by positing a neo-platonic primordial unity, which he variously called the unconscious abyss, the unruly ground, or Ungrund. Because Clayton interprets this concept as implying “a unity-above-all-differentiation” and “the One above all distinctions,” he argues that it results in a radical apophaticism about which “no theological language is finally true.” 82 He also criticizes the notion of the Ungrund as purely monistic, echoing Hegel’s view that Schelling’s Ungrund is an ultimate unity that dissolves all differences: “as the night in which . . . all cows are black.” 83 For Clayton, the monistic Ungrund is totally unnecessary once we drop Schelling’s misguided cosmic dualism. Instead, he believes that we should hold onto Schelling’s more adequate theory of dipolar and dialectical theism, between God as Grund and God-as-personal:

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Austin J. Roberts It may be that neither a full dualism nor a full monism is philosophically or theologically acceptable. . . . The resolution emerges, I have suggested, when one returns to the distinction that underlay Schelling’s occasionally misguided dualism. As Schelling observes in introducing his discussion, “the general basis of this doctrine . . . lies in the distinction between existence and that which is the ground of existence.” It is this distinction that we need to hold onto, while letting the others fall. 84

At this point, it should be clear that Clayton’s reading of Schelling’s unruly ground differs sharply from Corrington’s appropriation of the same concept. For Corrington, although Schelling’s Ungrund is indeed neo-platonic in a certain sense, it neither results in a hierarchy of beings nor a simple monism. If Clayton echoes Hegel’s critique of Schelling’s Ungrund, Corrington implicitly agrees with Deleuze’s counterargument against Hegel that “it is Schelling who brings difference out of the night of the Identical, and with finer, more varied and more terrifying flashes of lightning than those of contradiction: with progressivity.” 85 As another name for nature naturing, the unruly ground goes hand in hand with Corrington’s ontological pluralism that does not permit degrees of being due to the principle of ontological parity. For his part, Clayton views nature naturing as a description of the self-organizing powers of the finite world, which are derived from God as creative Ground. 86 We must also note that for Corrington, the unruly ground does not result in pure apophaticism. As we have seen, quite a few things can be positively stated about the divine natures in Corrington’s thought, even though the unruly ground (as distinct from the divine natures) is indeed an absolute mystery. As Corrington writes, “we can affirm that the underconscious of nature exists but . . . can say almost nothing about its internal structures.” 87 Finally, we should also note that Clayton differs from Corrington’s reading of Schelling’s notion of the potencies (Potenzen). Unlike Corrington who locates all possibilities and actualities within the orders of nature natured and views the potencies as the mysterious, pretemporal “selfothering momenta” of nature naturing, 88 Clayton reads the potencies of the infinite ground as synonymous with “potentials,” or ideal possibilities for becoming. 89 In fact, he explicitly argues that Schelling’s potencies are analogous to Whitehead’s primordially envisaged eternal objects. 90 As such, just as Whitehead’s primordial nature of God “contains” the eternal objects, it is similarly the case that Schelling’s infinite ground “contains” the potencies for the world’s becoming actualities. Furthermore, Clayton has also argued that Whitehead’s consequent nature can be compared to Schelling’s self-conscious pole of God in that both are personally responsive to the world. 91 Clayton’s panentheism is therefore both Schellingian and neo-Whiteheadian.

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CONCLUSION Throughout this study of Schelling in relation to the work of Corrington and Clayton, my primary intention has been to show how he continues to be a rich resource for contemporary philosophical theology. Rather than attempting to completely resolve the important differences between Corrington and Clayton’s appropriations of Schelling, I have instead chosen to point them out in order to illustrate the creative potential of Schelling’s often ambiguous but fascinating way of thinking about nature and the divine. Within our twenty-first-century context, Schelling remains a powerful conversation partner for diverse theologians with different commitments who want to be able to respond to deconstructive critiques of theology and metaphysics while still attempting to speak and write in a constructive fashion. By dethroning rationalism while still attempting to be reasonable about theology and metaphysics, Schelling’s thought is a deeply valuable guide through the postmodern jungle of anti-metaphysical pantextualism and hyper-skepticism. Furthermore, as modern scientific materialists dismiss theology as a fruitless project of dogmatic thinkers, the post-Christian pantheism of Corrington and the liberal Christian panentheism of Clayton offer important examples of Schelling-styled naturalistic theologies that strive to take diverse religious experiences seriously and reasonably. NOTES 1. F. W. J. Schelling, On the Essence of Human Freedom, trans. James Gutmann (Chicago: Open Court, 1936), 34. 2. For example, see Slavoj Žižek, The Indivisible Remainder: On Schelling and Related Matters (London: Verso, 1996). 3. See the essay by Žižek that is included in F. W. J. Schelling, The Abyss of Freedom/ Ages of the World, trans. Judith Norman (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 1997). 4. Andrew Bowie, Schelling and Modern European Philosophy: An Introduction (London: Routledge, 1994), 2. 5. Catherine Keller and Anne Daniell, eds., Process and Difference: Between Cosmological and Poststructuralist Postmodernisms (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002), 34. 6. Bowie, Schelling and Modern European Philosophy, 2. 7. Andrew Bowie, “Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling,” in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. Edward N. Zalta, Winter, 2010, plato.stanford.edu/archives/ win2010/entries/schelling/. 8. Bowie, Schelling and Modern European Philosophy, 3. 9. William Franke, On What Cannot Be Said: Apophatic Discourses in Philosophy, Religion, Literature, and the Arts: Volume 2: Modern and Contemporary Transformations, 1st edition (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2007), 62. 10. Keller and Daniell, Process and Difference, 38. 11. Robert S. Corrington, Nature’s Religion (Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 1997), 42. 12. Keller and Daniell, Process and Difference, 38.

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13. Bowie, “Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling.” 14. Keller and Daniell, Process and Difference, 37–38. 15. Franke, On What Cannot Be Said, 64. 16. Tyler Tritten, Beyond Presence: The Late F. W. J. Schelling’s Criticism of Metaphysics (Boston: Walter De Gruyter Inc., 2012), 113. 17. Keller and Daniell, Process and Difference, 40. 18. Ibid., 42. 19. Ibid., 37. 20. Ibid., 46. 21. Alistair Welchman and Judith Norman, eds., The New Schelling (New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2004), 12. 22. Keller and Daniell, Process and Difference, 45. 23. Bowie, Schelling and Modern European Philosophy, 40. 24. Keller and Daniell, Process and Difference, 34. 25. F. W. J. Schelling, First Outline of a System of the Philosophy of Nature, trans. Keith R. Peterson (Albany: State University of New York Press, 2004), 202. 26. Bowie, Schelling and Modern European Philosophy, 27. 27. Antoon Braeckman, “Whitehead and German Idealism: A Poetic Heritage,” Process Studies 14, no. 4 (Winter 1985): 265–86. See also Philip Clayton, Adventures in the Spirit: God, World, Divine Action (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2008), 164. 28. Gary Dorrien, Kantian Reason and Hegelian Spirit: The Idealistic Logic of Modern Theology (Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012), 84. 29. Gilkey argues that Tillich was “not an Idealist” in Langdon Gilkey, Gilkey on Tillich (New York: Crossroad, 1990), 28. 30. For the notion of Tillich as “proto-postmodern,” see the chapter on Tillich and postmodernism by John Thatamanil in Russell ReManning, ed., The Cambridge Companion to Paul Tillich (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009). 31. Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology, Volume 2 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1957), 11. 32. Gilkey, Gilkey on Tillich, 84–85. 33. Robert S. Corrington, Nature’s Sublime: An Essay in Aesthetic Naturalism (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2013), 13. 34. Ibid., 12–13. 35. Ibid., 14–19. 36. For a helpful introduction to Deleuze’s poststructuralist metaphysics in relation to theology, see Kristien Justaert, Theology After Deleuze (New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2012). 37. Corrington, Nature’s Sublime, xiii. 38. Robert S. Corrington, Nature and Spirit: An Essay in Ecstatic Naturalism (New York: Fordham University Press, 1992), 36. 39. Robert S. Corrington, “Ecstatic Naturalism” (SAAP Denver, 2014), 4. 40. Corrington, Nature’s Sublime, 10. 41. Ibid., 8. 42. Robert S. Corrington, Ecstatic Naturalism: Signs of the World (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994), 13. 43. Corrington, Nature’s Religion, 100. 44. Ibid., 98. 45. Ibid., 132. 46. Emphasis added. Corrington, “Ecstatic Naturalism,” 2014, 10. 47. Robert S. Corrington, “Toward a Transformation of Neoclassical Theism,” International Philosophical Quarterly vol. XXVII, no. 4, issue no. 108 (December 1987): 403. 48. Corrington, Nature and Spirit, 165. 49. Ibid., 173. 50. Corrington, “Toward a Transformation of Neoclassical Theism,” 404. 51. Corrington, Nature and Spirit, 180. 52. Ibid., 179.

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53. Corrington, “Toward a Transformation of Neoclassical Theism,” 407. 54. It is also true that Schelling sometimes identified as a pantheist, although this seems to be more accurately labeled as panentheism. Clayton, Adventures in the Spirit, 169. 55. Philip Clayton, The Problem of God in Modern Thought (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2000), 469. 56. Philip Clayton, God and Contemporary Science (Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1998), 2. 57. Ibid., 2–4. 58. He is especially influenced by C.S. Peirce. Clayton, Adventures in the Spirit, 134. 59. Ibid., 61. 60. Philip Clayton, Mind and Emergence: From Quantum to Consciousness (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006), 54. 61. His expertise in the field of science and religion is illustrated in Philip Clayton, Religion and Science: The Basics (New York: Routledge, 2011). 62. Philip Clayton and Steven Knapp, The Predicament of Belief: Science, Philosophy, and Faith (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 49. 63. Clayton, The Problem of God in Modern Thought, 470. 64. Ibid., 497. 65. Ibid., 472. 66. Clayton, Adventures in the Spirit, 168. 67. Clayton, The Problem of God in Modern Thought, 474. 68. Ibid., 475–478. 69. Clayton, Adventures in the Spirit, 169. 70. Clayton argues that God is “not-less-than-personal” throughout his works. For examples, see Clayton and Knapp, The Predicament of Belief. 71. Clayton, The Problem of God in Modern Thought, 478. 72. Ibid., 479. 73. Clayton, Adventures in the Spirit, 169. 74. Quoted in Ibid., 172. 75. Clayton, The Problem of God in Modern Thought, 480. 76. Ibid., 481. 77. Ibid., 495. 78. Ibid., 488. 79. Ibid., 487. 80. Ibid., 483–484. 81. Ibid., 485. 82. Clayton also points out that the unruly ground is the inspiration for Tillich’s “God above God.” Ibid. 83. G. W. F. Hegel, Phenomenology of Spirit, trans. A. V. Miller (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976), 9. 84. Clayton, The Problem of God in Modern Thought, 486. 85. Gilles Deleuze, Difference and Repetition, trans. Paul Patton (New York: Columbia University Press, 1995), 190f. 86. Clayton, Adventures in the Spirit, 164. 87. Robert S. Corrington, A Semiotic Theory of Theology and Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009), 249. 88. Ibid., 245. I would argue that Corrington’s “potencies” are closely comparable to Deleuze’s virtual singularities, which the latter also distinguished from Whitehead’s eternal objects in his late work, The Fold (1992). 89. Clayton, The Problem of God in Modern Thought, 487. 90. See endnote 30 in Clayton, Adventures in the Spirit, 292. 91. Joseph Bracken and Marjorie Hewitt Suchoki, eds., Trinity in Process: A Relational Theology of God (New York: Continuum, 1997), 134.

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REFERENCES Bowie, Andrew. “Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling.” In The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, edited by Edward N. Zalta, Winter, 2010. plato.stanford.edu/ archives/win2010/entries/schelling/. ———. Schelling and Modern European Philosophy: An Introduction. London: Routledge, 1994. Bracken, Joseph, and Marjorie Hewitt Suchoki, eds. Trinity in Process: A Relational Theology of God. New York: Continuum, 1997. Braeckman, Antoon. “Whitehead and German Idealism: A Poetic Heritage.” Process Studies 14, no. 4 (Winter 1985): 265–86. Clayton, Philip. Adventures in the Spirit: God, World, Divine Action. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2008. ———. God and Contemporary Science. Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 1998. ———. Mind and Emergence: From Quantum to Consciousness. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006. ———. Religion and Science: The Basics. New York: Routledge, 2011. ———. The Problem of God in Modern Thought. Grand Rapids, MI: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing, 2000. Clayton, Philip, and Steven Knapp. The Predicament of Belief: Science, Philosophy, and Faith. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011. Corrington, Robert S. A Semiotic Theory of Theology and Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. ———. “Ecstatic Naturalism.” SAAP Denver, 2014. ———. Ecstatic Naturalism: Signs of the World. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1994. ———. Nature and Spirit: An Essay in Ecstatic Naturalism. New York: Fordham University Press, 1992. ———. Nature’s Religion. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 1997. ———. Nature’s Sublime: An Essay in Aesthetic Naturalism. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2013. ———. “Toward a Transformation of Neoclassical Theism.” International Philosophical Quarterly vol. XXVII, no. 4, issue no. 108 (December 1987): 393–408. Deleuze, Gilles. Difference and Repetition. Translated by Paul Patton. New York: Columbia University Press, 1995. Dorrien, Gary. Kantian Reason and Hegelian Spirit: The Idealistic Logic of Modern Theology. Malden, MA: Wiley-Blackwell, 2012. Franke, William. On What Cannot Be Said: Apophatic Discourses in Philosophy, Religion, Literature, and the Arts: Volume 2: Modern and Contemporary Transformations. 1st edition. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2007. Gilkey, Langdon. Gilkey on Tillich. New York: Crossroad, 1990. Hegel, G. W. F. Phenomenology of Spirit. Translated by A. V. Miller. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1976. Justaert, Kristien. Theology After Deleuze. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2012. Keller, Catherine, and Anne Daniell, eds. Process and Difference: Between Cosmological and Poststructuralist Postmodernisms. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2002. ReManning, Russell, ed. The Cambridge Companion to Paul Tillich. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009. Schelling, F. W. J. First Outline of a System of the Philosophy of Nature. Translated by Keith R. Peterson. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2004. ———. On the Essence of Human Freedom. Translated by James Gutmann. Chicago: Open Court, 1936. ———. The Abyss of Freedom/Ages of the World. Translated by Judith Norman. Ann Arbor, MI:University of Michigan Press, 1997.

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Tillich, Paul. Systematic Theology, Volume 2. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1957. Tritten, Tyler. Beyond Presence: The Late F. W. J. Schelling’s Criticism of Metaphysics. Boston:Walter De Gruyter Inc, 2012. Welchman, Alistair, and Judith Norman, eds. The New Schelling. New York: Bloomsbury Academic, 2004. Žižek, Slavoj. The Indivisible Remainder: On Schelling and Related Matters. London: Verso,1996.

FOURTEEN The Categorial Schema Robert S. Corrington

0.0 The One is the Prior of all Priors. 1.0 The sequent Prior is the greater Nothingness. • 1.1 From the greater Nothingness the potencies unfold via the infinitesimals (the first positive Prior). • 1.2 From the potencies nature unfolds (the second positive Prior). • 1.3 From nature and its potencies the archetypal pre-formal potencies unfold (the third positive Prior). • 1.4 From the archetypal potencies the nascent orders of nature unfold (the fourth positive Prior). • 1.5 The nascent orders of nature transform the unfolding of the four positive Priors into differentiated enfoldings. • 1.6 The enfoldings coalesce into the innumerable unfolded orders of nature. 2.0 The fundamental fissure within the now emergent nature, via the four positive Priors, is that between natura naturans and natura naturata. • 2.1 There is no analogical bridge from the world of creation (natura naturata) to the underconscious of nature (natura naturans). • 2.2 The dimension of nature known as nature naturing has neither possibilities nor actualities, but is only constituted by potencies. • 1.3 Potencies are pre-semiotic, pre-temporal, and pre-spatial. 175

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• 1.4 The world of nature natured has neither internal nor external relations with the dimension of nature naturing. • 1.5 The unfolding ground of nature naturing manifests ontologically unique traces within the innumerable enfolding and enfolded orders of the world. 3.0 Nature is all that there is. • 3.1 There can be no theory of nature. • 3.2 The term “nature” is the most generic of terms and has no meaningful oppositional term. • 3.3 There is no supernatural realm. • 3.4 Nature is the availability of orders but is not an order in itself. • 3.5 Any given (natural) order is relevant to at least one other order. • 3.6 Any given (natural) order is non-relevant to at least one other order. 4.0 Nature is neither a system of internal relations nor an exhaustive set of external relations. • 4.1 Nature is constituted by innumerable subaltern worlds, each of which has limited scope. • 4.2 Systems and non-systems obtain in innumerable ways. • 4.3 There are natural continua in the world but no continuum of all continua. • 4.4 Each order in the world has limited scope and efficacy. • 4.5 Non-relevance is not a relation, either internal or external, as in the myth of negative prehensions which are, as per definition, relations. 5.0 Nature itself obtains prior to the distinction between the sacred and non-sacred. • 5.1 The sacred is an enfolding emergent from the unfoldings of nature naturing. • 5.2 Sacred orders are located within the orders of nature natured. • 5.3 Sacred orders contain traces of their origin in nature naturing. • 5.4 None of the traditional divine predicates are applicable to the sacred orders, specifically omniscience, omnipotence, simplicity, or eternity. • 5.5 The sacred is distinct from the more ubiquitous non-sacred orders. • 5.6 The sacred is humanly encountered through recollection and in its numinosity.

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6.0 The sacred is manifest in four primary modalities: the sacred folds, the sacred intervals, providingness, and the unruly ground. • 6.1 Each modality has unique features not shared by the other modalities. • 6.2 No one mode of the sacred is more or less real than another. • 6.3 While there are no degrees of being in the sacred, there are implicit dimensions of increasing or decreasing scope. • 6.4 Sacred folds and their intervals manifest archetypal formative powers. 7.0 The first modality of the sacred is the sacred fold. • 7.1 Sacred folds embody a dramatic increase in semiotic density and scope within their pertinent orders. • 7.2 Sacred folds function much like an astronomical stellar body, radiating great power into and through non-sacred orders. • 7.3 Sacred folds occur in innumerable gestalts in inorganic nature, organic nature, the self, histories, and mythic structures. • 7.4 Sacred folds have natural, not super-natural, histories and are subject to entropy. • 7.5 Sacred folds are entwined with human projections, but also have a quasi-independent status. • 7.6 There is no ultimate sacred fold, although any fold can become translucent to any or all of the four Priors and the Prior of all Priors. 8.0 The second modality of the sacred is that of the sacred interval. • 8.1 Sacred intervals always occur in conjunction with specific sacred folds. • 8.2 Sacred intervals dramatically dampen semiotic power. • 8.3 Sacred intervals occur in innumerable and often hard to detect subtle forms within the orders of the world. • 8.4 Sacred intervals have natural, not super-natural, histories, tied to the entropy of their respective sacred folds. • 8.5 Sacred intervals are entwined with human projections, but also have a quasi-independent status. • 8.6 There is no ultimate sacred interval although any interval can become translucent to any or all of the four positive priors and to the Prior of all Priors. 9.0 The third modality of the sacred is that of providingness. • 9.1 Providingness “has” no divine plan and is the sheer providingness of what does obtain. • 9.2 Providingness provides prior to the divide between good and evil.

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• 9.3 There is no location within nature natured where providingness is absent and as such it has no specific ordinal location. • 9.4 Providingness is not a predicate of anything. • 9.5 Providingness is not omnipotent nor is it in some kind of power relationship to the innumerable orders of the world. • 9.6 Providingness is experienced by the human self as natural grace. 10.0 The fourth modality of the sacred is that of the unruly ground. • 10.1 The unruly ground is the non-located unfolding for the sacred orders of the world. • 10.2 The unruly ground is without logos or meaning per se. • 10.3 The unruly ground does not embody or enact the principle of sufficient reason vis-à-vis the innumerable orders of the world. • 10.4 The unruly ground leaves pre-semiotic traces within the sacred orders of the world, thus rooting the sacred in the preordinal, pre-spatial, and pre-temporal. • 10.5 The unruly ground is most directly encountered through the human unconscious on the edges of its chaotic displacement. 11.0 The sacred modalities are differently entropic and non-entropic. • 11.1 Sacred folds admit entropy into their histories. • 11.2 Sacred intervals admit entropy into their histories. • 11.3 Providingness is neither entropic per se nor anti-entropic per se. • 11.4 The unruly ground is anti-entropic insofar as it is manifest as traces within orders rather than being orders of relevance in themselves within entropic nature natured. • 11.5 A sacred interval functions entropically as it entwines with its specific sacred fold. • 11.6 A sacred fold functions anti-enropically from the standpoint of an immediate cross-section of the human life-process, but cannot do so in the infinite long run. 12.0 The human process co-constitutes the first two modalities of the sacred (folds and intervals), but the sacred is not reducible to these forms of co-constitution. • 12.1 To be human is to be as the locus of internal unconscious complexes. • 12.2 All complexes of the unconscious are subject to projection onto sacred folds and intervals. • 12.3 A transference field connects projections to their order of relevance.

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• 12.4 A sacred countertransference exists but it is not located in a conscious divine agent. • 12.5 The sacred countertransference is experienced by the self as a form of resistance to the self’s projection onto a sacred field and interval. • 12.6 The sacred countertransference is not a human product. 13.0 There is no sacred history of be-ness or providingness. • • • •

13.1 Histories obtain but no History. 13.2 There can be sacred histories. 13.3 Histories are subaltern configuration within nature. 13.4 The “sum” of histories over time is neither cumulative nor uni-directional • 13.5 Each self occupies numerous histories simultaneously. • 13.6 Part of the moral life consists in the ongoing adjustment of histories. 14.0 Spirits exist in a different modality than the four modalities of the sacred. • 14.1 Spirits are ontologically unique, that is, they do not belong to nature naturing as potencies or to nature natured as orders. • 14.2 Spirits expand and contract as they encounter non-spiritual orders of the world. • 14.3 Spirits are not pre-determined bodies of interpretation (interpretants). • 14.4 Spirits are not conscious agents in any sense analogous to human forms of consciousness. • 14.5 The dimension of spirits is a “lesser” infinite than that of either the unfolding or the enfolded, but they have no mapable contour, either per se or from the perspective of human selves. • 14.6 Spirits interact with sacred folds and intervals while also quickening and augmenting natural grace (providingness/beness) so that it becomes the grace of the spirits. 15.0 Spirit interpreters enter into human communities of interpretation. • 15.1 Spirit interpreters are modalities of the spirits that enter specifically into the semiotic realms between and among human selves. • 15.2 Interpretive communities enhance and ramify signs held in common insofar as Spirit interpreters facilitate this hermeneutic process. • 15.3 Natural communities are human collectives that merely reiterate common signs without ramification; hence, they are bereft of Spirit interpreters.

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• 15.4 While Spirit interpreters are not bodies of attained signs, they open out semiosis for finite sign-users. • 15.5 Spirit interpreters make translation and augmentation of meaning possible in the time process. • 15.6 Each community of interpretation is the locus for different Spirit interpreters. 16.0 Sacred meaning has its originating impulse in melancholy. • 16.1 Melancholy is not directed toward any specific order of relevance within nature natured. • 16.2 Melancholy has its ultimate roots in the hidden memory of the Prior of all Prior, although it can be awakened by any or all of the four positive Priors. • 16.3 The primordial rootless root gets covered over with finite “lost objects” that intrude themselves onto the religious process. • 16.4 Melancholy can come to rest on any of the four positive Priors, each differently infinite, but the restlessness of melancholy will remain. • 16.5 Melancholy in its mediated form is a sudden unfolding of the grace of the spirits. • 16.6 Melancholy is a totalizing opening/closing that initially creates awareness of the fissuring between nature naturing and nature natured. 17.0 Sacred meaning has its culminating impulse in ecstatic bliss. • 17.1 Sacred bliss occurs only after melancholy has opened the self to its ultimate lost “whence.” • 17.2 Ecstatic bliss opens the human process to the originating unfolding that speaks to it from within and against its rigidified enfoldedness • 17.3 The life of the spirit consists of a dialectical engagement of melancholy and ecstatic bliss. • 17.4 The unknown root of the Nothingness appears through the ecstasies of nature naturing, and, in turn, through opening traces within nature natured. • 17.5 The opening traces of the Prior of all Priors are not orders of relevance, nor are they filled with semiotic content. • 17.6 Ecstatic bliss has no object, but rests in the eternal stillness within the periodic movement of unfolding/enfolding. 18.0 The Four Semiotic Infinities. • 18.1 The actual infinite is constituted by the “sum” of all actual and actualizing signs—a cross-slice of a given semiotic epoch.

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• 18.2 The prospective infinite consists of the enabling reservoir of potential signs holding forth a clearing within which the actual infinite can continue to unfold and enfold. • 18.3 The open infinite surrounds given interpretants, holding open a space of betweenness for each one. It is strongly tied to the principle of individuation. • 18.4 The sustaining infinite is the holding-around gathering that sustains all modes of semiosis that each prevails in their own distinctive way. 19.0 Hope is an access structure that holds open the dark intersection between nature naturing and nature natured. • 19.1 Personal hope first becomes focused on a specific order. • 19.2 Personal hope next becomes shaped by an emancipatory momentum that is beyond single and specific orders. • 19.3 Then follows the mode of personal hope that emerges from out of the heart of the ontological (natural) difference. • 19.4 Hope itself lives in the between keeping personal and communal hope vibrant and relatively non-demonic. • 19.5 Communal hope is entered into by the necessary structures of the community of interpreters e.g., hope and community coconstitute each other within time, space, and causality yet also within a semiotic transcendence that is content free. 20.0 The genus of sacred folds has (at least) four species. • 20.1 The first species is the dyadic centrifugal form that operates through an abjection of its opposite. • 20.2 The second species is the labyrinthine centripetal form that weaves the fold back toward the powers of origin. • 20.3 The third species is the fixed point enveloping fold. • 20.4 The fourth species is the polyform dialectical fold. • 20.5 Philosophical Query activates all four modes of sacred folds with a stress on the labyrinthine folds. 21.0 Ecstatic Naturalism combines the method of ordinal phenomenology with the stringent requirements of ontological parity. • 21.1 Ordinal phenomenology rotates its chosen natural complexes through their various ordinal locations, never essentializing or arranging some kind of hierarchy of Being from among them. • 21.2 Ordinal phenomenology receives its momentum from the stance of ontological parity; namely, through the rigorous commitment to see all natural complexes as fully real, but in different respects.

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• 21.3 Put differently, the ongoing stance of parity among all orders allows ordinal phenomenology to pay careful attention to whatever is in whatever way it is, and this without positing a transcendental subject as the ground of self-showingness. • 21.4 Yet ordinal phenomenology reaches its limit conditions in the saga of self-evident showing, thus requiring the use of a Peircean abduction and or a Kantian transcendental argument; namely, from the phenomenon as ordinally described to its transcendental support condition(s). The goal is to convert as many abductions as possible to the given/gifting of the ordinally located complex.

Selected Bibliography of Robert S. Corrington

A Semiotic Theory of Theology and Philosophy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000, 2009. An Introduction to C.S. Peirce: Philosopher, Semiotician, and Ecstatic Naturalist, Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 1993. Ecstatic Naturalism: Signs of the World, Advances in Semiotics. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1994. Nature and Spirit: An Essay in Ecstatic Naturalism. New York: Fordham University Press, 1992. Nature’s Religion. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 1997. Nature’s Self: Our Journey from Origin to Spirit. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 1996. Nature’s Sublime: An Essay in Aesthetic Naturalism. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2013. Riding the Windhorse: Manic Depressive Disorder and the Quest for Wholeness. Lanham, MD: Hamilton Books, 2003. The Community of Interpreters: On the Hermeneutics of Nature and the Bible in the American Philosophical Tradition. Macon, GA: Mercer University Press, 1987. Wilhelm Reich: Psychoanalyst and Radical Naturalist. New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2003.

Articles “An Appraisal and Critique of Alfred North Whitehead’s,” Process and Reality—corrected edition (1929 & 1978) and Justus Buchler’s Metaphysics of Natural Complexes— second, expanded edition (1966 & 1990). (Published by author, 2009). “Beyond Experience: Pragmatism and Nature’s God,” American Journal of Theology and Philosophy, 14, no. 2 (May 1993): 147–160. “Classical American Metaphysics: Retrospect and Prospect,” Philosophy and Experience: American Philosophy in Transition, ed. Richard E. Hart and Douglass R. Anderson (New York: Fordham University Press, 1997), 260–281. “Conversation between Justus Buchler and Robert S. Corrington,” The Journal of Speculative Philosophy: New Series, 3, no. 4 (1989): 261–274. “Deep Pantheism,” Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture, 1, no. 4 (October 2007): 503–507. “Ecstatic Naturalism and the Transfiguration of the Good,” Empirical Theology: A Handbook, ed. Randolph C. Miller (Birmingham: Religious Education Press, 1992), 203–221. “Ecstatic Naturalism,” Research News & Opportunities in Science and Theology, 3, no. 10 (June 2003): 20. “Empirical Theology and its Divergence from Process Thought,” Introduction to Christian Theology, ed. Roger A. Badham (Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press, 1998), 166–179. “Evolution, Religion, and an Ecstatic Naturalism,” in American Journal of Theology and Philosophy (Spring 2010): 124–135.

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“Finitude and Transcendence in the Thought of Justus Buchler,” The Southern Journal of Philosophy, 25, no. 4 (Winter 1987): 445–459. “Framing and Unveiling in the Emergence of the Three Orders of Value,” The American Journal of Theology and Philosophy, 23, no. 1 (Jan. 2002): 52–61. “From the Process Self to the Ecstatic Self: Pantheism Reconsidered.” Whitehead, Religion, Psychology. The Whitehead Society of Korea, 5th International Whitehead Conference (2004): 98–105. “Horizons and Contours: Toward an Ordinal Phenomenology,” Metaphilosophy, 22, no. 3 (1991): 179–189. “Justus Buchler’s Ordinal Metaphysics and the Eclipse of Foundationalism,” International Philosophical Quarterly, 25, no. 3 (September 1985): 289–98. “My Passage from Panentheism to Pantheism,” The American Journal of Theology and Philosophy, 23, no. 2 (May 2002): 129–153. “Naturalism, Measure, and the Ontological Difference,” The Southern Journal of Philosophy, 23, no. 1 (Spring 1985): 19–32. “Nature’s God and the Return of the Material Maternal,” The American Journal of Semiotics, 10, nos. 1–2 (1993): 115–132. “Neville’s ‘Naturalism’ and the Location of God,” Critical Studies in the Thought of Robert C. Neville, ed. C. Harley Chapman and Nancy Frankenberry (Albany: SUNY, 1998), 127–146. Also published in The American Journal of Theology & Philosophy, 18, no. 3: 257–280. “Ordinality and the Divine Natures,” Nature’s Perspectives: Prospects for Ordinal Metaphysics, ed. Kathleen Wallace, Armen Marsoobian, and Robert S. Corrington (Albany: SUNY Press, 1991), 347–366. “Peirce and the Semiosis of the Holy,” Semiotics 1990, ed. Karen Haworth, John Deely, and Terry Prewitt (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1991), 345–353. “Peirce’s Abjected Unconscious: A Psychoanalytic Profile,” Semiotics 1992, ed. John Deely (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1993), 91–103. “Peirce’s Abjection of the Maternal,” Semiotics 1993, ed. Robert S. Corrington and John Deely (New York: Peter Lang, 1995), 590–594. “Peirce’s Ecstatic Naturalism: The Birth of the Divine in Nature,” American Journal of Theology and Philosophy, 16, no. 2 (May 1995): 173–187. “Peirce’s Melancholy,” Semiotics 1991, ed. John Deely and Terry Prewitt (Lanham, MD: The University Press of America, 1992), 332–340. “Response to My Critics.” American Journal of Theology & Philosophy, 26, no. 3 (Sept. 2005): 263. “Semiosis and the Phenomenon of Worldhood,” Semiotics 1987, ed. John Deely (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1988), 383–393. “Taoism and Ecstatic Naturalism,” CKTS Newsletter (Center of Korean Theological Studies at Drew University). September 15, 1997. “The Christhood of Things (Hopkins’ Poem the Windhover), “The Drew Gateway, 52 (Fall 1981): 41–47. “The Emancipation of American Philosophy,” APA Newsletter: Blacks in Philosophy, 90, no. 3 (1991): 23–26, with a reply by Cornel West. “The Experience of Ringing (Meditations on the Later Heidegger),” The Drew Gateway, 51 (Winter 1980): 31–48. “Toward a Transformation of Neoclassical Theism,” International Philosophical Quarterly, 27, no. 4 (Winter 1987): 391–406. “Transcendence and the Loss of the Semiotic Self,” Semiotics 1989, ed. John Deely (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1990), pp. 339–345. “Unfolding/Enfolding: The Categorial Schema, Semiotics 2002, ed. by Terry J. Prewitt and John Deely (New York: Legas, 2003), 164–170.

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Items about Robert S. Corrington and Ecstatic Naturalism Badham, Paul. Review of A Semiotic Theory of Theology and Philosophy, by Robert S. Corrington. Theology (Sept–Oct, 2001). Badham, Roger A. “Windows on the Ecstatic: Reflections on Robert Corrington’s Naturalism.” Soundings 82, nos. 3–4 (Fall/Winter 1999): 357–381. ———. Review of Nature’s Self, by Robert S. Corrington. Critical Review of Books in Religion. Journal of the American Academy of Religion and Journal of Biblical Literature (1996): 360–365. De Marzio, Darryl Matthew. “Robert Corrington and the Philosophy for Children Program: Communities of Interpretation and Communities of Inquiry.” M.A. Thesis, Montclair State University, 1997. Driskill, Todd A. “Beyond the Text: Ecstatic Naturalism and American Pragmatism.” American Journal of Theology & Philosophy 15, no. 3 (September 1994): 305–325. Frankenberry, Nancy. Review of “Nature’s Self” by Robert S. Corrington. Journal of the American Academy of Religion 66, no. 1 (Spring 1998): 171–173. Gale Reference, “Biography—Corrington, Robert S. (1950–)” Contemporary Authors Online (Thomson Gale, 2006). Gudmarsdottir, Sigridur. “Corrington, Robert S. (1950–) “Encyclopedia of Religion and Nature. New York: Thoeemes Continuum, 2005. Hardwick, Charley D. “Metaphysical Priority and Physicalist Naturalism in Robert Corrington’s Ordinal Metaphysics.” American Journal of Theology & Philosophy 27, nos. 2–3 (May–September 2006): 214–224. ———. “Worldhood, Betweenness, Melancholy, and Ecstasy: an Engagement with Robert Corrington’s Ecstatic Naturalism.” American Journal of Theology & Philosophy 26, no. 3 (Sept. 2005): 238. Kennett, Stephen A. Review of “The Community of Interpreters” by Robert S. Corrington. SAAP Newsletter 59 (June 1991): 15–16. Kim, Jean H. “Chaos and Order in Nature/Creation: A Reading of Genesis 1–2:4a in Dialogue with Science and Philosophy.” The Journal of Faith and Science Exchange Col. III (1999): 193–203. ———. “Unbearable Fire and Water: The Search for the Spirit of Women in the Discussion of Paul Tillich’s ‘Spiritual Presence’ and Robert S. Corrington’s ‘Spirit’s Eros.’” Feminist Theology Review 3 (March 2003): 121–144. Neville, Robert Cummings. “Comments on Nature’s Religion and Robert Corrington’s Aesthetic Naturalism.” American Journal of Theology & Philosophy 26, no. 3 (Sept. 2005): 3. ———. Review of Nature and Spirit, by Robert S. Corrington. International Philosophical Quarterly 34, no. 4 (Dec., 1994): 504–505. Nguyen, Nam Trung. “Nature’s Primal Self: An Ecstatic Naturalist Critique of the Anthropocentrism of Peirce’s Pragmatism and Jaspers’ Existentialism.” Ph.D. Dissertation, Drew University, 2002. ———. Nature’s Primal Self: Peirce, Jaspers, and Corrington. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2012. Niemoczynski, Leon J. Charles Sanders Peirce and a Religious Metaphysics of Nature. Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2011. ———. “Nature’s Transcendental Creativity: Deleuze, Corrington, and an Aesthetic Phenomenology.”American Journal of Theology & Philosophy 34, no. 1 (January 2013): 17–34. ———. Review of Religious Naturalism Today: The Rebirth of a Forgotten Alternative, by Jerome Stone. SAAP Newsletter, 108 (November 2009): 60–62. ———. “The Sacred Depths of Nature: An Ontology of the Possible in the Philosophy of Peirce and Heidegger.” Ph.D. Dissertation, Southern Illinois University Carbondale, 2009. Pettit, Joseph. Review of Nature’s Religion by Robert S. Corrington. The Journal of Religion 80, no. 1 (January 2000): 149–151.

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Ramal, Randy. Review of Nature and Spirit; Ecstatic Naturalism; Nature’s Self; and Nature’s Religion by Robert S. Corrington. Process Studies 21, no. 9 (2000): 183–185. Raposa, Micahel L. Review of A Semiotic Theory of Theology and Philosophy by Robert S. Corrington. Modern Theology 18, no. 2 (April 2002): 302–304. Sharp, Douglas R. Review of The Community of Interpreters, by Robert S. Corrington. Church History 59, no. 4 (December 1990): 592–594. Stone, Jerome A. “Other Current Religious Naturalists: Robert Corrington.” In Religious Naturalism Today: The Rebirth of a Forgotten Alternative, 211–219. (SUNY Press, 2008). Ward, Roger. Review of A Semiotic Theory of Theology and Philosophy, by Robert S. Corrington. Philosophy in Review 21, no. 6 (December 2001): 411–413. ———. “Robert Corrington and the Transformation of Consciousness.” In Conversion in American Philosophy: Exploring the Process of Transformation. (New York: Fordham University Press, 2004), 203–216. Wildman, Wesley J. Review of A Semiotic Theory of Theology and Philosophy, by Robert S. Corrington. The Journal of Religion 82, no. 4 (October 2002): 657–658. Woodward, Guy. “Cleaving the Light: The Necessity of Metaphysics in the Practice of Theology.” M.A. Thesis, Loras College, 1997. Yalcin, Martin. Naturalism’s Philosophy of the Sacred: Justus Buchler, Karl Jaspers, and George Santayana. (Lanham, MD: Lexington Books, 2013). Zrinski, Tara M. “The Desire to Know and the Will to Suppress: A Thesis Concerning the Evolution of Western Civilization and the Human Process.” B.A. Thesis, Drew University, 1997.

Interviews Boileau, Kevin. “Interview with Robert S. Corrington.” Radio for the Thinking Person. Accessed July 27, 2014. www.blogtalkradio.com/epis–radio/2013/09/28/inter view–with–professor–robert–corrington. Niemoczynski, Leon J. “An Introduction to Ecstatic Naturalism: Interview with Robert S. Corrington.” Kinesis 36, no. 1 (2009): 64–94.

Index

abjection, 23, 44–45, 55, 181; of eros, 41; of Firstness, 55–56; of self, 53 absolute other, 23–24, 69 abyss (Ungrund), 156 abyss language, 130; gendered, 128, 132 access structures, 146 activists, Korean, 107 actual infinite, 21, 137, 180, 181 actuality, x, xi, 110, 117, 167 adventure, 12 aesthetic, xiii; creation ex nihilo, 93; phenomenon, 27; sacred and, 25–28 agency, 95, 113, 114, 116–117; interplay, 121, 122; relational, 121–122 agentialists, 116 “American Naturalism on Pantheism” (Yalcin), 25 American pragmatism, ix, xiii, 78. See also pragmatism American religious and political philosophy, 76 Analogia Entis: Metaphysik: Ur-Strukrur und All-Rhythmus (The Analogy of Being: Metaphysics: Originary Structure and All-Encompassing Rhythm) (Pryzwra), 150–152 analogy of being (analogia entis), 150–152 anthropocentrism/anthropomorphism, 7, 22, 36, 100, 103, 110, 111, 131, 136, 137, 162; of Jaspers, 51, 52–53, 54, 58–59, 60–61; of Peirce, 51, 52–53, 54, 56, 57, 60–61 anti-racism example, 44 apophasis, 36, 43, 47n18, 91, 163, 165, 167, 168 Aquinas, Thomas, 7, 13, 36 archetypes, 4, 14, 55, 58 Arendt, Hannah, 135

Aristotle, 118 art, 7, 10; religion of, 15; replaces religion, 25–26, 29n22; Sublime and, 14; supplants religion, xiii; as universalistic, 14; will to life and, 14 as poor, 64, 68, 70 Askja (volcano), 129, 133–135 atomicity, 120 auto-affection, 67–68, 71 axial existence/time, 58 axial period, 58–59, 60 axiological realism, 97, 98, 101 Badiou, Alain, 64, 65, 67, 71–72 Barad, Karen, 117 Being, 159; manifestive, 150–151; Schelling’s concept, 155, 158 Being itself (das Sein), 20, 35, 58, 60 Bernstein, 123 betweenness, 18–19, 43; of god, 148, 149; justice and, 69–70, 71, 72n7; self-othering as, 106, 108 biography, 76; acts of disloyalty in, 80; communal interpretive hermeneutics, 79; contextualized, 80, 82; Emerson, 79–80; empathic portraiture, 81; legendary, 79, 81. See also psychological biography birthing, ix–x, xii, 18, 19, 20; abyss language, 130; natality, 135; self and, 52, 60, 67, 110; Spirit and, 38, 41 book example, 120 boundary situations, 53 Bowie, Andrew, 156, 158 Buchler, Justus, ix, xii, 2, 6, 9, 118, 161; on boundaries of self, 118; on complexes, 144–145; on distinction between natura naturata and natura naturans, 10; natural debt, 12; ordinal metaphysics, 35, 119; 187

188

Index

“Probing the Idea of Nature,” 10; providingness, 21. See also ontological parity Burns, Ken, 89 Campbell, Joseph, 26 Cantor, Georg, 143–144 catastrophe theory, 136 categorical schema, 175–182; four positive Priors, 175; Four Semiotic Infinities, 180–181; fundamental fissure, 175–176; hope, 181; human process, 178–179; melancholy and meaning, 180; nature is all that there is, 176; no sacred history, 179; ordinal phenomenology and ontological parity, 181–182; primary modalities, 177–178; relations, 176; sacred and non-sacred, 176; sacred bliss, 180; sacred folds, genus and species, 181; Spirit interpreters, 179–180; Spirits, 179 characterological armoring, 13, 21 chora (ontological mother), 66, 71, 106, 108 Christianity, 2, 34, 41, 43, 45, 76, 77, 103, 164 civilization-building projects, 92 Clayton, Philip, 155, 164–168, 169 clearing function of nature, x, 37, 39, 40, 43–44, 181; metaphysics and, 143, 145, 149; self-othering and, 68–69 cognitive biases, 96 cognitive dissonance, 92, 96 colonialization, 132 Columbia School of Naturalism, 2, 7, 9, 11, 33 community, 78; interpretive, 2, 66, 69, 71, 81–84 The Community of Interpreters (Corrington), 77, 127, 129 “Compensation” (Emerson), 76 complex, 143. See also natural complexes concordance, 150–151, 152 conscious: rational, 58, 60; unconscious, correlation with, 59–60

consciousness, 4, 162; involution and, 13; Jaspers’ view, 59 consciousness-as-such, 54, 55 consumerism, 64–65, 68, 70 container relations, x, 143 contiguity, 57, 144, 144–145, 146 Continental philosophy, ix, xii, xiv, 1, 9, 156–157 contour/shape of nature, x, 10, 11, 127, 161, 179; ecology re-naturalized, 113, 118; metaphysics and, 143, 144–145; sacred and, 20, 23; Spirit and, 39, 40 Corrington, Robert S., ix; The Community of Interpreters, 77, 127, 129; ecofeminism, critique of, 130–131; Ecstatic Naturalism: Signs of the World, 21; “Evolution, Religion, and an Ecstatic Naturalism,” 25, 29n22, 133; Meenakshi Temple experience, 129–130, 135; mode of thought, 35; “My Passage from Panentheism to Pantheism,” 129–130; Nature and Spirit: An Essay in Ecstatic Naturalism, 6, 37, 37–39, 41, 129, 133, 136; on nature natured, x; Nature’s Religion, 39–42, 95, 162; Nature’s Self: Our Journey from Origin to Spirit, xi, 128; Nature’s Sublime: An Essay in Aesthetic Naturalism, ix, xi, 83, 84; on potencies, x–xi; A Semiotic Theory of Theology and Philosophy, 2, 21, 42, 43–45, 130–131, 132, 133; struggle for meaning, xiii; “The Superiority of Art to the Religious Pathogen,” 25 cosmocentric process, 111 cosmology, Korean, 103 cosmoplexes, 147 creativity, 4, 5, 13 Crosby, Donald, 36 cultural analysis, 6 Cuomo, Chris, 131, 133 dandelion seed metaphor, 108–109 Dao, 12, 109 Daoism, 103 Dasein, 11, 54, 55, 58

Index death, 116 deconstructionism, 63 deep pantheism, xiii, 12, 13–14, 40, 155; Corrington’s, 160–163 Deleuze, Gilles, x, 15n2, 108, 158, 161 democracy, 103 denial relation, 106 depths of nature, 3, 4–5 depth structures, 33, 39, 41, 56, 98, 100 Derrida, Jacques, 67, 71, 158 Descola, Philippe, 117, 122 Dewey, John, ix, 33, 52, 118, 121 dialectical theism, 165 dialogue, 71–72 différance, 67, 158 difference, 158, 160–161, 161 difference-seeking discourses, 64, 70 dipolar panentheism, 166 dipolar theism, 163, 165, 166, 167–168 discretism, 113 divine, 11. See also god; God divine lure, 25, 110, 163 doing non-doing, 103, 105; acting through non-action, 110; ecocracy, 109–111 Donghak religion, 103; doing nondoing, 103, 105; hanul, 104–105; reverence, 104; salim (enlivening), 103, 104, 106, 108; self-so-ing, 108–109; Ten Negativities (Sip-MooCheon), 103, 105. See also Korea Dorrien, Gary, 159 Driskill, Todd A., 35, 36 dynamic object, 53, 55, 57 East Asian philosophies, 103 Eckhart, Meister, 127, 130, 138 ecocentrism, 108, 110 ecocracy, 103, 109–111, 112n28 ecofeminism, 128; Corrington’s critique of, 130–131; maternal images in, 131; methodology, 131 ecological metaphysics, 113, 114, 114–115, 122, 123 ecological networks, 113, 114, 115, 116, 120; proception in, 121 ecology, re-naturalization of, 113, 115, 118, 122–123 The Ecology of Others (Descola), 122

189

ecstasis (ek-stasis), ix; as negation, 18; self-transforming, ix, xii, 11 ecstasy, xii, 69, 71, 96 ecstatic naturalism, ix; concern with loss, transformation and political influence, 76; Corrington’s statement of, 90–91; feminist critique of, 128; folds, intervals, ground, 90–93; ideological resistance to, 76; metaphysics and human process, 142–147; origins of, 33; as philosophical theology, 34; sacred and the aesthetic, 25–28; as trans-epochal, 147 Ecstatic Naturalism: Signs of the World (Corrington), 21, 131 ejects of nature naturing, x, xi, 13, 18, 19, 20, 38; birthing images and, 133; feminist concerns, 128, 129, 130, 133, 135, 137; metaphysics and, 143, 148, 149; self as, 52, 54, 56; social construction of reality and, 93, 94, 96, 100; volcano references, 133. See also volcanoes, language of embodiment, 117–118, 118 emergentist metaphysics, 165 Emerson, Ralph Waldo, 2, 9–10, 15, 33, 37, 45, 75, 77, 78, 79–85, 161; biographical writing, 79–80; communal interpretive hermeneutics, 79; Erikson, commonalities with, 80–81; expressive individualism, 80; selfperceptions of masculinity, 80 emptying, 18–19 encompassing, 20–22, 127; attunement to, 21, 23; Existenz as, 58; hanul (the divine), 104–105; metaphysics as originary structure, 150–151; oscillative, 151–152, 152 endosemiosis, 133 Enlightenment thinking, 157 entropy, 52 Erikson, Erik, 75, 80–81, 83 eros, 37, 41 “Eros and the Abyss: Reading Medieval Mystics in Postmodernity” (Jantzen), 128 Eschatology, 67, 110, 163

190

Index

essences, 161 eternal now, 130 ethnical chauvinism, 64 eutopia, 111 “Evolution, Religion, and an Ecstatic Naturalism” (Corrington), 25, 29n22, 133 evolutionary process, 13, 35 evolutionary psychology, 14 evolutionary theory, ix ex nihilo doctrine, 93–95, 165 existential anthropology, xii, 51–52 existentialists, 116 Existenz, 51, 52–53, 54, 116; axial period and, 58, 60; as encompassing, 58; reflective consciousness and, 58. See also self expectation, 163 ex-stasis, 18, 67 Eyjafjallajökull (volcano), 134 fascism, 84 feminism, 128 Feminism and Ecological Communities (Cuomo), 131 Fichte, 156, 157, 159 finitude, 115–118; of identity, 117 First Annual Congress on Ecstatic Naturalism, 90 Firstness, x, 36, 51, 53, 56, 60; of Firstness, 55–56; threat of, 55–56; unconscious and, 55–57 fold/interval dynamic, 40 folds, 40. See also sacred folds Four Semiotic Infinities: actual infinite, 21, 180–181; open infinite, 181; prospective infinite, 181; sustaining infinite, 181 fourth order of the self, 55 Franke, William, 157 Frankenberry, Nancy, 128, 129, 131, 132, 133, 137 freedom, 54, 116, 123 Freud, Sigmund, 4, 91 Friedrich, Casper David, 37 The Future of an Illusion (Freud), 91 Gandhi, Mohandas K., 83 Gare, Arran, 156, 157, 158

generic, 70, 71 gift, 52, 71, 110 global capitalism, 63, 64, 65, 68, 70 glottocentrism, 131, 133 God: affected by world process, 159; creation ex nihilo, 93; as differently bodied, 7; divine lure, 25, 110, 163; finite, 110; four inseparable dimensions, 163; fragmented origin, 163; grace of the spirit, 163; as ground, 19, 157, 165–167; as ground and abyss, 159; natural grace, 163; in Nature and Spirit, 38, 39; as nature naturing, 13; ontological argument for the existence of, 20; as personal being, 166; sacred as, 40. See also hanul god, 147–150; betweenness and, 148, 149; broken, 24; as complex, 148–149, 162; fourfold structure, 149; givenness of, 12; infinitizing, 22; as natural complex, 12, 13; as within nature, 11. See also divine God prior to God, 157 god-ing, 12–13, 14, 104, 109, 110 golden rule, 110 götterung, 12 grace, 19, 66, 67, 69, 95, 163 Grand Canal Project of Four Rivers, 107 Grange, Joseph, 7 Great Mother, 129–130, 137 Grímsvötn (volcano), 134 ground (Grund), 155 ground of being, 21 Guattari, Felix, 108 Gureombee rock, 107 Habermas, Jürgen, 157 Hae-Weol, 104, 105 Halmang (the Eternal Grandmother), 107–108 Halmang Mool (Eternal Grandmother’s water), 108 hanul (the divine), 110; do not harm, 105; encompassing and, 104–105 Hardt, Michael, 70 Hartshorne, Charles, 163 Hawai’ian religion, 98–99

Index healing, xiii, 42, 107, 137, 162; subject of truth and, 66, 68–70, 70; unconscious as source of, 19–20 Hedges, Chris, 77 Hegel, G. W. F., 117, 156–157, 168 heiau (temple site), 99 Heidegger, Martin, 1, 6, 11, 58, 157, 158; götterung, 12; ontological difference, 20, 35; thrownness, 12 Heracleitian worldview, 136 hermeneutics, ix heroes, 79 historicity, 53, 58, 59 history, 179 Hogue, Michael, 33 hope, 181 Hopkins, Gerard Manley, 110 horizon, 23, 41; human process and, 144, 145–146, 146–147 horizonal hermeneutics, xi, 20 House Made of Dawn (Momaday), 89 human betweenness, 71 human institutions, 77–78 human order, 19; sacred complexes relevant to, 23; semiotic/symbolic distinction, 23 human process. See selving (human process) human-being-between-ness, 71 humanism, 10, 15, 17, 58 Husserl, Edmund, xii Iceland, 133–134 iconicity, 55–56 iconoclasm: of naturalism, 24, 29n22; of religion, 26, 30n27 The Idea of the Holy (Otto), 27 idealism, 17, 53, 156, 158 idealization, 81 identity, difference within, 158 immanence, ix, 15n2, 151–152 indexical sign, xii individuality, 58, 77 individuation, 44, 117, 118–120 inertia, 44 inexhaustibility of meaning, 136 infinitesimals, x, 57, 175 infinities, Cantorean, 143–144, 146, 149

191

infinity: actual infinite, 21, 137, 180, 181; four modes of, 21; open infinite, 21, 137, 181 inhuman, 70 intellectual intuition, 54 intelligence, 145, 146, 147 intentionality, 6, 7, 95, 108; doing nondoing, 103, 106, 110 interplay, 121, 122 interpretation, 2, 5, 40; constitutive element, 93; intervals and, 91; justice and, 63, 66; Spirit interpreters, 179–180 interpretive community, 2, 66, 69, 71, 81–84; renewing focus on, 81–84; seeds of modern liberalism and social gospel, 77–78 intervals, 40, 90, 91, 101, 128, 136–137, 137; as primary modality, 177, 178, 179 An Introduction to C. S. Peirce: Philosopher, Semiotician, and Ecstatic Naturalist (Corrington), 2 intuition, 157 involution, 13 James, F., 65 James, William, ix, 75, 77 Jantzen, Grace, 128, 132 Jaspers, Karl, 20, 51; anthropocentrism of, 51, 52–53, 54, 58–59, 60–61; consciousness, view of, 59; historicity, 53, 58, 59 Jeju Island, 107 Johnson, Elizabeth, 131, 132 Joyce, James, 7 jugim (violence), 106–108, 110 Jung, Carl, xi, 4, 59 justice, 63–64, 163; auto-affection and, 67–68; Badouian concept of, 70–72; as being-human, 64–67; difference and, 63, 64; as ordinal, 66; as relative, 64; Spirit and, 69; subject of, 65–66; as subject of truth, 65; “universality” and, 63, 64, 69 Kandinsky, Wassily, 113 Kant, Immanuel, 14, 20, 92–93, 95; categories of understanding, 90;

192

Index

Clayton’s critique, 164 Kierkegaard, Søren, 58, 157 Kim Ji Ha, 103, 108, 110, 112n28; dandelion seed metaphor, 108–109 Korea, 103; destruction of nature, 107. See also Donghak religion “Korean Green New Deal Project,” 107 Kristeva, Julia, 23, 106, 131 Lacanian psychoanalytic theory, 156 latent forces, 113 Latour, Bruno, 122 Lee Myung-Bak government, 107 Leibniz, G. W. F., 118, 141–142; Leibniz’s query, 141–142, 150, 153 liberalism, modern, 75, 76, 77–78, 84; Corrington’s hermeneutic and, 78 lightnings and darkness metaphors, 132 liminality of language, 127 locatedness, 11, 43; of justice, 66; of natural complexes, 120 locations, 39, 40 Locke, John, 118 logos, 157 Loomer, Bernard, 41 loss, 76 lost object, 52, 60, 69, 129, 180 magma, semiotic, 136 Marion, Jean Luc, 12 material maternal, 23, 52, 56, 60, 130; in Ecstatic Naturalism, 131; as negativity, 106 materialism, 17 maternal language, 128; abjected, 128; Corrington’s reliance on, 129–132; vaginas, teethed, 129, 129–130, 137 matter, 26, 53, 57 meaning, 142, 146; melancholy and, 180 Meillassoux, Quentin, 115–116 melancholy, 180; for lost object, 60, 69 metaphysics, ix, xi, 52, 141; antifoundational, 20, 159; contour/shape of nature and, 143, 144–145; definition, 141–142; Leibniz’s query, 141–142, 150, 153; as originary structure, 150–152; post-

foundational, 155, 159, 163–168, 171n54; social construction of reality and, 95–97 Methodism, 3 Miller, David L., 26 Mindfullness (Besinnung) (Heidegger), 12 Momaday, N. Scott, 89, 101 monism, 17 multiplicity, 108 “My Passage from Panentheism to Pantheism” (Corrington), 129–130 mystery, 36 mysticism, 17 mythical period, 58 mythos, 58, 60 natural complexes, x, xii, 10, 11, 12, 13, 34; book example, 120; contour of, 144–145; divine as, 10; hierarchical infinities, 143–144; horizon, 23, 41, 144, 145; ontological ordinality, 119; sacred as, 17, 20–21, 22, 23–24, 26–27, 30n27. See also natural complex natural debt, 11–12, 13 natural self, 64, 67 naturalism: austere form, 17; naturalist commitments, 10–11; polemical side, 7; religion and, 10; as term, 7 nature, x; both finite and infinite, 19; broad understanding of, 17; clearing function, x, 37, 39, 40, 43–44, 68–69, 143, 145, 149, 181; Corrington’s definition, 143; destruction of, 107; devaluing of, 17, 25, 51, 95; domination of women, metaphors, 131, 132, 136; experience of, 97; interpretation of, 80; as nonlocated location, x, 143, 145; productivity of, 158, 159, 161; reflective consciousness and, 51, 58–60; as self-othering, 67–70; as selfotherized, 68; as semiotic process, 4; utter indifference of, 41. See also contour/shape of nature Nature and Spirit: An Essay in Ecstatic Naturalism (Corrington), 6, 37, 37–39, 41, 117, 129, 133

Index nature is all that there is, 9, 10, 13, 17, 19, 20, 104, 161, 176 nature natured (natura naturata), ix; definitions, 11, 149; fissure with nature naturing, 18, 19, 35, 51, 52, 56, 68, 175, 180; as orders of the world, 11; as primal eject of nature naturing, 149; self located in, 53; self-so-ing, 108–109; in Spinoza, 3; Sublime and, 14 nature naturing (natura naturans), ix–x, 148; as a-temporal, 113, 114; definition, 11; fissure with nature natured, 18, 19, 35, 51, 52, 56, 68, 175, 180; material maternal, 23, 52, 56, 60; natural grace, 163; nature natured as primal eject of, 149; no referent, 24, 36, 129, 134, 137; as ordinality, 10; religious significance, 36; self-fissuring, xi, 20, 51, 52, 54, 56, 57, 60, 132; in Spinoza, 3; as unconscious of nature, xi, 13, 14, 15, 20, 22, 30n27, 54, 55, 161 Nature’s Religion (Corrington), 39, 39–42, 95, 162 Nature’s Self: Our Journey from Origin to Spirit (Corrington), xi, 128, 131 Nature’s Sublime: An Essay in Aesthetic Naturalism (Corrington), ix, xi, 83, 84 nature “unnatured,” 107 Naval Base Construction (Jeju Island), 107 negation, 19; active passivity by, 105, 109; apophasis, 36, 43, 47n18, 91, 163, 165, 167, 168; denial relation, 106; doing non-doing, 103, 105; ecstasis (ek-stasis) as, 18; material maternal as, 106; of negation, 109; Ten Negativities (Sip-Moo-Cheon), 103, 105, 107 Negri, Antonio, 70 Neo-Darwinian Synthesis, 13 nesting effect, 119, 144 networks, ecological, 122 Neville, Robert, xiii, 39, 42; ex nihilo doctrine, 93–95 New Essays on Human Understanding (Leibniz), 118

193

The New Polytheism: Rebirth of the Gods and Goddesses (Miller), 26 Nietzsche, Friedrich, 58 nonhuman species, 103, 132; hanul and, 104, 105, 107, 132, 135; jugim violence against, 109 “nothing but,” 114 Nothingness, x, 175, 180 numbers, transfinite, 143–144 numinosity, 21, 27, 90, 137, 176 objectivity, 58, 91 object-oriented ontologies, 113–114. See also selving (human process) Objects, 114 Of Grammatology (Derrida), 67 ontological difference, x, xi, 9, 20, 26, 35–36, 42; attunement to, 23; ontological wound as, 132; semiotics and, 18–20 ontological divide, 20, 37, 57, 117 ontological ordinality, xii, 119 ontological parity, xii, 10, 15, 21, 24, 51, 53, 72n7, 91, 119, 160, 168; in art, 26; requirements of, 181–182 ontological pluralism, ix, x, 165 ontological priority, 21, 26, 60, 160 ontological wound, 52, 67, 68–69, 132 ontotheology, 160, 164 open infinite, 21, 137, 181 order of being, 3 order of knowing, 3 orders of nature, x, 10, 119; attained, xi, 20, 35, 56; as pre-phenomenological, 52; relevance, xii, 43, 52, 68, 145, 146, 147, 178, 180. See also nature natured (natura naturata) orders of the world, ix, xi, xii, 9, 11, 12, 13. See also nature natured (natura naturata); nature naturing (natura naturans) ordinal metaphysics, xii, 2, 6, 9, 35, 143, 147, 150; process ecology and, 118–120; rendered tractable, 144, 147; Schelling’s influence on, 160, 165 ordinal phenomenology, ix, xi–xii, 6, 11, 15, 181–182; goals of, 11; infinitizing, 21; metaphysics of, 143;

194

Index

self and, 52, 61n8 ordinality, xii The Origin and Goal of History (Jaspers), 59 oscillation, 151–152, 152 Other: as consumer, 64, 68; as poor, 64, 68, 70 otherness: inner, 67; as inside, 66 other-selving, 68 Otto, Rudolf, 27, 40, 163 panentheism, 12, 24, 25, 39, 129; Clayton’s post-foundationalist, 155, 163–168, 169, 171n54; Corrington’s deep, 160–163; Schelling’s, 160; Spirit and, 37 panpsychism, 53, 57, 159, 161, 165 pantheism, 13, 25; deep, xiii, 12, 13–14, 40, 155, 160–163 parity, xii Parmenides, 25 particulars of the world, 113, 114, 116, 117, 119 pattern, misjudging presence of, 92, 95, 98 Peirce, Charles Sanders, x, 2, 5, 33; anthropocentrism of, 51, 52–53, 54, 56, 57, 60–61; dynamic object, 53, 55, 57; father, relationship with, 56; semiosis, 18; semiotic self, 51, 53, 60 Peircean view, x periechontology, 55, 58, 60 phenomenality, 145, 146, 147 phenomenology: ordinal, ix, xi–xii, 6, 15, 21, 52, 61n8, 143, 181–182; as priority to the given, 6; traditional, 52 philosophical naturalism, ix, xiii, 17, 21, 34 philosophical theology, 1, 18, 34 philosophy of religion, 2 pietism, 3 Platonic Forms, 14 pluralism, 17, 114, 164–165; ontological, ix, x, 165 pneumatology, naturalized, 34, 37–38, 39, 43; eros-based, 41; negations, 43; plurality and, 45 political theology, 66, 71

Þorgeirsdóttir, Sigríður, 128, 135–136, 137 positive philosophy, 158 postcolonial discourses, 65 post-foundational metaphysics, 155, 159, 163–168, 169, 171n54 postsemiotic (return of naturenaturing) realm, 18 poststructuralists, 158 potencies, x, xi, xii, 148, 168, 175; retreat of, 18; self-transforming, 11; as signs in the making, 18; universal, 14. See also nature naturing (natura naturans) power, projection as, 27 power relations, 63, 66 Powers of Horror (Kristeva), 23 powers of origin, xi, 56, 181 pragmatism: American, ix, xiii, 78; of James, 77; of Royce, 77; semiotic, 51, 52, 54 pre-Oedipal language, 128 pre-semiotic (nature-naturing) realm, 18–19, 20 pre-semiotic self, 53 primal self, 51, 52; as alternative to Peirce and Jaspers, 54, 60–61 “Probing the Idea of Nature” (Buchler), 10 The Problem of God in Modern Thought (Clayton), 164 problems of our age, 64 proception, 121, 122–123 process ecology, 118–120 process naturalism, 35, 39, 41, 117 processus metaphysicarum, 147, 149 progressivity, 168 projections, 27, 30n27, 44, 69, 95 projective fields, 91, 93, 95, 96, 97, 100 prospective infinite, 21, 181 providingness, 177–178 Pryzwara, Erich, 141, 150; analogy of being (analogia entis), 150–152; Corrington and, 152–153 psychoanalytic theory, xi, xii, 4, 97, 156 psychodynamic signs, 4–5 psychological biography (psychobiography), 75, 78, 80, 81; contextualized, 82; personality

Index transformations, 82; publishing concerns, 85; of Reich, 82–84 psychosemiotics, xi publishing industry, 85 radical naturalism, 54, 122 radical transcendence, 20–21 Randall, John Herman, Jr., 9 rational consciousness, 58, 60 rationalism, 169 rationality, 157 realism, xi, 5, 41; axiological, 97, 98, 101; social construction of reality and, 91, 96 reality, 135, 141; human process explores, 142, 143 reason, 157 Reassembling the Social: An Introduction to Actor-Network Theory (Latour), 122 reductionism, 17, 114, 119, 120 reflective consciousness, 51, 58–60 regressive fantasy, 132 Reich, Wilhelm, 13; loss, experiences of, 84; in Nature’s Sublime, 83; psychological biography of, 82–84; social treatment by psychoanalytic establishment, 82, 83 relationships, 115, 118, 118–119, 122 relevance, 145, 146–147, 147; nonrelevance, 176; orders of, xii, 43, 52, 68, 145, 146, 147, 178, 180 religion: as aesthetic projection of human order, 27, 30n27; of art, 15; art replaces, 25–26, 29n22; nature, view of, 17; social construction of reality and, 96; tribalism of, xiii, 26, 45 religious naturalism, studies of, xiv re-naturalization of ecology, 113, 115, 118, 122–123 restlessness, primal human, 24 reverence, 104 rhizomatic movement, 108, 112n18 Roberson, Susan L., 79, 80 Romantic thinking, 157 rotational process, 145, 146 Royce, Josiah, 33, 75, 77 Ryder, John, 10, 11

195

sacred, xiii, 17–18, 22–25; aesthetic and, 25–28; arbitary labeling of, 30n27; as collaborative venture, 89–90; decentering activity, 23; encompassing of, 22–23; entropic and non-entropic modalities, 178; levity and, 27, 28; mixed metaphors, 90–91; one-sided interpretation of, 89–90; ontological difference and semiotics, 18; as order of nature, 22; primary modalities, 177–178; providingness as modality, 177–178; as “real” category, ix; renditions of, 27–28; sacred fold as modality, 177; sacred interval as modality, 177; shattering of idols, 17; social construction of reality and, 89; trajectory from panentheism to pantheism, 25; unruly ground as modality, 178; unsavory traits, 23; value of in relation to nature, 17; vying for supremacy, 27–28 sacred complexes, 17, 20–21, 22, 23–24, 26–27, 30n27 sacred folds, 5, 12, 89; Corrington on, 90; feminist critique, 128; genus and species, 181; hanul and, 104–105; as natural, 26; places or moments, 98–99; social construction of, 89, 96; as Sublime, 14; validity of, 98; volcano imagery, 136–137 salim (enlivening), 103, 104, 106, 108 salvation, 76 Santayana, George, 26, 27, 29n22, 33 Sartre, Jean-Paul, 116 Schelling, Friedrich, 12, 37, 40, 54, 92, 117, 155; Berlin lectures, 157; Clayton’s panentheism and, 164–168; God, view of, 163; legacy, 156–159; ontological difference, 161; proto-postmodern metaphysics, 155, 159 Schopenhauer, Arthur, ix, 14, 27, 92 sciences, 90, 91, 95, 96 Secondness, 56 Sein und Zeit (Heidegger), 11 self: abjected, 53; authentic, 53, 54; in Corrington, 52; encompassing and, 20–21; expanded beyond nature, 58;

196

Index

as fissured, 52; as foundling, 132; fourth order of, 55; future, 116, 117; as gift, 52; infinitizing, 21; in Jaspers, 52; narcissistic, 26, 56, 68, 69, 92; neoKantian, 92; as ontological wound, 52; in Peirce, 52; as place of transcendence, 116; semiotic, 51, 52; sign-using, 52, 56; as subject of truth, 65. See also natural self; primal self Self of nature, xi self-fissuring, xi, 20, 51, 52, 54, 56, 60, 132; infinitesimals and, 57 self/nature naturing correlation, 54 self-othering, 67–70, 71, 72n7; as betweenness, 106 self-sameness, 67, 68 self/self correlation, 54 self-so-ing, 108–109 self-transcendence, ix, xii, 51, 61, 104, 106 selving (human process), xi–xii, 11, 11–12, 51, 118; doing not-doing as, 103; as ens metaphysicarum, 142; goding and, 12–13, 14; justice and, 68; metaphysics and ecstatic naturalism, 142–147; as processus metaphysicarum, 147, 149; Spirit and, 44 selving, as term, 110 semiosis/semiotics, ix, 2, 13, 18–20, 54–55, 60, 66, 67, 146, 147; assimilative aspect, 92, 97; definition, 18; discipline of, 52; endosemiosis, 132; as external objective process, xi; firstness and unconscious, 56; as fundamental philosophy of nature, 2; ontological difference, 18–20; outside human interaction, xi, 131, 132; Peircean, 5, 6; spirit and, 43, 180 semiotic process, 4, 40, 66, 117 semiotic (nature-natured) realm, 18, 19, 23 semiotic self, 51, 53, 60, 60–61 semiotic theoretical method, x–xi A Semiotic Theory of Theology and Philosophy (Corrington), 2, 21, 42, 43–45, 130–131, 132, 133

semiotic/symbolic distinction, 23 shaping metaphors, 39 Shults, LeRon, 93 signification, xii, 20, 23, 52 signs, 18, 52, 72n7 simples, metaphysical, 11, 119 Skúlason, Páll, 129, 133–135, 138 Smith, John E., 2 social construction of reality : collaboration, 89–90; culturally conditioned axiological intuitions, 99–100, 100–101; ejects of nature naturing, 93, 94, 96, 100; metaphysics and, 95–97; projective fields and, 91, 93, 95, 96, 97, 100; reception vs. constitution, 97; religion and, 96 social gospel, 76, 77–78 Socotra Rock/Ieodo, 107 sounding, 151 Spinoza, Baruch, 3, 15n2, 147, 159, 165 Spirit, xiii, 117; Absolute, 19; deconstructive move, 43; eros and, 41; Hegelian, 37; interpreters, 179–180; locatedness, 43; naturalized pneumatology, 34, 37–38, 39; pluralized, 37, 43, 45; selfothering and, 69–70; shaping metaphors, 39; tribalized, 45; truth and, 66 Spirit interpreters, 179–180 spontaneity, 103, 108, 109 state discourse, 65, 72 Stone, Jerome, 39 Stony Brook School, 11 subject of truth, 65 subjects, humans as, 65 Sublime, 10, 14, 14–15; god-ing and, 14 suffering, xiii, 27, 64 sufficient reason, 10 Summa (Aquinas), 13 summa/summation, 151 “The Superiority of Art to the Religious Pathogen” (Corrington), 25 supernaturalism, 2, 7, 20 symbiosis, 106, 107, 110 symbolic realm, 23 synechism, 57

Index Systematic Theology (Tillich), 91 ta me onta (those who are not), 67, 70–71 technological advances, 85 teleology, developmental, 55, 57, 59, 72n7 Ten Commandments, 105 Ten Negativities (Sip-Moo-Cheon), 103, 105, 107 text, 67 theism, 17, 25 theology, 76 theology, philosophical, 17 theonomy, 15, 110 things in being (das Seiende), 20, 35 Thirdness, 53, 55, 56, 60 thrownness, 12 Tillich, Paul, xiii, 2, 9, 21, 40, 44, 91, 127, 130; abyss language, 127, 128; apophaticism, 165; dissertation, 159; as ecstatic naturalist, 97 tolerance, 64, 70 traits, xi–xii, 22, 161 transactional exchanges, 122 transcendence: authentic existence and, 53; finitude and, 115–118; immanentizing, ix; of self into worldhood of world, 11 transcendental phenomenology, xii, 6, 52 transcendentalism, 9 tribalism, religious, 14, 26, 37, 45 triumphalism, 26 truth: as event, 65, 67; outside established system of knowledge, 71; Spirit and, 66; as vanishing mediator, 65 truth regimes, 65 ultimacy, 5, 6, 7, 43, 116; human encounters with, 91; natural referent, 36 unconscious, xi, 4; abject, 56; collective, 58; conscious, correlation with, 59–60; developmental teleology, 55, 57, 59; fear of, 55; Firstness and, 55–57; mentalized, 56–57; mystery and, 36; nature naturing as, 13;

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negative characteristics, 59; Peirce’s approach, 54; semiotic self and, 51; as source of healing, 19–20 unconscious of nature, xi, 14, 15, 20, 22, 30n27, 54, 55, 161 underconscious of nature, xi, 36, 43, 69, 175; as link between nature naturing and nature natured, xi; self and, 52, 54, 55, 56; social construction of reality and, 90, 91, 94, 96, 97, 100 UNESCO World Heritage sites, 107 unity, 19, 20, 37, 39, 106, 117, 128, 142, 167; hanul, 104 universalism, 41 unruly ground, 36, 40–41, 161, 177, 178; as beyond good and evil, 162; in comparative perspective, 93–95; God prior to God, 157; naturalist reading of, 163; rationality emerges from, 157; Schelling’s version, 157, 162, 167–168; social construction of reality and, 92, 93, 96, 100, 101; volcano imagery, 133, 134, 136 vaginas, teethed, 129, 129–130, 137 violence (jugim), 106–107 Viveiros de Castro, Eduardo, 122–123 volcanoes, language of, 129, 133; gendered, 134, 136. See also ejective power web metaphor, 41 The West, 89 Whitehead, Alfred North, 3, 4, 7, 33, 159, 163, 168 wholeness, harmony, and thisness, 7 Wildman, Wesley, 2, 8, 46n3 Will, ix, 14. See also nature naturing (natura naturans) Woodbridge, F. J. E., 9 Woodward, Guy, xiv, 132 world, as Consequent, 166, 168 worldhood, xii, 11 Young Hegelians, 157 Žižek, Slavoj, 72, 156

About the Contributors

Robert S. Corrington (Ph.D. Drew University). Robert S. Corrington is Professor of Philosophical Theology in the Graduate Division of Religion of Drew University in Madison, NJ. He received his B.A. in Philosophy from Temple University and his M.Phil. and Ph.D. in Philosophical Theology from Drew University. He taught at Penn State and the College of William and Mary before going to the faculty of Drew University in 1991. He is the author of ten books and around seventy articles in the areas of: semiotics, American Philosophy (with a book on C.S. Peirce), phenomenology, psychoanalysis (with a book on Wilhelm Reich), Continental Philosophy (Jaspers, Heidegger, and Husserl), and Liberal Theology. His current book project has the working title: Deep Pantheism. Sigríður Gudmarsdottir (Ph.D. Drew University). Sigríður Gudmarsdottir is a native of Iceland and lives in North Norway. She is the dean of Sør Helgeland deanery in the Lutheran church of Norway and teaches philosophy of religion in the University of Iceland. Sigridur finished her doctoral degree from Drew University in 2007 on the abyss of God in the works of Paul Tillich. She has taught theology at Drew University, University of Winchester, England, and in Iceland. She has published articles on both sides of the Atlantic. Sigridur does research in feminist theology, philosophy of religion, pastoral theology, ecological studies, queer studies, and postcolonialism and is currently working on a master´s degree in education and mentoring. Some of her recent publications include: “Trinh Minh-Ha and Inbetween Religious Language Painted With Gray and Red Colors,” The Journal of European Women in Theological Research XX, 2014; Water as Sacrament: Tillich, Gender and Liturgical Eco-Justice,“ Dialog: A Journal of Theology, 2014; and ”The Natal Abyss of Freedom: Arendt, Augustine and Feminist Christian Ethics,” Gendering Christian Ethics, editor Jenny Daggers, Liverpool, Liverpool Hope University 2012. Joseph M. Kramp (Ph.D. Drew University). Joseph is an Adjunct Professor at numerous colleges and universities across the United States including Chicago Theological Seminary, John Jay College of Criminal Justice (CUNY), and Florida Gulf Coast University. Joseph resides in Fort Myers, FL and is the author of the recent book: Ralph Waldo Emerson: A Psychological Biography (Edwin Mellen Press, 2014). 199

200

About the Contributors

Wade A. Mitchell (Drew University). Wade A. Mitchell is a doctoral student in the Graduate Division of Religion at Drew University. His research interests include the American philosophical legacies of C. S. Peirce, William James, John Dewey, and Alfred N. Whitehead; the social and ethical possibilities of religious naturalism; and the cognitive science of religion. Wade’s other writings have focused on how the aesthetic foundations of Robert Corrington’s ecstatic naturalism both effectively challenge and deeply relate to contemporary investigations in the neuroscience of response to visual art. His dissertation project is positioned at the intersection of philosophical theology, naturalism, and the science of memory. He currently lives in New York City with his wife and two children. Robert Cummings Neville (Ph.D. Yale University; D.D. Lehigh University; Doctorate honoris causa, Russian Academy of Sciences). Robert Cummings Neville writes in the fields of philosophy, religion, and theology. Before his appointment to the deanship in 1988, he was the Director of the Boston University Division of Religious and Theological Studies and chair of the Religion Department. He was Dean of Humanities and Fine Arts at the State University of New York at Stony Brook, and has also taught at Yale, Fordham, and SUNY Purchase. An ordained elder in the Missouri East Conference of the United Methodist Church, Dean Neville has pastored in Missouri and New York. His recent publications include a three-volume Philosophical Theology entitled, respectively, Ultimates, Existence, and Religion, all from SUNY Press. Nam T. Nguyen (Ph.D. Drew University) teaches philosophy at the University of Central Florida and humanities at Valencia College, Florida. His research focuses on philosophical theology, American philosophy, Continental philosophy, Existentialism, and Ethics. He is the author of Nature’s Primal Self: Peirce, Jaspers, and Corrington (Lexington Books, 2011). Leon Niemoczynski (Ph.D. Southern Illinois University Carbondale). Leon Niemoczynski teaches in the Philosophy Department at Immaculata University and is currently a visiting assistant professor of philosophy at East Stroudsburg University. His research focuses on the philosophy of nature, where he is especially interested in issues pertaining to philosophical naturalism, logic and metaphysics, aesthetics, German idealism, philosophical ecology, animal ethics, environmental philosophy, and environmental philosophy’s relationship to the philosophy of religion. He is the author of Charles Sanders Peirce and a Religious Metaphysics of Nature (Lexington Books, 2011) and is a co-editor of Animal Experience: Consciousness and Emotions in the Natural World (Open Humanities Press, 2014). He specializes in both the American and contemporary Continental philosophical traditions.

About the Contributors

201

Jea Sophia Oh (Ph.D. Drew University) is an expert in Comparative Theology, Environmental Ethics, and Postcolonial Studies. Her research is highly interdisciplinary and cross-cultural for it arrives at the intersections of philosophy and theology, religion and ecology, Eastern learning and process theology. Her book, A Postcolonial Theology of Life: Planetarity East and West (Upland: Sopher Press, December 2011), is the first approach to bridge postcolonialism and ecological theology with the use of Asian spirituality as it suggests that all forms of Life are sacred and divine. Iljoon Park (Ph.D. Drew University) now lives in the Republic of Korea (South Korea) and teaches at Methodist Theological University as a research fellow. His dissertation topic was about the issue of human being as human-between. Seeking relevant philosophical and theological directions, Park has been searching various fields including evolutionary biology, evolutionary psychology, and cognitive science; as well as various scholars including S. Žižek, A. Badiou, and A.N. Whitehead. Austin J. Roberts (Drew University). Austin J. Roberts is currently a Ph.D student at Drew University in the Graduate Division of Religion. He received an M.A. in theology and philosophy of religion from Claremont School of Theology and a B.A. in religious studies from Humboldt State University. His current academic research centers mainly on the intersection between process theology and Continental philosophy of religion which flows into his interests in ecological theology, science and religion, and radical theology. After spending many years as an active musician, he continues to be interested in the arts, particularly film and music. This has led to his work as an editor and contributor for Imaginatio et Ratio: A Journal of Theology and the Arts. Wesley J. Wildman (Ph.D. Graduate Theological Union) is Professor of Philosophy, Theology, and Ethics at Boston University. His research and publications pursue a multidisciplinary, comparative approach to important topics within religious and theological studies. The programmatic statement of a theory of rationality underlying this type of integrative intellectual work is Religious Philosophy as Multidisciplinary Comparative Inquiry: Envisioning a Future for the Philosophy of Religion (State University of New York Press, 2010). Science and Religious Anthropology (Ashgate, 2009) presents his multidisciplinary interpretation of the human condition, and the companion volume Science and Ultimate Reality (Ashgate, forthcoming) articulates his account of religious naturalism in relation to competing views of ultimate reality. Religious and Spiritual Experiences (Cambridge University Press, 2011) presents a multidisciplinary interpretation of religious experience. The three co-edited volumes of Science and

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About the Contributors

the World’s Religions (2013) demonstrate the ways in which all religions have something at stake in science-religion dialogue, and the two coedited volumes of Encyclopedia of Science and Religion (2003) survey the field. He is co-founder of the Institute for the Biocultural Study of Religion, a research institute devoted to the scientific study of religion, and founding co-editor of the institute’s Taylor & Francis journal Religion, Brain & Behavior. Guy Woodward (M.A. Loras College) is an independent scholar who supports himself by working in manufacturing. He holds a B.A. in philosophy from the University of Dallas, Irving, Texas, and an M.A. in theology from Loras College, Dubuque, Iowa. His interests include ecstatic and aesthetic naturalisms, Spinoza, Santayana, nineteenth-century German idealism and romanticism, British idealism, medieval scholasticism, and modern and contemporary Continental thought. Woodward has written a study covering ecstatic and aesthetic naturalisms (unpublished) titled Fearsome Entrancing and is presently working on a book that sets forth his philosophy titled Relentless Endlessness. His interests are philosophy, history of religion, and history. He lives in rural Iowa. Martin O. Yalcin (Ph.D. Drew University). Martin O. Yalcin, who teaches in the Philosophy and Religion Department at Montclair State University, specializes in American philosophy, the philosophy of religion, and the philosophy of nature. He is the author of Naturalism’s Philosophy of the Sacred: Justus Buchler, Karl Jaspers, and George Santayana (Lexington Books, 2013). In this and other publications in the American Journal of Theology and Philosophy and the Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature and Culture, he has developed his own religious naturalism, a chief component of which has been an aesthetic or poetic interpretation of the sacred.