William Desmond, The Intimate Universal: The Hidden Porosity Among Religion, Art, Philosophy, and Politics. Columbia University Press, 2016. 520 pages. ISBN 9780231178761 Illustrating the constrictions of the received metaphysical legacy, the intimate as a universal seeks a space between the…
Review – The Enigmatic Absolute (Stanimir Panayotov)
Joshua Ramey and Matthew S. Haar Farris (Eds.), Speculation, Heresy, and Gnosis in Contemporary Philosophy of Religion: The Enigmatic Absolute. Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield, 2016. 299 pages. ISBN: 9781786601414 The volume edited by Ramey and Haar Farris is a…
Review – Decolonizing Dialectics (Josiah Solis)
Ciccariello-Maher, George. Decolonizing Dialectics. Durham NC: Duke University Press, 2017. 256 pages. ISBN-10: 0822362430. Hardcover, paperback, e-book. “Truly to escape Hegel,” Michele Foucault warns, “involves an exact appreciation of the price we have to pay to detach ourselves from him.” Considering that…
Review – Inventing Afterlives (Camille Grace Leon Angelo)
Inventing Afterlives: The Stories We Tell Ourselves About Life After Death. Janes, Regina M. New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 2018. 384 pages. ISBN: 9780231185714. Why do we form beliefs about the afterlife? What cultural work do these beliefs perform?…
Review – Neurotheological Nuances (Joshua Canzona)
Neurotheology: How Science Can Enlighten Us About Spirituality. Newberg, Andrew. New York: Columbia University Press, 2018. ISBN 9780231179041. Hardback. 321 pages. Andrew Newberg’s Neurotheology is a book of questions: why are some people religious and others not? Does religion have…
Review – Medicinal Religion (Aaron Klink)
Balboni, Michael J. and Peteet, John R. eds. Spirituality and Religion Within the Culture of Medicine: From Evidence to Practice. Oxford, UK and New York, NY: Oxford University Press 2017. ISBN 9780190272432 Hardcover. 419 pages. Several genres of writing stereotypically…
Review – The Ethics Of Time (Matthew Clemente)
The Ethics of Time. Manoussakis, John. New York: Bloomsbury Press, 2017. ISBN: 9781474299169. Hardback. 232 pages. John Manoussakis’s latest book, The Ethics of Time (2017)—the second volume of a trilogy to be—should be read as a continuation of the work…
Review – Reverent Irreverence (Amit Gvaryahu)
Pious Irreverence: Confronting God in Rabbinic Judaism. Weiss, Dov. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017. ISBN 9780812293050. Hardcover, ebook. ix+291 pages. Pious Irreverence opens with a quote from America’s favorite fictional president, Josiah Bartlet of The West Wing. After the…
Review – An Uncritical Critique of Theism (Rebekah Gordon)
Religion Within Reason. Cahn, Steven M. New York: Columbia University Press, 2017. ISBN: 9780231181617. Paperback. 93 pages. It is amazing that a book of less than 100 pages can be simultaneously so brief and so repetitive. The average chapter length of…
Review – Three Agambens on Display (S.J. Cowan)
Agamben’s Philosophical Lineage. Edited by Adam Kotsko and Carlo Salzani. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, 2017. ISBN-10: 1474423647. Hardcover, Paperback. 352 pages. If for nothing else, 2017 was a good year (at least for the English-speaking world) because we have received a…