front cover of Between Heidegger and Novalis
Between Heidegger and Novalis
Peter Hanly
Northwestern University Press, 2021
This book brings a central figure of the early German Romantic movement—the poet and philosopher Novalis—into dialogue with the work of Martin Heidegger. Looking beyond the question of direct influence, the book demonstrates that Novalis and Heidegger pursued complementary endeavors as thinkers of relation. Implicitly operative in their thinking, Peter Hanly argues, is an excavation of the Greek conception of harmonia found in the fragments of the pre-Socratic thinker Heraclitus. This is a conception that understands harmony not as concordance but as primal dissonance. It is this experience of harmonia, Hanly proposes, that allows both Novalis and Heidegger to think relation in terms of dynamic and contradictory energies of separation and convergence. Between Heidegger and Novalis thus is a study of the “in-between,” associated in Novalis with energies of fertility and productivity and in Heidegger with energies of agonistic difference.
 
An entirely new approach to both Novalis and Heidegger, this book will interest scholars and students engaged with continental philosophy and the legacy of German Romanticism.  
 
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front cover of Process-Relational Philosophy
Process-Relational Philosophy
An Introduction to Alfred North Whitehead
C. Robert Mesle
Templeton Press, 2008

Process thought is the foundation for studies in many areas of contemporary philosophy, theology, political theory, educational theory, and the religion-science dialogue. It is derived from Alfred North Whitehead's philosophy, known as process theology, which lays a groundwork for integrating evolutionary biology, physics, philosophy of mind, theology, environmental ethics, religious pluralism, education, economics, and more.

In Process-Relational Philosophy, C. Robert Mesle breaks down Whitehead's complex writings, providing a simple but accurate introduction to the vision that underlies much of contemporary process philosophy and theology. In doing so, he points to a "way beyond both reductive materialism and the traps of Cartesian dualism by showing reality as a relational process in which minds arise from bodies, in which freedom and creativity are foundational to process, in which the relational power of persuasion is more basic than the unilateral power of coercion."

Because process-relational philosophy addresses the deep intuitions of a relational world basic to environmental and global thinking, it is being incorporated into undergraduate and graduate courses in philosophy, educational theory and practice, environmental ethics, and science and values, among others. Process-Relational Philosophy: A Basic Introduction makes Whitehead's creative vision accessible to all students and general readers.

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