Amor Mundi and Overcoming Modern World Alienation

Justin Pack

Love in many premodern cultures extended to and permeated the world or even the cosmos, but love in contemporary consumerist society tends to be sexualized, romanticized, and individualized. As a result, ancient visions of ethical love are difficult for moderns to comprehend, especially those rooted in premodern Western thought, or Native American thinkers that describe a love of the natural world that would help us live more responsibly on the Earth.

This volume retrieves the significant narratives of love of the world and the concomitant ethical ramifications of those visions and argues that our age of science and technology has destroyed the ancient, living cosmos of previous visions and replaced it with a mechanical universe. This shift has resulted in various forms of destruction, diminishment, and forgetfulness. Overcoming modern world alienation requires recovering a sense of what it means to love the world and changing our practices to reflect our interconnection with it and our interdependency on it.

Lexington Books

Pages: 192 • Trim: 6⅜ x 9

978-1-4985-9134-8 • Hardback • October 2019 • $111.00 • (£85.00)

978-1-4985-9135-5 • eBook • October 2019 • $105.50 • (£82.00)

Series: Religion and Science as a Critical Discourse

Subjects: Political Science / Political Ideologies / Democracy, Religion / Christian Theology / General, Philosophy / Ethics / Environmental Ethics

Amor Mundi and Overcoming Modern World Alienation

Hardback

eBook

Summary

Love in many premodern cultures extended to and permeated the world or even the cosmos, but love in contemporary consumerist society tends to be sexualized, romanticized, and individualized. As a result, ancient visions of ethical love are difficult for moderns to comprehend, especially those rooted in premodern Western thought, or Native American thinkers that describe a love of the natural world that would help us live more responsibly on the Earth.

This volume retrieves the significant narratives of love of the world and the concomitant ethical ramifications of those visions and argues that our age of science and technology has destroyed the ancient, living cosmos of previous visions and replaced it with a mechanical universe. This shift has resulted in various forms of destruction, diminishment, and forgetfulness. Overcoming modern world alienation requires recovering a sense of what it means to love the world and changing our practices to reflect our interconnection with it and our interdependency on it.

Details

Lexington Books

Pages: 192 • Trim: 6⅜ x 9

978-1-4985-9134-8 • Hardback • October 2019 • $111.00 • (£85.00)

978-1-4985-9135-5 • eBook • October 2019 • $105.50 • (£82.00)

Series: Religion and Science as a Critical Discourse

Subjects: Political Science / Political Ideologies / Democracy, Religion / Christian Theology / General, Philosophy / Ethics / Environmental Ethics

Author

Justin Pack is lecturer at CSU Stanislaus.

Table of Contents

INTRODUCTION

I. COSMIC LOVE OR LOVING THE LIVING COSMOS

II. THE RISE OF SCIENCE, THE DEATH OF THE COSMOS, AND THE DECLINE OF

III. ARENDT AND AMOR MUNDI: WHAT IS WORLD?

IV. ARENDT AND AMOR MUNDI: WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO LOVE THE WORLD?

V. LOVE OF THE EARTH IN NATIVE AMERICAN PHILOSOPHY

VI. OVERCOMING THE MODERN JUGGERNAUT

CONCLUSIONS: LOVE THE WORLD!

REFERENCES CITED

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Amor Mundi and Overcoming Modern World Alienation

Justin Pack

Amor Mundi and Overcoming Modern World Alienation

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