Soul
A Cosmology
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Revives the concept of Soul, urging an understanding of Soul as expression.
Description
Contemporary culture is soulless. A dead concept to contemporary thinkers, "Soul" has been displaced by philosophical and scientific abstracts. Yet, argues Joseph Grange in this timely and thought-provoking book, without Soul we are left defenseless against the negative constructs of our culture; neither matter nor mind, nor brain, nor consciousness has the power to restore the quickness of our existence. Indeed, without Soul, ethics, particularly honesty, easily turns into its opposites: spin, sophistry, artful deception.
Providing a speculative, systematic cosmology based on the methodology developed by Alfred North Whitehead and referencing a variety of philosophers, Western and Eastern, classic and contemporary, Grange offers an understanding of Soul as expression. Grange lays out the basic characteristics of Soul as transformative, social, and conscious power and goes on to discuss the possibility of mystical reason and experience. Actual steps to reconstruct Soul, including meditation, are offered. Spinoza's Ethics, Vipassana meditation, and Cognitive Behavioral Therapy are shown to have particular resources for soul transformation.
This volume concludes Grange's trilogy of cosmologies. Nature: An Environmental Cosmology and The City: An Urban Cosmology discussed the natural environment and the cultural environment. The Soul complements these with an account of the spiritual environment.
Joseph Grange is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of Southern Maine. He is the author of John Dewey, Confucius, and Global Philosophy; Nature: An Environmental Cosmology; The City: An Urban Cosmology; and coeditor (with William Desmond) of Being and Dialectic: Metaphysics as a Cultural Presence, all published by SUNY Press.