CFP for Ecstatic Naturalism

Call for Papers

2012 Conference on Ecstatic Naturalism

April 13th & 14th, Drew University - Madison, New Jersey

Plenary Speaker:

Robert Neville

Departments of Religion, Philosophy and Theology – Boston University

Dean, Boston School of Theology


President, Highlands Institute for American Religious and Philosophical Thought 

"Ecstatic Naturalism" is a relatively new but influential school of philosophical theology which proposes to conjoin continental phenomenology and American pragmatism from within the tradition of philosophical naturalism. Broadly put, ecstatic naturalism recognizes a deep and self-transforming dimension of nature: the difference between natura naturans (nature naturing) and natura naturata (nature natured).  It is natura naturans which affords the possibility of religious transcendence via the ejection and subsequent semiosis of its potentials that take the shape of nature’s sacred folds. The religiosity of such transcendence is fully natural, as according to ecstatic naturalism, there is nothing other than nature.  Ecstatic Naturalism's founder, Robert S. Corrington (Drew University) is heavily influenced by both the American and continental philosophical traditions generally, but in particular by philosophers such as C. S. Peirce, John Dewey, and George Santayana, as well as by F. W. J. Schelling, Martin Heidegger, and Karl Jaspers, to name but a few.

Paper topics may include the following, but should include reference to ecstatic naturalism: philosophical naturalism, speculative and systematic philosophy, process philosophy, phenomenology, existentialism, hermeneutics, German idealism, mysticism, Asian religious traditions (Hinduism, Shamanism, Buddhism, Daoism, etc.) or philosophers such as Peirce, James, and Dewey; Buchler, Emerson, Schelling, Hegel, Leibniz, Spinoza, Heidegger, Tillich, Jaspers, Whitehead, Hartshorne, Bergson, Deleuze, Badiou, Žižek, Marion, etc.

This year the conference especially welcomes interdisciplinary papers, and papers which discuss contemporary American philosophy and ecstatic naturalism vis-a-vis recent developments in the continental tradition (speculative realism, object oriented philosophy, Caputo, Kearney, Desmond, Meillassoux, Harman, Latour, Laruelle, etc.) 

Submissions require a proposal only, 250 words.  Conference registration fee includes the conference, dinner, and an after-dinner presentation on the campus of Drew University which houses the Graduate Division of Religion and Drew Theological School. 

Please email proposals by December 31st, 2011 to: Leon.Niemoczynski@loras.edu.  We intend to notify authors of our decisions by January 31st, 2012.

The conference is being organized by Wade Mitchell and Renee Blanchard (both Drew University), with support by Leon Niemoczynski (Loras College).