Published Papers by Derek A Michaud
Pandemic, Ecology and Theology: Perspectives on COVID-19, 2020
The COVID-19 pandemic is a multidimensional crisis with biological, psychological, political, and... more The COVID-19 pandemic is a multidimensional crisis with biological, psychological, political, and spiritual dimensions. Efforts to address the crisis limited to a single dimension fail to promote holistic human health. For human flourishing, an adequate conception of humanity, the natural world, and the challenges we face as well as metaphysical grounds for hope to motivate long-term remediation efforts are needed. Paul Tillich's multidimensional unity of life accomplishes all this by framing the ecological interdependence of all within a transcendent horizon and viewing all beings as participates in the power of the Ground of Being to overcome estrangement motivates eschatological hope.
Abstract and introduction for "Christian Platonism in Early Modernity." Contact me for full-text.
Plotinus' Legacy: The Transformation of Platonism from the Renaissance to the Modern Era, 2019
Chapter in Plotinus’ Legacy: Studies in the Transformation of “Platonism”
from Early Modernism to... more Chapter in Plotinus’ Legacy: Studies in the Transformation of “Platonism”
from Early Modernism to the Romantics, Stephen Gersh, ed. Cambridge
University Press.
This chapter incorporates material presented as "John Smith's Plotinian Rational Theology" at the 15th Annual International Society for Neoplatonic Studies Conference, Olomouc, Czech Republic, 14-17 June 2017 and as "John Smith's 'Great Principles of Religion': The Natural Theology of a Cambridge Platonist" at the Maine Philosophical Institute, 71st Annual Meeting, University of Maine, 30 April 2016.
Nicholas of Cusa and the Making of the Early Modern World, 2019
Perceiving the Divine through the Human Body: Mystical Sensuality, Thomas Cattoi and June McDaniel, eds. Palgrave Macmillan, 2011
Cite and quote from the published version.
Chapter in Perceiving the Divine through the Human... more Cite and quote from the published version.
Chapter in Perceiving the Divine through the Human Body: Mystical
Sensuality, 141-158, Thomas Cattoi and June McDaniel, eds. Palgrave
Macmillan, 2011.
Books by Derek A Michaud
John Smith (1618-1652), long known for the elegance of his prose and the breadth of his erudition... more John Smith (1618-1652), long known for the elegance of his prose and the breadth of his erudition, has been underappreciated as a philosophical theologian. This book redresses this by showing how the spiritual senses became an essential tool for responding to early modern developments in philosophy, science, and religion for Smith. Through a close reading of the Select Discourses (1660) it is shown how Smith’s theories of theological knowledge, method, and prophecy as well as his prescriptive account of Christian piety rely on his spiritual aesthetics. Smith offers a coherent system with intellectual intuition informing natural theology and revelation supplemented by spiritual perception via the imagination too. The central uniting feature of Smith’s philosophical theology is thus ‘spiritual sensation’ broadly construed. The book closes with proposals for research on Smith’s influence on the accounts of the spiritual senses developed by significant later figures including Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758) and John Wesley (1703-1791).
Revision of 2015 PhD thesis (http://hdl.handle.net/2144/15615) at Boston University.
Pandemic, Ecology and Theology: Perspectives on COVID-19, 2020
As the sequential stages of the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic have unfolded, so have its complexities. W... more As the sequential stages of the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic have unfolded, so have its complexities. What initially presented as a health emergency, has revealed itself to be a phenomenon of many facets. It has demonstrated human creativity, the oft neglected presence of nature, and the resilience of communities. Equally, it has exposed deep social inequities, conceptual inadequacies, and structural deficiencies about the way we organize our civilization and our knowledge. As the situation continues to advance, the question is whether the crisis will be grasped as an opportunity to address the deep structural, ecological and social challenges that we brought with us into the second decade of the new millennium. This volume addresses the collective sense that the pandemic is more than a problem to manage our way out of. Rather, it is a moment to consider our broken relationship with the natural world, and our alienation from a deeper sense of purpose and meaning. The contributors, though differing in their diagnoses and recommendations, share the belief that this moment, with its transformative possibility, not be forfeit. Equally, they share the conviction that the chief ground of any such reorientation ineluctably involves our collective engagement with both ecology and theology. INFORMATION
Edited Work by Derek A Michaud
Message from the Guest Editor Dear Colleagues, This Special Issue aims to take stock of philosoph... more Message from the Guest Editor Dear Colleagues, This Special Issue aims to take stock of philosophical theology at this historical moment through both original constructive papers and review articles reflecting on the field. In either case, papers should situate their work within the field of philosophical theology as the author understands it. Broad questions include:
Religions, 2023
Dear Colleagues,
Philosophical theology received authoritative summaries in English over ten y... more Dear Colleagues,
Philosophical theology received authoritative summaries in English over ten years ago (Flint and Rea, 2011; Taliaferro and Meister, 2009). However, the previous decade has witnessed the rise of analytic theology (Crisp and Rea, 2009; Abraham, 2012), interreligious philosophy of religion (e.g., Global Philosophy of Religion Project), and increased sensitivity to the voices of persons with diverse identities and backgrounds. With roots in the anglophone philosophy of religion in the 1960s, analytic theology has become an area of joint inquiry with its own community, journals (e.g., Journal of Analytic Theology), and book series (e.g., Oxford Studies in Analytic Theology). Though it is clearly at least adjacent to philosophical theology, the precise nature of this proximity remains underdeveloped. While Crisp and Rea (2009) included chapters on Jewish, Islamic, and Confucian philosophical theologies, the field has lagged behind some recent work in the philosophy of religion in terms of becoming a truly global field. Finally, philosophical theology has been overwhelmingly associated with cisgender heterosexual Christian men.
In response to these developments and more, I am pleased to invite you and your colleagues and graduate students to contribute to “New Voices in Philosophical Theology,” a Special Issue of Religions.
This Special Issue aims to take stock of philosophical theology at this historical moment through both original constructive papers and review articles reflecting on the field. In either case, papers should situate their work within the field of philosophical theology as the author understands it. Broad questions include:
What methods, presuppositions, or practices differentiate philosophical theology from the philosophy of religion? What unites them?
What themes, issues, or texts drive current thinking?
Divine attributes and nature;
Revelation and religious epistemology;
Science and religion;
Interreligious dialogue or comparative theology;
How do issues of personal identity influence our work in philosophical theology?
Where is the proper home of philosophical theology?
Religious communities (i.e., churches, denominations, etc.)
Academia
Public life
What novel approaches, including reappropriations of old texts and traditions, are or should be developed?
How are developments in analytic, systematic/dogmatic, moral, biblical, and political theology influencing the field?
We are seeking papers from diverse perspectives to accurately reflect current work in the field and welcome novel approaches. Therefore, contributions from early career scholars, BIPOC and/or LGBTQ authors, and others historically underrepresented in the field are especially encouraged.
We look forward to receiving your contributions.
Dr. Derek A. Michaud
I edit the ever growing bibliography on Plotinus at PhilPapers.org.
I edit the ever growing bibliography on Cambridge Platonism at PhilPapers.org.
Unpublished Papers by Derek A Michaud
PhilosophyOfReligion.org, Apr 24, 2019
Excellence in the philosophy of religion, whether in scholarship, public presentation, or classro... more Excellence in the philosophy of religion, whether in scholarship, public presentation, or classroom instruction, is sensitive to the history and significance of religious ideas and practices for living human beings. The philosophy of religion is best when it seeks at once to contribute to philosophy as a sub-division thereof and generally to religious studies as one approach among many thereto. Philosophers of religion should remain therefore humble students of both religion and philosophy.
A *very* rough draft of a paper on Anselm's "ontological argument" in which I argue that the argu... more A *very* rough draft of a paper on Anselm's "ontological argument" in which I argue that the argument in the Proslogion rests on a robust notion of having "that then which nothing greater can be thought" in one's mind.
Engaging Particularities Conference, Chestnut Hill, MA: Boston College, 2008
Book Reviews by Derek A Michaud
Reading Religion, 2021
Review of Robert Wallace, Philosophical Mysticism in Plato, Hegel, and the Present (London: Bloom... more Review of Robert Wallace, Philosophical Mysticism in Plato, Hegel, and the Present (London: Bloomsbury Academic, December 2019) ISBN 9781350082861.
Reading Religion, 2019
Review of Lloyd Strickland’s Proofs of God in Early Modern Europe (Baylor, 2018).
“Returning to Reality: Christian Platonism for our Times, Paul Tyson, Cambridge: Lutterworth, 201... more “Returning to Reality: Christian Platonism for our Times, Paul Tyson, Cambridge: Lutterworth, 2015,” Reviews in Religion & Theology 24.3 (July 2017): 586-8.
Reading Religion, 2017
“Preparation for Natural Theology: With Kant's Notes and the Danzig Rational Theology Transcript,... more “Preparation for Natural Theology: With Kant's Notes and the Danzig Rational Theology Transcript, Johann August Eberhard Eberhard, trans., Courtney D. Fugate and John Hymers, Kant's Sources in Translation, Bloomsbury Academic, 2016,” Reading Religion, February 24, 2017, http://readingreligion.org/books/preparation-natural-theology.
Review of Philosophical Religions from Plato to Spinoza [Carlos Fraenkel, Cambridge University Pr... more Review of Philosophical Religions from Plato to Spinoza [Carlos Fraenkel, Cambridge University Press, 2012 (ISBN 978-0-521-19457-0), xxvii + 328 pp., hb £59.99], Reviews in Religion & Theology 22.3 (July 2015): 233-5.
Uploads
Published Papers by Derek A Michaud
from Early Modernism to the Romantics, Stephen Gersh, ed. Cambridge
University Press.
This chapter incorporates material presented as "John Smith's Plotinian Rational Theology" at the 15th Annual International Society for Neoplatonic Studies Conference, Olomouc, Czech Republic, 14-17 June 2017 and as "John Smith's 'Great Principles of Religion': The Natural Theology of a Cambridge Platonist" at the Maine Philosophical Institute, 71st Annual Meeting, University of Maine, 30 April 2016.
Pre-publication text available at https://derekmichaud.com/2018/07/18/the-legacy-of-a-living-library-the-transatlantic-reception-of-john-smith/
Text available here: https://derekmichaud.com/2018/12/26/varieties-of-spiritual-sense-cusanus-and-john-smith/.
Chapter in Perceiving the Divine through the Human Body: Mystical
Sensuality, 141-158, Thomas Cattoi and June McDaniel, eds. Palgrave
Macmillan, 2011.
Books by Derek A Michaud
Revision of 2015 PhD thesis (http://hdl.handle.net/2144/15615) at Boston University.
Edited Work by Derek A Michaud
Philosophical theology received authoritative summaries in English over ten years ago (Flint and Rea, 2011; Taliaferro and Meister, 2009). However, the previous decade has witnessed the rise of analytic theology (Crisp and Rea, 2009; Abraham, 2012), interreligious philosophy of religion (e.g., Global Philosophy of Religion Project), and increased sensitivity to the voices of persons with diverse identities and backgrounds. With roots in the anglophone philosophy of religion in the 1960s, analytic theology has become an area of joint inquiry with its own community, journals (e.g., Journal of Analytic Theology), and book series (e.g., Oxford Studies in Analytic Theology). Though it is clearly at least adjacent to philosophical theology, the precise nature of this proximity remains underdeveloped. While Crisp and Rea (2009) included chapters on Jewish, Islamic, and Confucian philosophical theologies, the field has lagged behind some recent work in the philosophy of religion in terms of becoming a truly global field. Finally, philosophical theology has been overwhelmingly associated with cisgender heterosexual Christian men.
In response to these developments and more, I am pleased to invite you and your colleagues and graduate students to contribute to “New Voices in Philosophical Theology,” a Special Issue of Religions.
This Special Issue aims to take stock of philosophical theology at this historical moment through both original constructive papers and review articles reflecting on the field. In either case, papers should situate their work within the field of philosophical theology as the author understands it. Broad questions include:
What methods, presuppositions, or practices differentiate philosophical theology from the philosophy of religion? What unites them?
What themes, issues, or texts drive current thinking?
Divine attributes and nature;
Revelation and religious epistemology;
Science and religion;
Interreligious dialogue or comparative theology;
How do issues of personal identity influence our work in philosophical theology?
Where is the proper home of philosophical theology?
Religious communities (i.e., churches, denominations, etc.)
Academia
Public life
What novel approaches, including reappropriations of old texts and traditions, are or should be developed?
How are developments in analytic, systematic/dogmatic, moral, biblical, and political theology influencing the field?
We are seeking papers from diverse perspectives to accurately reflect current work in the field and welcome novel approaches. Therefore, contributions from early career scholars, BIPOC and/or LGBTQ authors, and others historically underrepresented in the field are especially encouraged.
We look forward to receiving your contributions.
Dr. Derek A. Michaud
Unpublished Papers by Derek A Michaud
Book Reviews by Derek A Michaud
from Early Modernism to the Romantics, Stephen Gersh, ed. Cambridge
University Press.
This chapter incorporates material presented as "John Smith's Plotinian Rational Theology" at the 15th Annual International Society for Neoplatonic Studies Conference, Olomouc, Czech Republic, 14-17 June 2017 and as "John Smith's 'Great Principles of Religion': The Natural Theology of a Cambridge Platonist" at the Maine Philosophical Institute, 71st Annual Meeting, University of Maine, 30 April 2016.
Pre-publication text available at https://derekmichaud.com/2018/07/18/the-legacy-of-a-living-library-the-transatlantic-reception-of-john-smith/
Text available here: https://derekmichaud.com/2018/12/26/varieties-of-spiritual-sense-cusanus-and-john-smith/.
Chapter in Perceiving the Divine through the Human Body: Mystical
Sensuality, 141-158, Thomas Cattoi and June McDaniel, eds. Palgrave
Macmillan, 2011.
Revision of 2015 PhD thesis (http://hdl.handle.net/2144/15615) at Boston University.
Philosophical theology received authoritative summaries in English over ten years ago (Flint and Rea, 2011; Taliaferro and Meister, 2009). However, the previous decade has witnessed the rise of analytic theology (Crisp and Rea, 2009; Abraham, 2012), interreligious philosophy of religion (e.g., Global Philosophy of Religion Project), and increased sensitivity to the voices of persons with diverse identities and backgrounds. With roots in the anglophone philosophy of religion in the 1960s, analytic theology has become an area of joint inquiry with its own community, journals (e.g., Journal of Analytic Theology), and book series (e.g., Oxford Studies in Analytic Theology). Though it is clearly at least adjacent to philosophical theology, the precise nature of this proximity remains underdeveloped. While Crisp and Rea (2009) included chapters on Jewish, Islamic, and Confucian philosophical theologies, the field has lagged behind some recent work in the philosophy of religion in terms of becoming a truly global field. Finally, philosophical theology has been overwhelmingly associated with cisgender heterosexual Christian men.
In response to these developments and more, I am pleased to invite you and your colleagues and graduate students to contribute to “New Voices in Philosophical Theology,” a Special Issue of Religions.
This Special Issue aims to take stock of philosophical theology at this historical moment through both original constructive papers and review articles reflecting on the field. In either case, papers should situate their work within the field of philosophical theology as the author understands it. Broad questions include:
What methods, presuppositions, or practices differentiate philosophical theology from the philosophy of religion? What unites them?
What themes, issues, or texts drive current thinking?
Divine attributes and nature;
Revelation and religious epistemology;
Science and religion;
Interreligious dialogue or comparative theology;
How do issues of personal identity influence our work in philosophical theology?
Where is the proper home of philosophical theology?
Religious communities (i.e., churches, denominations, etc.)
Academia
Public life
What novel approaches, including reappropriations of old texts and traditions, are or should be developed?
How are developments in analytic, systematic/dogmatic, moral, biblical, and political theology influencing the field?
We are seeking papers from diverse perspectives to accurately reflect current work in the field and welcome novel approaches. Therefore, contributions from early career scholars, BIPOC and/or LGBTQ authors, and others historically underrepresented in the field are especially encouraged.
We look forward to receiving your contributions.
Dr. Derek A. Michaud