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 typical contrasts of the notion of particulars and universals, or the immanent and transcendent. Desmond […]
Author: Books
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 compendium of, for the most part, high theory experimental writings. The volume collects reworked papers […]
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 an impact on health and well-being? What is the difference between religion and spirituality? Can […]
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 intersect with the topics of medicine and religion: empirical studies of religion’s impact on various […]
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 he began a decade ago in God After Metaphysics (2007). In that earlier book, which […]
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 funeral of his friend and personal secretary, Dolores Landingham, Bartlet asks for some time alone […]
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 this book is only six pages, in which enormous concepts such as the existence of God, […]
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 variety of new works of philosophy from Giorgio Agamben. During the last year we have […]
Review – Hear No Evil, See No Evil, Speak No Evil: Negative Reactions to the Jewish Pre- and Post-Holocaust (Madison Tarleton)
Antisemitism Before and Since the Holocaust: Altered Contexts and Recent Perspectives. Basingstoke United Kingdom: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017. Hardcover, Paperback, E-book, ix + 406 pages. Anthony McElligott and Jeffrey Herf’s edited collection Antisemitism Before and Since the Holocaust grew out of an idea born at the conference on Antisemitism and Holocaust Denial held by the Holocaust […]
Review – French Perceptions of Muslim Sexuality (Trevor Wolff)
Mack, Mehammed Amadeus. Sexagon: Muslims, France, and the Sexualization of National Culture. New York City NY: Fordham University Press, 2017. ISBN-10: 0823274616. Hardcover, Paperback, E-book. The title of Mehammed Amadeus Mack’s latest book Sexagon: Muslims, France, and the Sexualization of National Culture is a wordplay within a wordplay, referencing French slang for the country […]