The Intellectual Journey of Thomas Berry: Imagining the Earth Community.
Warner, Keith Douglass
The Intellectual Journey of Thomas Berry: Imagining the Earth
Community. Edited by Heather Eaton. Lanham, MD: Lexington, 2014. Pp.
xvii + 261. $95.
The book traces the religious, cultural, and intellectual
influences on the thought of Thomas Berry. It articulates the contextual
factors that shaped the trajectory of his work in religious studies,
environmental ethics, and religious cosmologies. Berry was an original
intellectual figure who contributed to multiple currents of thought in
historical and contemporary cultural studies of religion. His calls to
reconstruct functional cosmologies captured the imagination of many
people uneasy with religion's role in (post)modernity. Berry was a
profoundly influential thinker on the evolution of religions as cultural
forces, and any reader seeking to understand the sources of his rich
thought will find this volume of essays a delight.
Each contributor knew Berry personally, either as a graduate
student, colleague, or both. The chapters trace the influence of a
specific intellectual domain on Berry and his subsequent public
intellectual work. Topics range from Eastern and indigenous religious
traditions to philosophy of history, cosmology, and epistemology. The
result is a veritable archeology of Berry's thought, from Confucius
through Giambattista Vico to Pierre Teilhard de Chardin. This collection
is particularly useful in supplying what Berry, in his lyrical style,
often failed to include: sources and explanations of how he arrived at
his judgments. Berry's historical and cosmological vision is
all-the-more impressive in light of the diversity of his influences.
The book has one curious lacuna: Berry's identity as a Roman
Catholic priest in the Passionist Order. His priesthood is mentioned
only in passing. Perhaps the contributors did not consider it a
significant influence on Berry; regardless, it merits discussion in such
a volume.
As an introduction to Berry's thought I do not recommend this
book. Some of his foundational books--Dream of the Earth (2006) or The
Great Work (2000)--would serve that purpose better. Nor would it be
helpful as an overview of the impact of Berry's thought on others.
But it will be of interest to those wishing to trace influences on
Berry's thought.
Keith Douglass Warner, OEM.
Santa Clara University
