Finalist for the 2013 John N. Findlay Award in Metaphysics presented by the Metaphysical Society of America Robert Cummings Neville offers a new theology of the ultimate and a new theory of religion to back it up. The first volume in a trilogy, this book and companion volumes treating existence and religion advance a systematic philosophical theology to address first-order questions found in the array of Axial Age religions. Questions generally arising in the major religious traditions are interrogated with a dialectic of philosophical approaches. This volume begins the project with a consideration of ultimacy defined philosophically and illustrated in a wide range of traditions. To the question of how or why there is something rather than nothing, Neville answers with an elaborate hypothesis about the ontological act of creation that creates all determinate things as related to but different from one another. The result is the claim that there are five ultimates: the ontological act, the form of determinate things, the components of determinate things, the existential location of determinate things relative to one another, and the value-identity of ultimate things, giving rise to five universal religious problematics of ultimacy respectively: the question of existence, the ground of obligation, the quest for wholeness, engaging others, and finding meaning. Neville analyzes what can and cannot be known about each of these ultimates. Readers will find Neville s theory of religion and philosophy a bold one, running counter to dominant trends while richly informed by a long and fruitful engagement with theology, philosophy, and religion, East and West."

Product Description: Complete 3 volume set available for special price: Philosophical Theology Set (Volumes 1, 2 and 3) The second volume in a trilogy advancing a systematic philosophical theology, this book explores the realities of human existence articulated by religion...read more

Product Description: A philosophical consideration of key religious issues from a pragmatist's perspective.

Ritual and Deference develops Robert Cummings Neville's thesis that contemporary philosophy has much to gain by shaping itself through important themes of the Chinese philosophical traditions, especially the themes of ritual and deference. Neville here offers a broad and detailed interpretation of the relevance of Confucianism and Daoism to contemporary issues. The discussion includes analyses of classical Confucian and Daoist texts, especially those of Xunzi and Laozi, and of the current scene of English-speaking philosophy advancing Chinese themes. The book also reflects on the nature of comparative philosophy as such, and the role that comparative philosophy has in the ongoing contemporary engagement with globalization, the clash of cultures, and scientific transformations of the worldviews of diverse civilizations. Neville stresses the importance of deferring to the integrity of cultures while still submitting them to normative analysis and criticism.

Product Description: Demonstrates the power of the gospel to engage the world's problems through hard-edged thinking and authentic proclamation. Easy answers and simple solutions abound in this world, yet Robert Neville reminds us that the world is itself neither easy nor simple...read more

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A well-known theologian and philosopher offers a late-modern perspective on religion, one opposed to the received truths of postmodern religious thought. (view table of contents)

Product Description: Focusing on what makes Jesus important in Christianity, Robert Cummings Neville, a leading philosophical theologian, presents and illustrates a theory of religious symbols wherein God is directly engaged in symbolically shaped thinking and practice...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

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Product Description: The idea of ultimacy as a comparative category that cuts across major religious traditions and cultures is discussed in Ultimate Realities, a multi-authored collaborative work. In this light, Chinese religion, Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam are examined by distinguished specialist historians...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

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Product Description: Explores the human condition in a range of world religions and discusses the issue and philosophical implications of comparison itself. This multi-authored collaborative work on the idea of the human condition as a comparative category cuts across major religious traditions and cultures...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: This multifaceted study compares how six traditions interpret religious truth, and how it has come to be illustrated so diversely in the Chinese religion, Buddhism, Hinduism, Judaism, Christianity, and Islam. Philosophical essays integrate the comparisons, ask what religious truth might be in terms of a contemporary defensible theory, and reflect on what all this shows for the nature of religion and its study...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: Argues that Confucianism can be important to the contemporary, global conversation of philosophy and should not be confined to an East Asian context. Is it possible to be a Confucian without being East Asian, as so many philosophers have been Platonists without being Greek? Strangely enough, many scholars would answer in the negative, citing the inextricable connection between Confucianism and East Asian culture...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: Grouped according to theological topics (the five parts focusing on the call to Christian life, the encounter with God, Christology, discipleship, and education for discipleship), the sermons are all about God's beckoning us through fire, water, and the abyss into the divine light where we do not so much see God as dissolve into blissful love...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: This collection of essays by leading American philosophers honors John E. Smith, a major figure in the struggle for the American profession of philosophy to redefine itself and return to its grander traditions. (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)

Product Description: In her previous book, T'ai-Chi Ch'uan: Body and Mind in Harmony: The Integration of Meaning and Method, Sophia Delza describes the Wu Style with careful directions and illustrations for learning the practice of the exercise-art of T'ai-Chi Ch'uan...read more (view table of contents, read Amazon.com's description)