Re Enchanting Humanity

Reenchanting Humanity is a work of systematic theology that focuses on the doctrine of humanity. Engaging the major anthropological questions of the age, like transgender, homosexuality, technology, and more, author Owen Strachan establishes a Christian anthropology rooted in Biblical truth, in stark contrast to the popular opinions of the modern age.

This work represents Murray Bookchin's riposte to the antihumanism, mysticism and antirationalism which are influencing many people's attitudes to environmental problems. Bookchin offers a critique of, among others, social Darwinists, deep ecologists, new agers, technophobes, Foucault, Derrida and Baudrillard.

Temples of Modernity uses ethnographic data to investigate the presence of religious ideas and practices in Indian science and engineering. Geraci shows 1) how the integration of religion, science and technology undergirds pre- and post-independence Indian nationalism, 2) that traditional icons and rituals remain relevant in elite scientific communities, and 3) that transhumanist ideas now percolate within Indian visions of science and technology. This work identifies the intersection of religion, science, and technology as a worldwide phenomenon and suggests that the study of such interactions should be enriched through attention to the real experiences of people across the globe.

The ePaper presents A Rise in Humanity, the opening lecture of the academic year 2021–2022 delivered by Felwine Sarr at the Graduate Institute of International and Development Studies in Geneva. In his lecture, Mr Sarr explains how societies need to take ownership of their present and future, and proposes paths to reengage at a collective level in order to fill them with meaning. The lecture is preceded by a think piece in which Marie-Laure Salles, Director of the Graduate Institute, urges us to collectively work towards the re-enchanting of our humanity – the categorical imperative of our times. It is followed by an interview in which Felwine Sarr shares his thoughts with two young researchers on how to rethink the economy.

Kosky focuses on a handful of artists - Walter De Maria, Diller + Scofidio, James Turrell, and Andy Goldsworthy - to show how they introduce spaces hospitable to mystery and wonder, redemption and revelation, and transcendence and creation.

"Artificial Intelligence (AI), the new frontier of human evolution, holds the promise of reuniting religion and science"--

What is nature? What is humanity's place in nature? And what is the relationship of society to the natural world? In an era of ecological breakdown, answering these questions has become of momentous importance for our everyday lives and for the future that we and other life-forms face. In the essays of The Philosophy of Social Ecology, Murray Bookchin confronts these questions head on: invoking the ideas of mutualism, self-organization, and unity in diversity, in the service of ever expanding freedom. Refreshingly polemical and deeply philosophical, they take issue with technocratic and mechanistic ways of understanding and relating to, and within, nature. More importantly, they develop a solid, historically and politically based ethical foundation for social ecology, the field that Bookchin himself created and that offers us hope in the midst of our climate catastrophe.

This collection provides an overview of the thought of the foremost social theorist and political philosopher of the libertarian left today. Best known for introducing ecology as a concept relevant to radical political thought in the early 1960s, Murray Bookchin was the first to propose, in the innovative and coherent body of ideas that he has called "social ecology", that a liberatory society would also have to be an ecological one. His writings span five decades and encompass subject matter of remarkable breadth. Bookchin's writings on revolutionary philosophy, politics and history are far less known than the specific controversies that have surrounded him, but deserve far greater attention. Despite Bookchin's critical engagement with both Marxism and anarchism, his political philosophy, known as libertarian municipalism, draws on the best of both for the emancipatory tools to build a democratic, libertarian alternative. His nature philosophy is an organic outlook of generation, development, and evolution that grounds human beings in natural evolution yet, contrary to today's fashionable anti-humanism, places them firmly at its summit. Bookchin's anthropological writings trace the rise of hierarchy and domination out of egalitarian societies, while his historical writings cover important chapters in the European revolutionary tradition. Consistent throughout Bookchin's work is a search for ways to replace today's capitalist society--which disenchants most of humanity for the benefit of the few and is poisoning the natural world--with a more rational and humane alternative. The selections in this reader constitute a sampling from the writings of one of the most pivotal thinkers of our era.