Lexington Books
Pages: 132
•
Trim: 6¼ x 9½
978-1-4985-5275-2 • Hardback • January 2019 • $104.00 • (£80.00)
978-1-4985-5276-9 • eBook • January 2019 • $98.50 • (£76.00)
Anthony Sean Neal specializes in the African American Philosophy, African American Philosophy of Religion and Religious Philosophy, and Neo-Classical African Philosophy.
Introduction
Chapter 1 An Emergent Beginning: A Philosophical (Genealogical) History of the Intellectual Antecedents to Howard Thurman
Chapter 2 Creatively Encountering Oneness: Howard Thurman’s Mystical Logic (A Logical Analysis of Thurman’s Theology)
Chapter 3 Deepening the Hunger: Philosophical and Theological Poetics (A Humanistic Analysis of Thurman’s Meditations and Poetry)
Chapter 4 Intrinsic Love
Conclusion: Logical Extensions. Examining the Tapestry: Consequences of Howard Thurman’s Thought
In Howard Thurman's Philosophical Mysticism: Love against Fragmentation, Anthony Sean Neal convincingly makes the case for Howard Thurman being an unduly neglected African American philosopher who sought to improve the lived conditions of black people in the United States, as well as affirm their God-given worth during what Neal calls the “Modern Era of the African American Freedom Struggle” (1896–1975). Neal also explains how Thurman synthesized a vast array of personal, philosophical, and theological sources—ranging from his Grandma Nancy’s slave religiosity and the Negro Spirituals to black theology to poetics to Neoplatonism, intuitionism, and process thought—into an eclectic yet coherent philosophical theology that makes sense of his own experiences as a black mystic philosopher, poet, and pastor living in a racially segregated United States. It is well worth reading!
— Dwayne Tunstall, Grand Valley State University
Anthony Neal has written the authoritative text on the meaning and substance of Howard Thurman’s philosophy. Anthony Neal did not simply write a careful exegesis of Howard Thurman’s pre-existing work, he wrote a book that leads the reader through an understanding of Black philosophy as active thinking—as a multi-leveled consciousness about the potential in the world, the obstacles to its more perfect end, and the mysticism that justifies the belief in the unrealized. Thurman often ended his books with a multi-titled designation of himself as a “Poet, Mystic, Philosopher, and Theologian.” The fineness of Neal’s writing about Thurman’s thought undoubtedly takes possession of those designations that Thurman once called his own.
— Tommy J. Curry, The University of Edinburgh