Derek A Michaud | University of Maine (original) (raw)
Published Papers by Derek A Michaud
Pandemic, Ecology and Theology: Perspectives on COVID-19, 2020
The COVID-19 pandemic is a multidimensional crisis with biological, psychological, political, and... more The COVID-19 pandemic is a multidimensional crisis with biological, psychological, political, and spiritual dimensions. Efforts to address the crisis limited to a single dimension fail to promote holistic human health. For human flourishing, an adequate conception of humanity, the natural world, and the challenges we face as well as metaphysical grounds for hope to motivate long-term remediation efforts are needed. Paul Tillich's multidimensional unity of life accomplishes all this by framing the ecological interdependence of all within a transcendent horizon and viewing all beings as participates in the power of the Ground of Being to overcome estrangement motivates eschatological hope.
Abstract and introduction for "Christian Platonism in Early Modernity." Contact me for full-text.
Plotinus' Legacy: The Transformation of Platonism from the Renaissance to the Modern Era, 2019
Chapter in Plotinus’ Legacy: Studies in the Transformation of “Platonism” from Early Modernism to... more Chapter in Plotinus’ Legacy: Studies in the Transformation of “Platonism”
from Early Modernism to the Romantics, Stephen Gersh, ed. Cambridge
University Press.
This chapter incorporates material presented as "John Smith's Plotinian Rational Theology" at the 15th Annual International Society for Neoplatonic Studies Conference, Olomouc, Czech Republic, 14-17 June 2017 and as "John Smith's 'Great Principles of Religion': The Natural Theology of a Cambridge Platonist" at the Maine Philosophical Institute, 71st Annual Meeting, University of Maine, 30 April 2016.
Nicholas of Cusa and the Making of the Early Modern World, 2019
“Varieties of Spiritual Sense: Cusanus and John Smith,” in Nicholas of Cusa and the Making of the... more “Varieties of Spiritual Sense: Cusanus and John Smith,” in Nicholas of Cusa and the Making of the Early Modern World, Studies in the History of Christian Traditions, vol. 190, ch. 10, edited by Simon Burton, Joshua Hollmann, and Eric Parker. Brill.
Text available here: https://derekmichaud.com/2018/12/26/varieties-of-spiritual-sense-cusanus-and-john-smith/.
Perceiving the Divine through the Human Body: Mystical Sensuality, Thomas Cattoi and June McDaniel, eds. Palgrave Macmillan, 2011
Cite and quote from the published version. Chapter in Perceiving the Divine through the Human... more Cite and quote from the published version.
Chapter in Perceiving the Divine through the Human Body: Mystical
Sensuality, 141-158, Thomas Cattoi and June McDaniel, eds. Palgrave
Macmillan, 2011.
Books by Derek A Michaud
John Smith (1618-1652), long known for the elegance of his prose and the breadth of his erudition... more John Smith (1618-1652), long known for the elegance of his prose and the breadth of his erudition, has been underappreciated as a philosophical theologian. This book redresses this by showing how the spiritual senses became an essential tool for responding to early modern developments in philosophy, science, and religion for Smith. Through a close reading of the Select Discourses (1660) it is shown how Smith’s theories of theological knowledge, method, and prophecy as well as his prescriptive account of Christian piety rely on his spiritual aesthetics. Smith offers a coherent system with intellectual intuition informing natural theology and revelation supplemented by spiritual perception via the imagination too. The central uniting feature of Smith’s philosophical theology is thus ‘spiritual sensation’ broadly construed. The book closes with proposals for research on Smith’s influence on the accounts of the spiritual senses developed by significant later figures including Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758) and John Wesley (1703-1791).
Revision of 2015 PhD thesis (http://hdl.handle.net/2144/15615) at Boston University.
Pandemic, Ecology and Theology: Perspectives on COVID-19, 2020
As the sequential stages of the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic have unfolded, so have its complexities. W... more As the sequential stages of the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic have unfolded, so have its complexities. What initially presented as a health emergency, has revealed itself to be a phenomenon of many facets. It has demonstrated human creativity, the oft neglected presence of nature, and the resilience of communities. Equally, it has exposed deep social inequities, conceptual inadequacies, and structural deficiencies about the way we organize our civilization and our knowledge. As the situation continues to advance, the question is whether the crisis will be grasped as an opportunity to address the deep structural, ecological and social challenges that we brought with us into the second decade of the new millennium. This volume addresses the collective sense that the pandemic is more than a problem to manage our way out of. Rather, it is a moment to consider our broken relationship with the natural world, and our alienation from a deeper sense of purpose and meaning. The contributors, though differing in their diagnoses and recommendations, share the belief that this moment, with its transformative possibility, not be forfeit. Equally, they share the conviction that the chief ground of any such reorientation ineluctably involves our collective engagement with both ecology and theology. INFORMATION
Edited Work by Derek A Michaud
Message from the Guest Editor Dear Colleagues, This Special Issue aims to take stock of philosoph... more Message from the Guest Editor Dear Colleagues, This Special Issue aims to take stock of philosophical theology at this historical moment through both original constructive papers and review articles reflecting on the field. In either case, papers should situate their work within the field of philosophical theology as the author understands it. Broad questions include:
Religions, 2023
Dear Colleagues, Philosophical theology received authoritative summaries in English over ten y... more Dear Colleagues,
Philosophical theology received authoritative summaries in English over ten years ago (Flint and Rea, 2011; Taliaferro and Meister, 2009). However, the previous decade has witnessed the rise of analytic theology (Crisp and Rea, 2009; Abraham, 2012), interreligious philosophy of religion (e.g., Global Philosophy of Religion Project), and increased sensitivity to the voices of persons with diverse identities and backgrounds. With roots in the anglophone philosophy of religion in the 1960s, analytic theology has become an area of joint inquiry with its own community, journals (e.g., Journal of Analytic Theology), and book series (e.g., Oxford Studies in Analytic Theology). Though it is clearly at least adjacent to philosophical theology, the precise nature of this proximity remains underdeveloped. While Crisp and Rea (2009) included chapters on Jewish, Islamic, and Confucian philosophical theologies, the field has lagged behind some recent work in the philosophy of religion in terms of becoming a truly global field. Finally, philosophical theology has been overwhelmingly associated with cisgender heterosexual Christian men.
In response to these developments and more, I am pleased to invite you and your colleagues and graduate students to contribute to “New Voices in Philosophical Theology,” a Special Issue of Religions.
This Special Issue aims to take stock of philosophical theology at this historical moment through both original constructive papers and review articles reflecting on the field. In either case, papers should situate their work within the field of philosophical theology as the author understands it. Broad questions include:
What methods, presuppositions, or practices differentiate philosophical theology from the philosophy of religion? What unites them?
What themes, issues, or texts drive current thinking?
Divine attributes and nature;
Revelation and religious epistemology;
Science and religion;
Interreligious dialogue or comparative theology;
How do issues of personal identity influence our work in philosophical theology?
Where is the proper home of philosophical theology?
Religious communities (i.e., churches, denominations, etc.)
Academia
Public life
What novel approaches, including reappropriations of old texts and traditions, are or should be developed?
How are developments in analytic, systematic/dogmatic, moral, biblical, and political theology influencing the field?
We are seeking papers from diverse perspectives to accurately reflect current work in the field and welcome novel approaches. Therefore, contributions from early career scholars, BIPOC and/or LGBTQ authors, and others historically underrepresented in the field are especially encouraged.
We look forward to receiving your contributions.
Dr. Derek A. Michaud
I edit the ever growing bibliography on Plotinus at PhilPapers.org.
I edit the ever growing bibliography on Cambridge Platonism at PhilPapers.org.
Unpublished Papers by Derek A Michaud
PhilosophyOfReligion.org, Apr 24, 2019
Excellence in the philosophy of religion, whether in scholarship, public presentation, or classro... more Excellence in the philosophy of religion, whether in scholarship, public presentation, or classroom instruction, is sensitive to the history and significance of religious ideas and practices for living human beings. The philosophy of religion is best when it seeks at once to contribute to philosophy as a sub-division thereof and generally to religious studies as one approach among many thereto. Philosophers of religion should remain therefore humble students of both religion and philosophy.
A *very* rough draft of a paper on Anselm's "ontological argument" in which I argue that the argu... more A *very* rough draft of a paper on Anselm's "ontological argument" in which I argue that the argument in the Proslogion rests on a robust notion of having "that then which nothing greater can be thought" in one's mind.
Engaging Particularities Conference, Chestnut Hill, MA: Boston College, 2008
Book Reviews by Derek A Michaud
Reading Religion, 2021
Review of Robert Wallace, Philosophical Mysticism in Plato, Hegel, and the Present (London: Bloom... more Review of Robert Wallace, Philosophical Mysticism in Plato, Hegel, and the Present (London: Bloomsbury Academic, December 2019) ISBN 9781350082861.
Reading Religion, 2019
Review of Lloyd Strickland’s Proofs of God in Early Modern Europe (Baylor, 2018).
“Returning to Reality: Christian Platonism for our Times, Paul Tyson, Cambridge: Lutterworth, 201... more “Returning to Reality: Christian Platonism for our Times, Paul Tyson, Cambridge: Lutterworth, 2015,” Reviews in Religion & Theology 24.3 (July 2017): 586-8.
Reading Religion, 2017
“Preparation for Natural Theology: With Kant's Notes and the Danzig Rational Theology Transcript,... more “Preparation for Natural Theology: With Kant's Notes and the Danzig Rational Theology Transcript, Johann August Eberhard Eberhard, trans., Courtney D. Fugate and John Hymers, Kant's Sources in Translation, Bloomsbury Academic, 2016,” Reading Religion, February 24, 2017, http://readingreligion.org/books/preparation-natural-theology.
Review of Philosophical Religions from Plato to Spinoza [Carlos Fraenkel, Cambridge University Pr... more Review of Philosophical Religions from Plato to Spinoza [Carlos Fraenkel, Cambridge University Press, 2012 (ISBN 978-0-521-19457-0), xxvii + 328 pp., hb £59.99], Reviews in Religion & Theology 22.3 (July 2015): 233-5.
Pandemic, Ecology and Theology: Perspectives on COVID-19, 2020
The COVID-19 pandemic is a multidimensional crisis with biological, psychological, political, and... more The COVID-19 pandemic is a multidimensional crisis with biological, psychological, political, and spiritual dimensions. Efforts to address the crisis limited to a single dimension fail to promote holistic human health. For human flourishing, an adequate conception of humanity, the natural world, and the challenges we face as well as metaphysical grounds for hope to motivate long-term remediation efforts are needed. Paul Tillich's multidimensional unity of life accomplishes all this by framing the ecological interdependence of all within a transcendent horizon and viewing all beings as participates in the power of the Ground of Being to overcome estrangement motivates eschatological hope.
Abstract and introduction for "Christian Platonism in Early Modernity." Contact me for full-text.
Plotinus' Legacy: The Transformation of Platonism from the Renaissance to the Modern Era, 2019
Chapter in Plotinus’ Legacy: Studies in the Transformation of “Platonism” from Early Modernism to... more Chapter in Plotinus’ Legacy: Studies in the Transformation of “Platonism”
from Early Modernism to the Romantics, Stephen Gersh, ed. Cambridge
University Press.
This chapter incorporates material presented as "John Smith's Plotinian Rational Theology" at the 15th Annual International Society for Neoplatonic Studies Conference, Olomouc, Czech Republic, 14-17 June 2017 and as "John Smith's 'Great Principles of Religion': The Natural Theology of a Cambridge Platonist" at the Maine Philosophical Institute, 71st Annual Meeting, University of Maine, 30 April 2016.
Nicholas of Cusa and the Making of the Early Modern World, 2019
“Varieties of Spiritual Sense: Cusanus and John Smith,” in Nicholas of Cusa and the Making of the... more “Varieties of Spiritual Sense: Cusanus and John Smith,” in Nicholas of Cusa and the Making of the Early Modern World, Studies in the History of Christian Traditions, vol. 190, ch. 10, edited by Simon Burton, Joshua Hollmann, and Eric Parker. Brill.
Text available here: https://derekmichaud.com/2018/12/26/varieties-of-spiritual-sense-cusanus-and-john-smith/.
Perceiving the Divine through the Human Body: Mystical Sensuality, Thomas Cattoi and June McDaniel, eds. Palgrave Macmillan, 2011
Cite and quote from the published version. Chapter in Perceiving the Divine through the Human... more Cite and quote from the published version.
Chapter in Perceiving the Divine through the Human Body: Mystical
Sensuality, 141-158, Thomas Cattoi and June McDaniel, eds. Palgrave
Macmillan, 2011.
John Smith (1618-1652), long known for the elegance of his prose and the breadth of his erudition... more John Smith (1618-1652), long known for the elegance of his prose and the breadth of his erudition, has been underappreciated as a philosophical theologian. This book redresses this by showing how the spiritual senses became an essential tool for responding to early modern developments in philosophy, science, and religion for Smith. Through a close reading of the Select Discourses (1660) it is shown how Smith’s theories of theological knowledge, method, and prophecy as well as his prescriptive account of Christian piety rely on his spiritual aesthetics. Smith offers a coherent system with intellectual intuition informing natural theology and revelation supplemented by spiritual perception via the imagination too. The central uniting feature of Smith’s philosophical theology is thus ‘spiritual sensation’ broadly construed. The book closes with proposals for research on Smith’s influence on the accounts of the spiritual senses developed by significant later figures including Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758) and John Wesley (1703-1791).
Revision of 2015 PhD thesis (http://hdl.handle.net/2144/15615) at Boston University.
Pandemic, Ecology and Theology: Perspectives on COVID-19, 2020
As the sequential stages of the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic have unfolded, so have its complexities. W... more As the sequential stages of the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic have unfolded, so have its complexities. What initially presented as a health emergency, has revealed itself to be a phenomenon of many facets. It has demonstrated human creativity, the oft neglected presence of nature, and the resilience of communities. Equally, it has exposed deep social inequities, conceptual inadequacies, and structural deficiencies about the way we organize our civilization and our knowledge. As the situation continues to advance, the question is whether the crisis will be grasped as an opportunity to address the deep structural, ecological and social challenges that we brought with us into the second decade of the new millennium. This volume addresses the collective sense that the pandemic is more than a problem to manage our way out of. Rather, it is a moment to consider our broken relationship with the natural world, and our alienation from a deeper sense of purpose and meaning. The contributors, though differing in their diagnoses and recommendations, share the belief that this moment, with its transformative possibility, not be forfeit. Equally, they share the conviction that the chief ground of any such reorientation ineluctably involves our collective engagement with both ecology and theology. INFORMATION
Message from the Guest Editor Dear Colleagues, This Special Issue aims to take stock of philosoph... more Message from the Guest Editor Dear Colleagues, This Special Issue aims to take stock of philosophical theology at this historical moment through both original constructive papers and review articles reflecting on the field. In either case, papers should situate their work within the field of philosophical theology as the author understands it. Broad questions include:
Religions, 2023
Dear Colleagues, Philosophical theology received authoritative summaries in English over ten y... more Dear Colleagues,
Philosophical theology received authoritative summaries in English over ten years ago (Flint and Rea, 2011; Taliaferro and Meister, 2009). However, the previous decade has witnessed the rise of analytic theology (Crisp and Rea, 2009; Abraham, 2012), interreligious philosophy of religion (e.g., Global Philosophy of Religion Project), and increased sensitivity to the voices of persons with diverse identities and backgrounds. With roots in the anglophone philosophy of religion in the 1960s, analytic theology has become an area of joint inquiry with its own community, journals (e.g., Journal of Analytic Theology), and book series (e.g., Oxford Studies in Analytic Theology). Though it is clearly at least adjacent to philosophical theology, the precise nature of this proximity remains underdeveloped. While Crisp and Rea (2009) included chapters on Jewish, Islamic, and Confucian philosophical theologies, the field has lagged behind some recent work in the philosophy of religion in terms of becoming a truly global field. Finally, philosophical theology has been overwhelmingly associated with cisgender heterosexual Christian men.
In response to these developments and more, I am pleased to invite you and your colleagues and graduate students to contribute to “New Voices in Philosophical Theology,” a Special Issue of Religions.
This Special Issue aims to take stock of philosophical theology at this historical moment through both original constructive papers and review articles reflecting on the field. In either case, papers should situate their work within the field of philosophical theology as the author understands it. Broad questions include:
What methods, presuppositions, or practices differentiate philosophical theology from the philosophy of religion? What unites them?
What themes, issues, or texts drive current thinking?
Divine attributes and nature;
Revelation and religious epistemology;
Science and religion;
Interreligious dialogue or comparative theology;
How do issues of personal identity influence our work in philosophical theology?
Where is the proper home of philosophical theology?
Religious communities (i.e., churches, denominations, etc.)
Academia
Public life
What novel approaches, including reappropriations of old texts and traditions, are or should be developed?
How are developments in analytic, systematic/dogmatic, moral, biblical, and political theology influencing the field?
We are seeking papers from diverse perspectives to accurately reflect current work in the field and welcome novel approaches. Therefore, contributions from early career scholars, BIPOC and/or LGBTQ authors, and others historically underrepresented in the field are especially encouraged.
We look forward to receiving your contributions.
Dr. Derek A. Michaud
I edit the ever growing bibliography on Plotinus at PhilPapers.org.
I edit the ever growing bibliography on Cambridge Platonism at PhilPapers.org.
PhilosophyOfReligion.org, Apr 24, 2019
Excellence in the philosophy of religion, whether in scholarship, public presentation, or classro... more Excellence in the philosophy of religion, whether in scholarship, public presentation, or classroom instruction, is sensitive to the history and significance of religious ideas and practices for living human beings. The philosophy of religion is best when it seeks at once to contribute to philosophy as a sub-division thereof and generally to religious studies as one approach among many thereto. Philosophers of religion should remain therefore humble students of both religion and philosophy.
A *very* rough draft of a paper on Anselm's "ontological argument" in which I argue that the argu... more A *very* rough draft of a paper on Anselm's "ontological argument" in which I argue that the argument in the Proslogion rests on a robust notion of having "that then which nothing greater can be thought" in one's mind.
Engaging Particularities Conference, Chestnut Hill, MA: Boston College, 2008
Reading Religion, 2021
Review of Robert Wallace, Philosophical Mysticism in Plato, Hegel, and the Present (London: Bloom... more Review of Robert Wallace, Philosophical Mysticism in Plato, Hegel, and the Present (London: Bloomsbury Academic, December 2019) ISBN 9781350082861.
Reading Religion, 2019
Review of Lloyd Strickland’s Proofs of God in Early Modern Europe (Baylor, 2018).
“Returning to Reality: Christian Platonism for our Times, Paul Tyson, Cambridge: Lutterworth, 201... more “Returning to Reality: Christian Platonism for our Times, Paul Tyson, Cambridge: Lutterworth, 2015,” Reviews in Religion & Theology 24.3 (July 2017): 586-8.
Reading Religion, 2017
“Preparation for Natural Theology: With Kant's Notes and the Danzig Rational Theology Transcript,... more “Preparation for Natural Theology: With Kant's Notes and the Danzig Rational Theology Transcript, Johann August Eberhard Eberhard, trans., Courtney D. Fugate and John Hymers, Kant's Sources in Translation, Bloomsbury Academic, 2016,” Reading Religion, February 24, 2017, http://readingreligion.org/books/preparation-natural-theology.
Review of Philosophical Religions from Plato to Spinoza [Carlos Fraenkel, Cambridge University Pr... more Review of Philosophical Religions from Plato to Spinoza [Carlos Fraenkel, Cambridge University Press, 2012 (ISBN 978-0-521-19457-0), xxvii + 328 pp., hb £59.99], Reviews in Religion & Theology 22.3 (July 2015): 233-5.
Invited seminar paper, Metaphysics of Conversion from Late Antiquity to Early Modernity, Cambridg... more Invited seminar paper, Metaphysics of Conversion from Late Antiquity to Early Modernity, Cambridge Centre for the Study of Platonism and the Early Modern Conversions Research Partnership. McGill University, Montréal, 1 August 2018.
PowerPoint Presentation for a Paper read at the Christian Systematic Theology Unit, the Annual Me... more PowerPoint Presentation for a Paper read at the Christian Systematic Theology Unit, the Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Religion, Boston, 19 November 2017.
Invited lecture, University of Maine, Honors College, HON 112 Civilizations: Past, Present, and F... more Invited lecture, University of Maine, Honors College, HON 112 Civilizations: Past, Present, and Future II, 5 March 2019.
“Christian Platonism” session of the Platonism and Neoplatonism Group, Annual Meeting of the Amer... more “Christian Platonism” session of the Platonism and Neoplatonism Group, Annual Meeting of the American Academy of Religion, San Francisco, November 2011.
PHI 287 Buddhist Philosophy Syllabus Spring 2021
Syllabus for Online Winter term Contemporary Moral Problems course at the University of Maine, Ja... more Syllabus for Online Winter term Contemporary Moral Problems course at the University of Maine, January 2021.
Moral theory course syllabus focused on a very narrow canon of Western moral philosophy.
PHI 104 Syllabus Fall 2018 UMaine
PHI 103 Methods of Reasoning Syllabus Fall 2021
PHI 102, UMaine, Spring 2018.
Join us for an evening with former Maine poet laureate Stuart Kestenbaum. The author of six colle... more Join us for an evening with former Maine poet laureate Stuart Kestenbaum. The author of six collections of poems, Kestenbaum also frequently writes and speaks on the arts and creativity. On February 8 th he will read a selection of his poetry directly influenced by Judaism and will speak on his writing process and the connections to Jewish liturgy and Biblical texts.
Flyer for an event at the University of Maine October 14th, 2020.
A panel discussion on anti-Semitism and American politics sponsored by UMaine Judaic Studies
Local news report and article by Joe Cortese, Fox 22 (WFVX), and ABC 7 (WVII), Bangor, Maine.
Pandemic, Ecology and Theology (Routledge), 2020
DESCRIPTION As the sequential stages of the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic have unfolded, so have its com... more DESCRIPTION As the sequential stages of the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic have unfolded, so have its complexities. What initially presented as a health emergency, has revealed itself to be a phenomenon of many facets. It has demonstrated human creativity, the oft neglected presence of nature, and the resilience of communities. Equally, it has exposed deep social inequities, conceptual inadequacies, and structural deficiencies about the way we organize our civilization and our knowledge. As the situation continues to advance, the question is whether the crisis will be grasped as an opportunity to address the deep structural, ecological and social challenges that we brought with us into the second decade of the new millennium. This volume addresses the collective sense that the pandemic is more than a problem to manage our way out of. Rather, it is a moment to consider our broken relationship with the natural world, and our alienation from a deeper sense of purpose and meaning. The contributors, though differing in their diagnoses and recommendations, share the belief that this moment, with its transformative possibility, not be forfeit. Equally, they share the conviction that the chief ground of any such reorientation ineluctably involves our collective engagement with both ecology and theology. INFORMATION
Religious Studies Review, 2015
Journal of the History of Philosophy, 2014
Paul’s commentary is also worth reading for its digressions, which help us to understand how cert... more Paul’s commentary is also worth reading for its digressions, which help us to understand how certain standard medieval debates were carried out in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. Throughout these volumes the reader will encounter a number of perennial metaphysical topics, including for instance problems pertaining to universals and individuation, as well as the answers that different authors gave to them. Perhaps foremost among these are questions about accidents, since Zeta not only provides an occasion for medieval authors to examine a question with theological implications—namely, whether inherence is a necessary feature of accidents—it also allows them to deeply engage with this fundamental ontological question: Are the properties of things themselves things (res), or are they merely modes of things? A n d r e w A r l i g Brooklyn College, CUNY
Routledge eBooks, Jul 25, 2023
John Smith (1618-1652) has never escaped the attention of scholars in fields as diverse as the hi... more John Smith (1618-1652) has never escaped the attention of scholars in fields as diverse as the history of philosophy, religious studies, theology, literature, history of science and mathematics. Smith's name appears, as often as not in a footnote crediting him with inspiring some other better-known figure, in a broad scholarly literature and it has for several centuries. Early Continental accounts of the Platonists of Cambridge often do not include Smith. This is most likely because, unlike others in this group, only his discourse on prophecy was translated into Latin and it is among his less philosophical work. Nevertheless, Smith was one of the first members of the group we know as the Cambridge Platonists. He was therefore able to influence not only his contemporaries like Cudworth and More but all those who followed him well into the twentieth century and beyond. This chapter offers a broad, but highly selective, overview of the reception and influence of Smith's life and work. It is intended, however, as a call for future research more than as an authoritative presentation of Smith's legacy. For, if the Cambridge Platonists have been underappreciated, none have been unjustly ignored as consistently as Smith.
A *very* rough draft of a paper on Anselm's "ontological argument" in which I argue... more A *very* rough draft of a paper on Anselm's "ontological argument" in which I argue that the argument in the Proslogion rests on a robust notion of having "that then which nothing greater can be thought" in one's mind
Excellence in the philosophy of religion, whether in scholarship, public presentation, or classro... more Excellence in the philosophy of religion, whether in scholarship, public presentation, or classroom instruction, is sensitive to the history and significance of religious ideas and practices for living human beings. The philosophy of religion is best when it seeks at once to contribute to philosophy as a sub-division thereof and generally to religious studies as one approach among many thereto. Philosophers of religion should remain therefore humble students of both religion and philosophy
John Smith (1618-1652) has never escaped the attention of scholars in fields as diverse as the hi... more John Smith (1618-1652) has never escaped the attention of scholars in fields as diverse as the history of philosophy, religious studies, theology, literature, history of science and mathematics. Smith's name appears, as often as not in a footnote crediting him with inspiring some other better-known figure, in a broad scholarly literature and it has for several centuries. Early Continental accounts of the Platonists of Cambridge often do not include Smith. This is most likely because, unlike others in this group, only his discourse on prophecy was translated into Latin and it is among his less philosophical work. Nevertheless, Smith was one of the first members of the group we know as the Cambridge Platonists. He was therefore able to influence not only his contemporaries like Cudworth and More but all those who followed him well into the twentieth century and beyond. This chapter offers a broad, but highly selective, overview of the reception and influence of Smith's life and work. It is intended, however, as a call for future research more than as an authoritative presentation of Smith's legacy. For, if the Cambridge Platonists have been underappreciated, none have been unjustly ignored as consistently as Smith.
Plotinus' Legacy, 2019
Unlike More and Cudworth Smith does not reference the work of Hobbes, instead framing his discuss... more Unlike More and Cudworth Smith does not reference the work of Hobbes, instead framing his discussion in terms of a return to the ancient school of Epicureanism. 4 Sheppard, Anti-Atheism, 92. "Epicureanism" was the early modern equivalent of our category of materialist naturalism.
Nicholas of Cusa and the Making of the Early Modern World, 2019
This paper offers a window into the theologies of Cusanus and the Cambridge Platonist John Smith ... more This paper offers a window into the theologies of Cusanus and the Cambridge Platonist John Smith (1618-52) by illuminating their contrasting appropriations of Origen's concept of the spiritual senses. Both early modern Neo-Platonists of sorts, they evince many common concerns even while a definitive link between them remains elusive. This traditional notion in mystical theology is essential to a proper account of Christian experience not adequately addressed by the scholasticism of their times. While both use the language of spiritual sensation throughout their extant works, their understandings thereof are markedly different. Each appropriated and reformulated the spiritual senses to meet their intellectual and religious contexts. Cusa attempted what has been called a synthesis of Aristotelian and Origenist aesthetics while Smith's Reformed Neo-Platonism led him to reject peripatetic philosophy outright. For Cusanus, spiritual sensation is a fundamentally apophatic process whereby we come to "see that we do not see" which points back to the sacramental practices and eschatological hope of the Catholic Church. For Smith, spiritual sensation is a direct and personal kataphatic process whereby we leave unfitting modes of perception behind in exchange for the divine intellect within us. For the Cardinal, ordinary sense perception, including contemplating images, is central. But this sacramental showing includes hiddenness within itself. For this reason spiritual sensation supplies a mediated "foretaste" of things only fully revealed in the eschatological future. Smith, on the other hand, allows little to no positive role for ordinary sense perception. Instead, he emphasizes that spiritual sensation is an intellectual matter more or less achievable in this life. Both sought to reform the Origenist tradition for their own situations sure that contemplation of the divine is more tasted than calculated.
Revisioning Cambridge Platonism: Sources and Legacy, 2019
John Smith (1618-1652) has never escaped the attention of scholars in fields as diverse as the hi... more John Smith (1618-1652) has never escaped the attention of scholars in fields as diverse as the history of philosophy, religious studies, theology, literature, history of science and mathematics. Smith's name appears, as often as not in a footnote crediting him with inspiring some other better-known figure, in a broad scholarly literature and it has for several centuries. Early Continental accounts of the Platonists of Cambridge often do not include Smith. This is most likely because, unlike others in this group, only his discourse on prophecy was translated into Latin and it is among his less philosophical work. Nevertheless, Smith was one of the first members of the group we know as the Cambridge Platonists. He was therefore able to influence not only his contemporaries like Cudworth and More but all those who followed him well into the twentieth century and beyond. This chapter offers a broad, but highly selective, overview of the reception and influence of Smith's life and work. It is intended, however, as a call for future research more than as an authoritative presentation of Smith's legacy. For, if the Cambridge Platonists have been underappreciated, none have been unjustly ignored as consistently as Smith.
Reviews in Religion & Theology, 2017
John Smith (1618-1652), the 17th century Cambridge Platonist, employed the traditional language o... more John Smith (1618-1652), the 17th century Cambridge Platonist, employed the traditional language of the spiritual senses of the soul to develop an early modern theological aesthetic central to his religious epistemology and thus to his philosophy of religion and systematic theology. Smith’s place in this tradition has been under-appreciated by scholars working on the Cambridge Platonists and the spiritual senses. However, as a Christian Platonist, Smith advocated intellectual intuition of Divine Goodness as the key to theological knowledge and spiritual practice. Furthermore, Smith’s theory of prophecy rests on the reception of sensible images in the imagination. In order to demonstrate this the dissertation first presents an interpretive summary of the spiritual senses tradition and proposes a functional typology that registers three uses of noncorporeal perception throughout the history of Christian theology: (1) accounts