Co-sponsored by Platonism and Neoplatonism (AAR) and Mysticism, Esotericism and Gnosticism in Antiquity (SBL)
Panpsychism describes the idea of a world soul or anima mundi, that permeates all being. It plays an important role in the antique religions of the ancient near east, and a perennial role in the human imagination. As a way of thinking about the relationship between the divine and creation, panpsychism, has offered an alternative to mechanistic worldviews, and the reduction of the rule of God to the role of artificer. As such, it has both invigorated and challenged the monotheist traditions. It holds out possibilities for broad interreligious and intercultural dialogue amongst world religions and indigenous traditions. Finally, it is increasingly the subject of renewed attention in the context of the environmental crisis.
Recent philosophy has seen a remarkable renaissance of panpsychism. Since the concept of the soul is one of the most problematic concepts in modern philosophy, and has been all but eclipsed in recent philosophical discussion, it is rather surprising that this should be generating so much contemporary interest. Of course, panpsychism is de facto a doctrine of the ubiquity of mind or consciousness rather than constituting a theory of soul. Etymologically, panpsychism is the doctrine of the ‘all-soul’, and the ‘world-soul’ or anima mundi is a distinctively Platonic notion. Traditional theistic models have not been sympathetic to the world soul, nor indeed panpsychism, while various forms of panentheism are more sympathetic to a version of panpsychism. This paper explores the prospects for a version of panpsychism within the framework of a Neo-Platonic panentheism.
Neoplatonism is often accused of valorizing transcendence to the detriment of immanence. And given the current ecological emergency, Neoplatonism might appear as an archaism best left behind. But this reading is reductive; it obscures the diversity of the Neoplatonic heritage and its potential to address the existential dimensions of the crisis. My paper explores the thought of Jacob Böhme (1575-1624) and considers its entanglements with ecocritical poetics. Böhme synthesizes the Platonic-Christian heritage of “apophatic mysticism” with an embodied speculative naturalism that brings this tradition “back to earth.” I subsequently explore the echoes of this tradition in the queer feminist theory of Gloria Anzaldú (1942-2004) as well as the poetry of Theodore Roethke (1908-1963) and Charles Wright (b. 1935), to articulate a panpsychic poetics of presence. In closing, I suggest that a new form of "Dark Neoplatonism" can contribute to reimagining immanence and offer resources for an ethics of affect.
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