Essays on a Polytheistic Philosophy of Religion
May 4, 2012
This book contains the two articles I previously published in The Pomegranate, “The Theological Interpretation of Myth” and “Polycentric Polytheism and the Philosophy of Religion”, plus two never-before-published essays, “Neoplatonism and Polytheism” and “A Theological Exegesis of the Iliad, Book One”.
http://www.amazon.com/Essays-Polytheistic-Philosophy-Religion/dp/1105709175/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8
Preview on Google Books
Fantastic news and congratulations! I just started blogging a couple days ago, but I have long been a fan of your writing (I once used a printer at work to print out and read your entire dissertation – which was brilliant and incredibly enlightening, by the way). It will be wonderful to have some of your writings in a book form. Your polycentric interpretation/explanation of Proclus has been extremely formative in my own understanding of theology and the Neoplatonists in general. And I look forward to reading your exegesis on Book One of the Iliad as well!
Thank you so much, Ryan, for your kind words. The sense of community I have experienced since my work began to trickle out to the world has been humbling and inspiring beyond my meager ability to express in words. I’ve been enjoying your new blog thoroughly, and I’m proud to think of work helping to some extent in shaping your (very savvy) perspective.
Could you tell me if this publication is ever likely to be available in ebook format?
I interpret my contributor’s agreement with The Pomegranate as preventing me from offering the two articles I published there in ebook format, because Equinox makes them available on their own site (there are links on my Theology page). This was the major reason for publishing the book.
Wonderful! So glad to hear it! I hope to get this in the near future…and will also recommend it in the Academia Antinoi courses, and perhaps even make it a required textbook for some of them!
(Any chance you might do something similar with your Theological Encyclopedia? Hint, hint, hint…!)
I second that nomination for a print edition of your Theological Encyclopedia!
I will probably do that someday, but that would be a lot more work than this volume, which had a certain urgency to it as well because I wanted to provide a means of access to those articles at lower cost than Equinox’s site, and my agreement with them only allows a printed book.
[...] Edward Butler has just released Essays on a Polytheistic Philosophy of Religion, which includes his essay on “Polycentric Polytheism,” which is one of the most important essays I think that has been written in the last thirty years as far as practical polytheistic (and syncretistic) theology is concerned. (My “Super-Syncretism!” presentation would have been impossible without it!) You can get the book here. [...]
[...] which Edward adds: This book contains the two articles I previously published in The Pomegranate, “The Theological [...]
[...] Essays on a Polytheistic Philosophy of Religion by Edward P. Butler, available here. [...]
Ordered; looking forward to it.
But I’ll be interrupting your reading fast, per your recent post…
You have received the Inspiring Blog Award
http://lykeiaofapollon.wordpress.com/2012/08/07/inspiring-blog-award/
Keep up the great work!
As you may know I am very interested in polytheism because of the post-Jungian James Hillman. Andalso because of ALL THINGS SHINING by Hubert Dreyfus and Sean Kelly, although I think that they are too timid. Feyerabend says some things that popint in this direction as well. and i argue on my blog that Deleuze is implicitly polytheistic too. I wonder what you think of these thinkers, or are they too far from your preoccupations. I just received your book but it may be quite a while before I can read it. I will be sure to review it, regards Terence Blake.
https://twitter.com/TPBlake/status/266230029346828288/photo/1
Thank you; I’ve enjoyed your blog posts and am very pleased you’ve decided to check out my work.
With respect to Deleuze, you may be interested in my essay “Hercules of the Surface: Deleuzian Humanism and Deep Ecology“, which is available on the Philosophy page. In this essay I attempt to sketch the broad outlines of a henological reading of Deleuze. The basis of this engagement is broader than polytheism per se, insofar as it really concerns the meaning and value of “unity” at the base of classical metaphysics, and the consequent possibility of a profound revaluation of that tradition, such that classical metaphysics shows itself to be far more responsive to problems of interest to contemporary philosophy than one would suspect from its received interpretation.
The philosophical value of polytheism, in this respect, has to do with its power to illuminate logical issues that go well beyond a psychological perspective such as Hillman’s. So while I am familiar with psychoanalytic theory (I took a master’s degree in the subject), my interests in that field do not lie with Jungianism, despite its rhetorical appeal to polytheism. Rather, I am interested in strains of psychoanalytic thought that seem to be in a deeper structural sympathy with the novel ontological, epistemological and ethico-aesthetic possibilities opened up by henology.