Nature's Sublime An Essay in Aesthetic Naturalism [Hardcover]

In order to deliver its central thesis, this book traverses a wide scope of intellectual historyfrom continental philosophy to classical American to the psychoanalytic theories of Freud, Reich, Kohut, Jung, Rank, and Kristeva. Corrington contrasts communities that actively suppress and reject novel forms of semiosis and artistic creation with those communities of interpretation that welcome creative and enriched signs and symbols. ... the book makes particularly cogent contributions on the topic of religion and violence.The regions of self, community, religion, and nature...are present. But each of these themes are radically recast within an aesthetic approach in mind. The aesthetics that Corrington is interpreting here is one which takes the sublime as its key motif. The sublime, we are told, reveals what is most essential about natura naturans ('nature naturing') and its relationship to 'the human process,' a Buchlerian term designating a 'self' as creative agent in process. The split between nature naturing and nature natured is then taken up with the sublime in mind, and how the human being (or 'human process') relates psychoanalytically and semiotically to the sublime. This is the culminating theme of the book. Overall, those interested in American philosophy and theology, continental philosophy of religion, German idealism and romanticist aesthetics will appreciate this book because it takes on a very unique approach to thinking about religion through art.[I]n Natures Sublime, Corrington has crafted ordinal metaphysics, phenomenology, and psychoanalysis with aesthetics into a four-legged stool  remove one leg, and it may wobble but may still support an inquiry into the possibilities of grace in our time&. Moral in its imperative, aesthetic in its ultimacy, Natures Sublime offers prescriptions for an Art of Life that may redeem our often mundane times.Robert Corrington continues to refine, develop, and clarify his vision of religiousor what he now prefers lã8