In Inhabiting the Earth Foltz undertakes the first sustained analysis of how Heidegger's thought can contribute to environmental ethics and to the more broadly conceived field of environmental philosophy. Through a comprehensive study of the status of "nature" and related concepts such as "earth" in the thought of Martin Heidegger, Foltz attempts to show how Heidegger's understanding of the natural environment and our relation to it offer a more promising basis for environmental philosophy than others that have so far been (...) put forward. Indeed, Dr. Foltz finds that to ecofeminism and social ecology, whose prescriptions are based on historically oriented etiologies of domination and oppression, Heidegger's work offers what is arguably the first comprehensive and nonreductive philosophy of history since Hegel that can embrace both nature and humanity in one narrative, and the first since Augustine that can do this while granting to nature a messure of selfstanding. But it is probably for the environmental philosophies of deep ecology, bioregionalism, and ecological holism that Heidegger's work has the most immediate, as well as the most extensive implications, because it is to them that it has the most affinity. Finally, as a corrective and a major challenge to deep ecology, which has tended to valorize the scientific approach to nature, Heidegger's work provides a sophisticated basis for showing the primacy of the poetic in the task of learning to inhabit the earth rightly. (shrink)

The essays featured in this volume embrace environmental philosophy in its broadest sense and include topics such as environmental ethics, environmental ...

Through an examination of the thought of Martin Heidegger, I argue that the relation between human beings and the natural environment can be more radically comprehended by critically examining the character of the relation itself with regard to how it has been shaped and articulated by the tradition ofWestern metaphysics, particularly in light of the manner in which this tradition contains the central presuppositions of both modern natural science as weIl as contemporary technology. I conclude with an examination of a (...) “deconstructive analysis” of the concept of nature that has dominated Western philosophy; with a delineation of an alternative understanding of the environment, that is nevertheless deeply rooted in the Western tradition; and with a proposal that the present “environmental crisis” ultimately derives not from certain Judeo-Christian “values,” as it is commonly claimed, but from the initial metaphysical orientation of early Greek philosophy. (shrink)

Contemplative or "noetic" knowledge has traditionally been seen as the highest mode of understanding, a view that persists both in many non-Western cultures and in Eastern Christianity, where "theoria physike," or the illumined understanding of creation that follows the purification of the heart, is seen to provide deeper insights into nature than the discursive rationality modernity has used to dominate and conquer it. Working from texts in Eastern Orthodox philosophy and theology not widely known in the West, as well as (...) a variety of sources including mystics such as the Sufi Ibn 'Arabi, poets such as Basho, Traherne, Blake, Hölderlin, and Hopkins, and nature writers such as Muir, Thoreau, and Dillard, The Noetics of Nature challenges both the primacy of the natural sciences in environmental thought and the conventional view, first advanced by Lynn White, Jr., that Christian theology is somehow responsible for the environmental crisis. Instead, Foltz concludes that the ancient Christian view of creation as iconic its "holy beauty" manifesting the divine energies and constituting a primal mode of divine revelation offers the best prospect for the radical reversal that is needed in our relation to the natural environment. (shrink)

When the elite of German culture discovered that they no longer understood what the belief in God had been about, they earnestly set to work seeking an answer to this puzzle: what had once animated religious belief? What had been the point of it all? What had been its true meaning? The first answer came from Kant, who sought to show that religion, or at least what he considered the legitimate exercise of religion, had all along been about morality. A (...) second answer came from Schleiermacher, who addressed the “cultured despisers” of religion to demonstrate that the true content of the Christian religion had been not propositions of morality, but certain kinds of intuition or feeling. And, yet a third answer came from Hegel, who concluded that revealed religion had been one of three cultural manifestations of absolute knowledge. In one form or another, these three reductions continue in various permutations to be the principal ways that religion is understood today, even by self-identified believers. With ongoing reference to bioethics as a sort of Rosetta Stone for deciphering secular culture, Engelhardt shows at length how the Enlightenment project—the attempt to lay a new foundation for morality and politics drawing upon a universal, secular, discursive rationality rather than the Experience of God—has failed so miserably that there can be no hope for its fulfillment. The secular project—the attempt to live “after God,” to find secular substitutes to which Christianity can be reduced—has failed miserably, even if the darkness from this failed star has yet to reach the enthusiasts of secular society: “Morality has been utterly deflated. Culture is cheap. Feelings are quarantined as matters of personal taste to be overridden by secular obligations. The only solution is to return to the ascetical disciplines of the Church of the Apostles and the Fathers, which aid in turning one from self-love to the transcendent God and to a noetic experience of his will”. (shrink)

The concept of heretical art may seem peculiar, if not altogether misguided. For isn’t all genuine art creative and original, revolutionary, unconventional, unorthodox? And isn’t the heretical defined precisely in contrast with what is orthodox, i.e. as something contesting it? The orthodox, for its part, is thought to be what is conventional, what is merely assumed and taken for granted. The task of art would thus be precisely to call into question the status quo, to overthrow comfortable conventions and orthodoxies—to (...) be, in fact, essentially heretical. (shrink)

Contrary to those who argue that Christianity has itself generated our environmental problems, due to its emphasis on transcendence, it is argued that it is rather the modern abandonment of the ancient Christian tradition, as best preserved in Eastern Orthodox thought and practice, that underlies our environmental woes. For example, the traditional concept of “creation” (as lyrically expressed in the Psalms) corresponds much more closely to our lived experience of heaven and earth than do the concepts of “environment” and even (...) “nature” itself. In the Orthodox East, we find a tradition of understanding our surrounding world that (1) is cosmically oriented, (2) sees the truth of anthropocentrism in human service to creation, (3) has preserved a higher or contemplative understanding of creation, whose language is common to poets and (at their best) environmental writers alike, (4) approaches the natural environment with a deeply sacramental awareness, (5) avoids the reductionism endemic to a scientific worldview, (6) through its distinction between the divine essence and the divine energies, is able to affirm the presence of God in creation without risking pantheism, and (7) most importantly of all, emphasizes a triadic relation between Creator, creation, and humanity, i.e. affirms that we only understand the truth of nature when we experience it in relation to God. (shrink)

If we are to consider seriously the possibility of an Orthodox college in North America, then it is worth considering how it might best deliver a core curriculum that is based on the kinds of texts commonly designated as “great books.” That there ought to be a core, and that it should be based on classic texts, are assumptions for which I will not argue at any length. Concerning the former, it seems to me rather evident that twentieth century experiments (...) in abandoning a core curriculum altogether have been unsatisfactory, not only in making higher education a hit and miss proposition for the students, and resulting in highly unpredictable outcomes, but leaving the faculty with virtually nothing in common upon which they can reliably build in delivering non-core classes. And that this core should be based upon Great Books seems to me especially compelling at a college meant to express Orthodox Christianity, which has sustained such a powerful and characteristic respect for tradition. Beyond this, Great Books expose students to the greatest minds, both challenging them, and teaching them humility. Moreover, the very stature of what we unfashionably call “Great Books” typically consists in their richness and multi-dimensionality. (For example a very long, and very interesting, book could be written recounting the many differing interpretations of Plato’s Republic during the last two and a half millennia.) Learning not just to cope with this element, but to thrive within it seems to me the best way to teach young minds to deal with a world that does is not often susceptible to clear-cut interpretations, and with problems that rarely admit of simple solutions. The question of how much of the curriculum should consist of Great Books courses, I think it best to leave open for now, although I will say that I think it should probably be well under half. (shrink)

After discussing the Orthodox “Jesus prayer” and its relation to Orthodox prayer in general, the article outlines a “Topography of Prayer in Orthodox Practice” under ten subheadings: Divine Presence; Avoiding Representations; Descent to the Heart; the Role of Compunction; the Name of God; the Circularity of Prayer; God Praying Within Us; Stillness (hesychia); Erōs and Longing; and the Cosmic Dimension of Prayer. A concluding section discusses the essential link between prayer and action.

“And forgive us our debts, as we also forgive our debtors.” (Matthew 6: 12) This verse from the “Lord’s Prayer” surely represents the most familiar passage about forgiveness in English, and probably in any Western language. But do we really want to be forgiven to the degree that we ourselves have shown forgiveness? Vladimir Jankélévitch in his book Le Pardon considers the difficulty of authentic forgiveness, which he argues must be totally free from any ulterior motive. Given this high standard, (...) he concludes that it is possible that there has never been a human instance of forgiveness in this “strict sense.” Through an examination of the exegesis of the Lord’s Prayer by St Maximus the Confessor, it is concluded that even this strict sense of forgiveness is possible, but only through divine grace, which itself presupposes a significant degree of asceticism. It is concluded that this mystical conception of forgiveness, with its ascetical prerequisites and which is intelligible only on the assumption of divine grace, represents the highest standard to which we can aspire. (shrink)

Bruce V. Foltz; Hidden Patency: On the Iconic Character of Human Life, Christian bioethics: Non-Ecumenical Studies in Medical Morality, Volume 7, Issue 3, 1 Jan.

The modern age has placed primary importance upon the material world and its mastery, while the ages of Greek Antiquity and Ancient Christianity placed great emphasis upon the spiritual realm. Accordingly, the lexicon of Patristic Christianity for characterizing the relation between faith and knowledge is far richer than our own. Drawing upon the writings of St Maximus the Confessor and St Isaac of Syria, the article distinguishes five types of relation between faith and knowledge, and uses this typology to situate (...) modern science and its relation to Christian faith. It concludes that scientific knowledge as it is understood in Western modernity is limited by its “methodological atheism,” and a “dianoetic” or explanatory account of science must be completed by a “noetic” or contemplative account, proceeding from the exercise of humility and ascetic purification. (shrink)

The beginnings of the university can be found long before the medieval era in which its rise is usually situated. Its gradual emergence can best be understood as having taken place in two successive moments of history, the first unique to ancient Greece, and a second in which this initial moment was itself recapitulated in similar ways within three different religious traditions: first in the Byzantine world, then in the Islamic, and finally in the Latin Middle Ages. The most critical (...) threat to its continued flourishing, it will be argued, comes within a third moment, asymmetrical with the first two, that has been underway for several centuries. (shrink)

Why look to Orthodox philosophers for narratives of their spiritual journeys? Is there something especially noteworthy about the religious seekings of a philosopher? Surely philosophers are more likely to reflect on the process, making them likely to have more to say about it than most. Yet this pensiveness may derive not only from the spirit of impartial inquiry, but just as much from stubbornness or indecision or a fear of falling into error so strong that it overrides the love of (...) truth itself. Or perhaps it is assumed that philosophers, reputedly more rational and less passion-driven than most, would therefore have something unusually instructive to say about religious matters? But is philosophical rationality really the best vehicle for either finding, or elucidating, religious truth? (shrink)

Many are familiar with C. S. Lewis’ discussion of “the four loves” in his book of the same name. This article pursues the philosophical presuppositions of agapē (Greek) or caritas (Latin), which Christian ages understood as love in the most important sense. Agapē is contrasted with Platonic erōs and Aristotelean philia, and argued to presuppose the Trinitarian understanding of personhood, originally named by the Greek prosōpon, a nonemprical and un-grounded “facing.” The relation between prosōpon and agapē is discussed here with (...) reference to the writings of the Russian philosopher Pavel Florensky and the Greek theologian John Zizioulis, as well as the great Holy Trinity icon of the fifteenth century iconographer Andrei Rublev. (shrink)

In Dostoevsky’s Brothers Karamazov, the discourses of Elder Zosima lyrically depict a deep beauty and an enchanting mystery that can be apprehended in nature by the pure in heart. Dostoevsky suggests here that for modern humanity, the beauty and goodness and wisdom that in here in the order of creation constitute an especially important path to God. This insight has been eloquently articulated in the tradition of Russian sophiology by figures such as Soloviev, Florensky, and Bulgakov. But despite the appeal (...) of Sophia as the immanence of Divine Wisdom in creation, there are serious philosophical and theological problems with the concept. However, the decline of natural law theory has left a normative vacuum that needs to be filled. It is argued, then, that a series of patristic concepts (such as the notions of divine energies and divine logoi inherent in creation) as they have been developed in the Christian East, can serve both to offer a better lexicon that is offered in sophiology as well as comprehend the divine wisdom in creation better than natural law had done. (shrink)

Blessed Theodoret of Cyrrhus, one of the last great Antiochian theologians of the patristic era, wrote extensively of nature understood as “creation,” and thus as open to divine Wisdom and infused with divine energies. He may be taken as representative of a Great Tradition of Orthodox theology that, among many other facets, show how creation is not a closed system, as modern naturalism claims, but is everywhere turned toward its Creator. But why is this view of creation now neglected, leaving (...) the understanding of nature to modern natural science understood positivistically as a metaphysic that is hostile to any concept of divine activity? It is argued that this neglect is due largely to the rejection by neopatristic theology (and notably Florovsky and Lossky) of the “sophiology” of Fr Sergei Bulgakov. But this rejection has left a lacuna in our understanding of creation that needs to be filled by a retrieval of creation as approached in the Great Tradition. (shrink)

This chapter considers several of the fundamentals of Byzantine iconography, along with certain philosophical and theological presuppositions, without any pretensions to completeness. It begins by distinguishing between sacred art, which establishes contact with sacred reality, and religious art, which is merely representational, depicting realities that are religious in character, and differs only in subject matter from secular art. It proceeds to discuss philosophical foundations of Byzantine iconography, arguably the hightest manifestation of art in the Christian East. And it concludes with (...) a discussion of the relation between knowledge and representation in the work of Pavel Florensky and Christos Yannaras. (shrink)

Modern science and technology, despite their contribution to human weal, have brought us to a point where we see nature as infinitely malleable. But this directly contradicts the ancient understanding of “nature” or physis as the realm of things that have a nature, in contrast to things that exist by artifice or technē. Science and technology do indeed reveal certain truths of nature, seeing it respectively in its objectivity or in its character as a resource. But these are relatively shallow, (...) derivative truths of nature, as is indicated by our willingness to violate our own nature in matters of sexuality, reproduction, and human compassion, as well as our related willingness to violate the integrity of the natural environment. There are deeper truths of nature, however, more original ways of revealing the nature of nature, and these rest upon asceticism, or the purification of the soul, as a prerequisite to seeing nature as creation, i.e. as rooted in the energies of its own Creator. (shrink)

While the history of philosophy is commonly seen as focusing on the problem of unity and multiplicity, the one and the many, an even stronger case can be made for regarding as essential the relation between what Plato calls “the same” (tō auto) and “the other” (tō heteron)—stronger, because when it is properly understood, the problem of the one and the many can be seen as derivative from that of same and other. How can we approach otherness without reducing it (...) to the sameness of our own realm of will or understanding? The difficulty of philosophically addressing the other is traced throughout the history of metaphysics, with only Kierkegaard and Levinas taking seriously the problem itself, and neither arriving at a satisfactory resolution. It is concluded the solution to the problem of the other is to be found in ancient patristic thought, and ultimately in the Christian life—the life that seeks to participates in the self-emptying, self-giving life of the Holy Trinity—the life that gives itself away, abandons itself for the sake of the other, that the other may be, and that it might above all participate in the kenotic love through which the eternally same-in-other God creates and sustains the world, and re-unites it to Himself. (shrink)

Humanistic aesthetics sees beauty only as it stands in proportion to the human, only in its kinship with us, only as we are at home with it, and only in its domestic varieties. But surely an environmental aesthetic must find its proper element not in domesticity, but in wildness; not in what is measured, but in what is unmeasured; not in the homely, but in the strange and uncanny. An environmental aesthetic must be successive to humanism.

Our symposium has had as its theme, “Ethics and the Challenges of Secularism.” Secularism, the sense that religious unbelief is the default option, is of central concern for ethics because despite claims to the contrary, it is not clear that a “thick” and robust ethic can stand alone apart from religious foundations, as in the case of Kantian deontology and its “postulates of practical reason,” or else more casually in the everyday moral intuitions by which most people live, but which (...) are based on religious sensibilities handed down from the past. The alternatives seem to be either an unsatisfying, minimalist ethics of consent (I agree not to kill you without your consent if you agree not to kill me against my will) or else a utilitarianism of acts that leads to abhorrent conclusions. (shrink)

This book represents a series of incursions or philosophical forays between realms of Byzantine and Russian thought and territory long claimed by Western philosophy and theology. Beginning with thoughts inevitably rooted in the West, it seeks to penetrate as deeply as possible into Byzantine and Russian philosophical and spiritual landscapes, and to return with fresh insights. These are also incursions that move back and forth between the visible and the invisible realms, in the traditions of Plato and his successors as (...) well as the great monastics of Eastern Christianity. Foltz argues from various perspectives that the problematic relation between transcendence and immanence finds its answer in the philosophical and theological legacy of Eastern Christian thought, which has always sought to bring together strands tenaciously held separate in the West. This book transports contemporary readers to an ancient conceptual landscape as it expertly handles both Western and Byzantine ideas with a familiarity unusual to contemporary scholars. It is essential reading for all those wishing to engage the heart of Byzantine thought and employ its lessons to address the problems which plague Western philosophy and culture. (shrink)

In the turbulent years between 1916 and 1926, one of Russia’s most brilliant intellectuals worked intermittently, but persistently and even doggedly, on a text recalling his experiences growing up in the Caucasus Mountains—a curious pursuit, given his relatively young age of 34 at the book’s inception. He called the resulting book To My Children—again a seemingly odd choice, since his own young children could not have comprehended the depths of his poetic and philosophical reflections on the “lost paradise” of his (...) childhood. Perhaps he was seeking to anchor certain indispensible things from his past, sensing the forces of change in Russia that were sweeping away everything before them—changes so rapid and so radical that during this time, Walter Benjamin in his Moscow Diary would comment on a “strange term” having come into recent currency: “has beens” (byvshie liudi) denoting “those citizens who were dispossessed by the Revolution and who have been unable to adapt to the new situation.” And perhaps, too, Florensky saw with growing urgency that the materialist tidal wave that Benjamin terms “the withering away of private life” would surely, sooner or later, inexorably demolish a man such as himself—a man whose own life was anchored in prayer and the practice of hesychia or stillness that is integral to Byzantine and Russian spirituality—leaving him an uncertain prospect of transmitting these important things to his children later, in person. (shrink)

Although equal in power to other facets of the rich cultural ferment of modern Russia that have profoundly influenced Western civilization—such as painting, literature, drama, and politics—the authentic legacy of twentieth-century Russian philosophy has until recently been eclipsed by Soviet ideological dominance. Of the important philosophers drawing upon the characteristically Russian synthesis of Ancient Neoplatonism, German Idealism, and Byzantine spirituality, Sergei Bulgakov is outstanding, and his work has important implications for our contemporary thinking about the relationship between humanity and nature (...) in an age of environmental crisis. Overcoming the objectivist stance toward nature consolidated by Descartes and ensconced by Kant, Bulgakov anticipates not only many existential and phenomenological thinkers in the West—especially Heidegger—but also current ecological sensibilities, by showing the ontological status of humanity and nature as profoundly interconnected, especially through his understanding of nature as “household.” Beyond this, he elucidates a normative, “thoesophianic” character of nature corresponding to Plato’s “world soul,” the Renaissance natura naturans, and Heidegger’s “divinely beautiful nature” which is best revealed not by science and technology, but by the aesthetic and contemplative energies of a humanity whose essential interconnection with nature is shown most profoundly by means of this mode of revealing itself. (shrink)