• Herder's Essay on Being: A Translation and Critical Approaches (edited book)
    with John K. Noyes, Arnd Bohm, Manfred Baum, Marion Heinz, Nigel DeSouza, Sonia Sikka, Ulrich Gaier, and Wolfgang Pross
    Boydell & Brewer. 2018.
  • Nature and Aesthetics: Methexis, Mimēsis and Poiēsis
    In Alexander J. B. Hampton & Douglas Hedley (eds.), Cambridge Companion to Christianity and the Environment, Cambridge University Press. pp. 263-85. 2022.
  •  17
    Jacobi held a position of unparalleled importance in late eighteenth and early nineteenth century intellectual history. This includes his role in bringing about the close of the Enlightenment, his central part in shaping the reception of Kant's philosophy and German idealism, and his influence on the development of Romanticism and existentialism.
  • Christian Platonism, nature and environmental crisis
    In Alexander J. B. Hampton & John Peter Kenney (eds.), Christian Platonism: A History, Cambridge University Press. 2020.
  • Christianity and Platonism
    with John Peter Kenney
    In Alexander J. B. Hampton & John Peter Kenney (eds.), Christian Platonism: A History, Cambridge University Press. 2020.
  •  17
    The Role of Plotinus in the Romantic Philosophy of Novalis
    International Journal of the Platonic Tradition 17 (2): 232-255. 2022.
    Novalis was a central figure in early German Romantic philosophy. Whilst the importance of both Fichte and Spinoza for the development of Romanticism is well established, the vital influence of the Platonic tradition in allowing the Romantics to synthesise these divergent philosophies merits closer attention. Essential to the development of Novalis’ thought was his exposure to Plotinus. This examination first sets out the religious and philosophical problems in Germany at the close of the eighte…Read more
  •  6
    The Cambridge Companion to Christianity and the Environment (edited book)
    Cambridge University Press. 2022.
    Christianity has understood the environment as a gift to nurture and steward, a book of divine revelation disclosing the divine mind, a wild garden in need of cultivation and betterment, and as a resource for the creation of a new Eden. This Cambridge Companion details how Christianity, one of the world's most important religions, has shaped one of the existential issues of our age, the environment. Engaging with contemporary issues, including gender, traditional knowledge, and enchantment, it b…Read more
  •  18
    Aesthetics, Nature and Religion: Ronald W. Hepburn and his Legacy, ed. Endre Szécsényi
    with Endre Szécsényi, Peter Cheyne, Cairns Craig, David E. Cooper, Emily Brady, Douglas Hedley, Mary Warnock, Guy Bennett-Hunter, Michael McGhee, James Kirwan, Isis Brook, Fran Speed, Yuriko Saito, James MacAllister, Arto Haapala, Pauline von Bonsdorff, Sigurjón Baldur Hafsteinsson, and Arnar Árnason
    Aberdeen University Press. 2020.
    On 18–19 May 2018, a symposium was held in the Research Institute of Irish and Scottish Studies at the University of Aberdeen to commemorate the tenth anniversary of the death of Ronald W. Hepburn (1927–2008). The speakers at this event discussed Hepburn’s oeuvre from several perspectives. For this book, the collection of the revised versions of their talks has been supplemented by the papers of other scholars who were unable to attend the symposium itself. Thus this volume contains contribution…Read more
  •  4
    As the sequential stages of the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic have unfolded, so have its complexities. What initially presented as a health emergency, has revealed itself to be a phenomenon of many facets. It has demonstrated human creativity, the oft neglected presence of nature, and the resilience of communities. Equally, it has exposed deep social inequities, conceptual inadequacies, and structural deficiencies about the way we organize our civilization and our knowledge. As the situation continues …Read more
  •  13
    Christian Platonism: A History (edited book)
    with John Peter Kenney
    Cambridge University Press. 2020.
    Platonism has played a central role in Christianity and is essential to a deep understanding of the Christian theological tradition. At times, Platonism has constituted an essential philosophical and theological resource, furnishing Christianity with an intellectual framework that has played a key role in its early development, and in subsequent periods of renewal. Alternatively, it has been considered a compromising influence, conflicting with the faith's revelatory foundations and distorting i…Read more
  •  112
    Platonism, Nature and Environmental Crisis
    In Alexander J. B. Hampton & John Peter Kenney (eds.), Christian Platonism: A History. forthcoming.
    This examination makes the case that the tradition of Christian Platonism can constitute a valuable resource for addressing the long-running and increasingly-acute environmental crisis that threatens the global ecosystem and all who inhabit it. More than a scientific, technological or political challenge, the crisis requires a fundamental shift in the way humans understand nature and their place within it. Key to implementing this shift is the need to address the problematic anthropocentric conc…Read more
  •  166
    As the sequential stages of the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic have unfolded, so have its complexities. What initially presented as a health emergency, has revealed itself to be a phenomenon of many facets. As the situation continues to advance, the question for many is whether the crisis will be grasped as an opportunity to address deep structural, ecological and social challenges. This introductory chapter briefly addresses why and how the fields of ecology and theology can play an important and vital…Read more
  •  101
    This consideration characterises the crisis and opportunity of COVID-19 in three parts: First, it sets out the problematic conceptualisation of nature in the modern social imaginary by focusing upon the buffered self in terms of its sense of identity, agency and authority. Second, it sets out how the pandemic fundamentally disrupts these three facets of the self in terms of the fragilization of economic values, the notion of unique human agency, and the limitation of the authority of discursive …Read more
  •  169
    Henry More
    In Hans-Josef Klauck (ed.), Encyclopedia of the Bible and its Reception: Lectionary-Lots, De Gruyter. 2015.
    More, Henry (1614-1687), an English philosopher, theologian and poet. The most important member of the Cambridge Platonists, a group of seventeenth century thinkers associated with the University of Cambridge. Accepting of the developments of Galilean science, Cartesianism and atomism, they sought an alternative to the faltering philosophical foundation of Aristotelianism by looking to the Platonic tradition, viewed through the framework of Renaissance perennial philosophy. More’s Christian apol…Read more
  •  214
    Christianity and Platonism: A History
    with John Peter Kenney
    Cambridge University Press. forthcoming.
    This is the first volume to offer a systematic consideration and comprehensive overview of Christianity’s long engagement with the Platonic philosophical tradition. The book offers a detailed consideration of the most fertile sources and concepts in Christian Platonism, a historical contextualization of its development, and a series of constructive engagements with central questions. Bringing together a range of leading scholars, the volume guides readers through each of these dimensions, unique…Read more
  •  525
    Mystical Poetics
    In Edward Howells & Mark A. McIntosh (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Mystical Theology, Oxford University Press. pp. 241-64. 2020.
    The development of Christian mysticism is deeply bound to poetics. This examination first considers Platonic poetry, Hebrew creation, and Christian kenosis as sources of poetic mysticism, before turning to an elaboration of the role of rhythm, language, and the poetic imagination. The appraisal then considers the historical development of mystical poetry, beginning with early Christian reflection on the figurative and lyrical use of scriptural language to express a deep personal relationship wit…Read more
  •  278
    A central element of Hölderlin’s poetic project was to find a new language for transcendence in an age of immanence. To do so, he turned not to philosophy or theology, but to poetics. Its rhythmic nature, he argued, was capable of re-presenting the transcendent. This examination will begin with a brief historical consideration of the relation of transcendence and immanence, with particular attention to the influential philosophies of Spinoza and Fichte. It then proceeds to Hölderlin’s considerat…Read more
  •  1081
    This article examines the relationship between the conspicuous and complicated terms of transcendence and immanence, which may equally be defined as essentially connected, or diametrically opposed. Recent developments in two largely unrelated sets of scholarship— the re-evaluation of secularisation, and the relationship between medieval and modern philosophy—provide a helpful means to arrive at a clearer understanding of this challenging problem. Charles Taylor and Jan Aertesn act as foci for th…Read more
  •  686
    A Post-Secular Nature and the New Nature Writing
    Christianity and Literature 3 (67): 454-471. 2018.
    With the turn of the twenty-first century, a group of writers began rehabilitating British nature writing and the voice of the individual interacting with it, producing what has become collectively known as the new nature writing. This examination considers how this literature represents a post-secular re-conceptualization of our relationship to nature. The new nature writing challenges a key element of the secular social imaginary, namely the subject-centered, immanence-bound, disenchanted repr…Read more
  •  669
    Herder’s earliest philosophical writing, the essay fragment Versuch über das Sein, explores the concept of Being (Sein) in dialogue with Kant’s pre-critical Der einzig mögliche Beweisgrund zu einer Demonstration des Daseins Gottes. In this often critically omitted work, Herder arrives at a number of insights that would be determinative for the development of his later thought. This examination details Herder’s concept of Being as the transcendent ground of predication, his contention that Being …Read more
  •  4
    Early German Romanticism sought to respond to a comprehensive sense of spiritual crisis that characterised the late eighteenth century. The study demonstrates how the Romantics sought to bring together the new post-Kantian idealist philosophy with the inheritance of the realist Platonic-Christian tradition. With idealism they continued to champion the individual, while from Platonism they took the notion that all reality, including the self, participated in absolute being. This insight was expre…Read more
  •  6
    Dalia Nassar: The Romantic Absolute: Being and Knowing in Early German Romantic Philosophy, 1795–1804 (review)
    Journal for the History of Modern Theology/Zeitschrift für Neuere Theologiegeschichte 22 (1). 2015.
    The Romantic Absolute does a spectacular job of reconstructing the main philosophical position of three very difficult figures. The more we know of Romanticism as a movement, the more questions we seem to have, and the more important it seems to be, both to the history of philosophy and to the philosophical questions that concern us today. Nassar’s book represents an important contribution to our understanding of Early German Romanticism and will undoubtedly become an important resource for anyo…Read more
  •  695
    Religion and the Problem of Subjectivity in the reception of Early German Romanticism
    Journal for the History of Modern Theology/Zeitschrift für Neuere Theologiegeschichte 22 (1). 2015.
    This examination provides a history of the problematic characterisation of Early German Romanticism (or Frühromantik) as subjectivist, and challenges this characterisation in light of recent scholarship. From its earliest critical reception in the early nineteenth century, the movement suffered from a set of problematic characterisations made by popular philosophical figures. Goethe, Hegel, Heine, Kierkegaard and others all criticised the movement for holding a dangerous subjective egoism. This …Read more
  •  9
    The Conquest of Mythos by Logos: Countering Religion without Faith in Irenaeus, Coleridge and Gadamer
    Forum Philosophicum: International Journal for Philosophy 12 (1): 57-70. 2007.
    Irenaeus, Coleridge and Gadamer all wrote about religion in distinct historical periods, however the work that each produced reflects the anthropological condition of the middle position. Furthermore, each thinker provides an opportunity for self-reflection about the motivations of faith without requiring the individual to abandon their religious belief in order to do so. In this manner they present a productive alternative to the required external views of the social sciences. The individual's …Read more
  •  307
    The Aesthetic Foundations of Romantic Mythology: Karl Philipp Moritz
    Journal for the History of Modern Theology/Zeitschrift für Neuere Theologiegeschichte 20 (2): 175-191. 2013.
    Largely neglected today, the work of Karl Philipp Moritz was a highly influential source for Early German Romanticism. Moritz considered the form of myth as essential to the absolute nature of the divine subject. This defence was based upon his aesthetic theory, which held that beautiful art was “disinterested”, or complete in itself. For Moritz, Myth, like art, constitutes a totality providing an idiom free from restriction in the imitation of the divine. This examination offers a consideration…Read more
  •  544
    This examination considers the influence of the seventeenth century Cambridge Platonist Cudworth upon the thought of the late eighteenth century German thinker Herder. It focuses upon Herder's use of Cudworth's philosophy to create a revised version of Spinoza's metaphysics. Both Cudworth and Herder were concerned with the problem of determinism. Cudworth outlined a number of difficulties relating to this problem in the thought of Spinoza and proposed amendments, particularly the introduction of…Read more
  •  16
    This examination considers the influence of the seventeenth century Cambridge Platonist Cudworth upon the thought of the late eighteenth century German thinker Herder. It focuses upon Herder's use of Cudworth's philosophy to create a revised version of Spinoza's metaphysics. Both Cudworth and Herder were concerned with the problem of determinism. Cudworth outlined a number of difficulties relating to this problem in the thought of Spinoza and proposed amendments, particularly the introduction of…Read more