A Communion Of Subjects

A Communion of Subjects is the first comparative and interdisciplinary study of the conceptualization of animals in world religions. Scholars from a wide range of disciplines, including Thomas Berry (cultural history), Wendy Doniger (study of myth), Elizabeth Lawrence (veterinary medicine, ritual studies), Marc Bekoff (cognitive ethology), Marc Hauser (behavioral science), Steven Wise (animals and law), Peter Singer (animals and ethics), and Jane Goodall (primatology) consider how major religious traditions have incorporated animals into their belief systems, myths, rituals, and art. Their findings offer profound insights into the relationship between human beings and animals, and a deeper understanding of the social and ecological web in which we all live.

Essays on our spiritual role in the fate of the planet from “the most provocative figure among the new breed of eco–theologians” (Newsweek). Among the contemporary voices for the Earth, none resonates like that of cultural historian Thomas Berry. His teaching and writings have inspired a generation’s thinking about humankind’s place in the Earth community and the universe, engendering widespread critical acclaim and a documentary film on his life and work. This new collection of essays, from various years and occasions, expands and deepens ideas articulated in his earlier writings and also breaks new ground. Berry opens our eyes to the full dimensions of the ecological crisis, framing it as a crisis of spiritual vision. Applying his formidable erudition in cultural history, science, and comparative religions, he forges a compelling narrative of creation and communion that reconciles modern evolutionary thinking and traditional religious insights concerning our integral role in Earth’s society. While sounding an urgent alarm at our current dilemma, Berry inspires us to reclaim our role as the consciousness of the universe and thereby begin to create a true partnership with the Earth community. With Evening Thoughts, this wise elder has lit another beacon to lead us home. “Thomas Berry is an exemplar in a tradition that includes a diverse group of spiritually radiant individuals (Gandhi, the monk Thomas Merton, the Lakota elder Black Elk), visionaries (Jacques Ellul, Terry Tempest Williams, Rachel Carson), and writers (Wendell Berry, Gary Snyder, Rebecca Solnit, Loren Eiseley).” —Barry Lopez, author of Arctic Dreams

Thomas Berry had a gentle yet mesmerizing and luminescent presence that was evident to anyone who spent time with him. His intellectual scope and erudite manner were compelling, and the breadth, depth, clarity, and elegance of his vision was breathtaking. Berry was an intellectual giant and cultural visionary of extraordinary stature. Thomas Berry’s vast knowledge of history, religions, and cultural histories is a unique blend revealing a genuine, original thinker. The ecological crisis, in all its manifestations, came to dominate Berry’s concerns. He perceived that the greatest need was to offer the possibility of a viable future for an Earth community. Many know of his proposal for a functional cosmology, the need for a new story, and a vital Earth sensitive spirituality. Few know of his rich and varied intellectual journey. The Intellectual Journey of Thomas Berry: Imagining the Earth Community is about the roots and insights hidden within his ecological, spiritual proposal. These essays, written by experts on Thomas Berry’s work, probe into, and reveal distinct themes that permeate his work, in gratitude for his contribution to the Earth.

The Eucharist: Mystery of Presence, Sacrifice, and Communion explores the three ends of the Sacrament of Sacraments: God’s true presence, His redemptive sacrifice, and spiritual nourishment through communion with Him. In this follow-up to his groundbreaking work, Faith Comes From What Is Heard, Lawrence Feingold constructs a biblical vision of the Eucharist from its prefigurement in the Old Testament to its fulfillment in the New and presents the Eucharistic theology of the Church Fathers, St. Thomas Aquinas, and magisterial teaching from centuries past through today. The Eucharist is a masterful text, both challenging and spiritually rich, that comprehensively examines the unspeakable mystery that is the Eucharist.

Thomas Berry (1914–2009) was one of the twentieth century’s most prescient and profound thinkers. As a cultural historian, he sought a broader perspective on humanity’s relationship to the earth in order to respond to the ecological and social challenges of our times. This first biography of Berry illuminates his remarkable vision and its continuing relevance for achieving transformative social change and environmental renewal. Berry began his studies in Western history and religions and then expanded to include Asian and indigenous religions, which he taught at Fordham University, Barnard College, and Columbia University. Drawing on his explorations of history, he came to see the evolutionary process as a story that could help restore the continuity of humans with the natural world. Berry urged humans to recognize their place on a planet with complex ecosystems in a vast, evolving universe. He sought to replace the modern alienation from nature with a sense of intimacy and responsibility. Berry called for new forms of ecological education, law, and spirituality, as well as the creation of resilient agricultural systems, bioregions, and ecocities. At a time of growing environmental crisis, this biography shows the ongoing significance of Berry’s conception of human interdependence with the earth as part of the unfolding journey of the universe.

In nineteenth-century America, Gillian Silverman contends, reading—and particularly book reading—precipitated intense fantasies of communion. In handling a book, the reader imagined touching and being touched by the people affiliated with that book's narrative world—an author, a character, a fellow reader. This experience often led to a sense of consubstantiality, a fantasy that the reader, the material book, and the imagined other were momentarily merged. Such a fantasy challenges psychological conceptions of discrete subjectivity along with the very notion of corporeal integrity—the idea that we are detached, skin-bound, and autonomously functioning entities. It forces us to envision readers not as liberal subjects, pursuing reading as a means toward privacy, interiority, and individuation, but rather as communal beings inseparable from objects in our psychic and phenomenal world. While theorists have long emphasized the way reading can promote a sense of abstract belonging, Bodies and Books emphasizes the intense somatic bonds that nineteenth-century subjects experienced while reading. Silverman bridges the gap between the cognitive and material effects of reading, arguing that the two worked in tandem, enabling readers to feel deep communion with objects (both human and nonhuman) in the external world. Drawing on the letters and diaries of nineteenth-century readers along with literary works by Herman Melville, Frederick Douglass, Susan Warner, and others, Silverman explores the book as a technology of intimacy and ponders what nineteenth-century readers might be able to teach us two centuries later.

Alexandra Horowitz, Peter Singer, Barbara King, Christine Korsgaard, and others explore the core concepts of this interdisciplinary field: “Recommended.” —Choice Animal Studies is a rapidly growing interdisciplinary field devoted to examining, understanding, and critically evaluating the complex relationships between humans and other animals. Scholarship in Animal Studies draws on a variety of methodologies to explore these multi-faceted relationships in order to help us understand the ways in which other animals figure in our lives and we in theirs. Bringing together the work of a group of internationally distinguished scholars, Critical Terms for Animal Studies offers distinct voices and diverse perspectives, exploring significant concepts and asking important questions. What do we mean by anthropocentrism, captivity, empathy, sanctuary, and vulnerability, and what work do these and other critical terms do in Animal Studies? How do we take non-human animals seriously, not simply as metaphors for human endeavors, but as subjects themselves? Sure to become an indispensable reference for the field, Critical Terms for Animal Studies not only provides a framework for thinking about animals as subjects of their own experiences, but also serves as a touchstone to help us think differently about our conceptions of what it means to be human, and the impact human activities have on the more than human world. “The subject of animal studies is at a crucial stage, still being mapped out and defining itself, and this volume is very useful, given its conciseness, its all-star cast of contributors, and its breadth in providing a guide to some of the key ideas.” —Colin Jerolmack, New York University

A theologian and father of a child with disabilities reveals how disability highlights our common brokenness and need for grace.

To date, philosophical discussions of animal ethics and Critical Animal Studies have been dominated by Western perspectives and Western thinkers. This book makes a novel contribution to animal ethics in showing the range and richness of ideas offered to these fields by diverse Asian traditions. Asian Perspectives on Animal Ethics is the first of its kind to include the intersection of Asian and European traditions with respect to human and nonhuman relations. Presenting a series of studies focusing on specific Asian traditions, as well as studies that put those traditions in dialogue with Western thinkers, this book looks at Asian philosophical doctrines concerning compassion and nonviolence as these apply to nonhuman animals, as well as the moral rights and status of nonhuman animals in Asian traditions. Using Asian perspectives to explore ontological, ethical and political questions, contributors analyze humanism and post-humanism in Asian and comparative traditions and offer insight into the special ethical relations between humans and other particular species of animals. This book will be of interest to students and scholars of Asian religion and philosophy, as well as to those interested in animal ethics and Critical Animal Studies.

Presents integral approaches to ecology that cross the boundaries of the humanities, social sciences, and biophysical sciences. In the current era of increasing planetary interconnectedness, ecological theories and practices are called to become more inclusive, complex, and comprehensive. The diverse contributions to this book offer a range of integral approaches to ecology that cross the boundaries of the humanities and sciences and help us understand and respond to today’s ecological challenges. The contributors provide detailed analyses of assorted integral ecologies, drawing on such founding figures and precursors as Thomas Berry, Leonardo Boff, Holmes Rolston III, Ken Wilber, and Edgar Morin. Also included is research across the social sciences, biophysical sciences, and humanities discussing multiple worldviews and perspectives related to integral ecologies. The Variety of Integral Ecologies is both an accessible guide and an advanced supplement to the growing research for a more comprehensive understanding of ecological issues and the development of a peaceful, just, and sustainable planetary civilization.