The Book Corner |
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Welcome to The Book Corner. In each March and October issue, we will feature books that have recently been published by Oxford University Press in the various AAR/OUP book series. The books featured in this issue were published between July and December 2009. For more books published in the various series, visit www.aarweb.org/Publications/Books. Andrew C. Dole. Schleiermacher on Religion and the Natural Order. Oxford University Press, 2010.
Properly understood, says Dole, Schleiermacher’s account of religion is an early and important example of a combination of theology and the “scientific” study of religion. Dole focuses particularly on Schleiermacher’s lectures in ethics at Halle and Berlin, wherein he developed an understanding of religion as a process of the social formation of feeling, and also investigates the relationship between this account of religion and Schleiermacher’s theological account of Christianity in The Christian Faith. By calling attention to this under-discussed aspect of Schleiermacher’s work, Dole hopes to correct the historical record and stimulate interest in Schleiermacher outside the field of theological studies. ISBN: 978-0-19-5341171 Cathy Gutierrez. Plato’s Ghost: Spiritualism in the American Renaissance. Oxford University Press, 2009.
Plato’s Ghost examines the Spiritualist movement as the legacy of European esoteric speculation, particularly Platonic ideals, transformed on a new continent. The movement, Cathy Gutierrez says, was a “renaissance of the Renaissance,” a culture in love with history as much as it trumpeted progress and the future, and an expression of what constituted religious hope amidst burgeoning technology and colonialism. Spiritualism represented the ultimate marriage of universal salvation and the pursuit of esoteric knowledge, as a new generation of Americans embraced a completely inclusive heaven. Gutierrez analyzes Spiritual conceptions of memory, marriage, medicine, and finally nascent psychology. In each she finds echoes of Plato, pulling time backward even as it marched toward a brighter future. ISBN: 978-0-19-538835-0 |