Henri-Louis Bergson was a French philosopher, who was influential in the traditions of analytic philosophy and continental philosophy, especially during the first half of the 20th century until the Second World War, but also after 1966 when Gilles Deleuze published Le Bergsonisme. Bergson is known for his arguments that processes of immediate experience and intuition are more significant than abstract rationalism and science for understanding reality.
Monism attributes oneness or singleness to a concept, such as to existence. Various kinds of monism can be distinguished:
Pantheism is the philosophical religious belief that reality, the universe, and nature are identical to divinity or a supreme entity. The physical universe is thus understood as an immanent deity, still expanding and creating, which has existed since the beginning of time. The term pantheist designates one who holds both that everything constitutes a unity and that this unity is divine, consisting of an all-encompassing, manifested god or goddess. All astronomical objects are thence viewed as parts of a sole deity.
Panentheism is the belief that the divine intersects every part of the universe and also extends beyond space and time. The term was coined by the German philosopher Karl Krause in 1828 to distinguish the ideas of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831) and Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling (1775–1854) about the relation of God and the universe from the supposed pantheism of Baruch Spinoza. Unlike pantheism, which holds that the divine and the universe are identical, panentheism maintains an ontological distinction between the divine and the non-divine and the significance of both.
Process theology is a type of theology developed from Alfred North Whitehead's (1861–1947) process philosophy, but most notably by Charles Hartshorne (1897–2000), John B. Cobb, and Eugene H. Peters (1929-1983). Process theology and process philosophy are collectively referred to as "process thought".
Theism is broadly defined as the belief in the existence of at least one deity. In common parlance, or when contrasted with deism, the term often describes the philosophical conception of God that is found in classical theism—or conception found in monotheism—or gods found in polytheistic religions—or a belief in God or gods without the rejection of revelation as is characteristic of deism.
The world is the totality of entities, the whole of reality, or everything that exists. The nature of the world has been conceptualized differently in different fields. Some conceptions see the world as unique while others talk of a "plurality of worlds". Some treat the world as one simple object while others analyze the world as a complex made up of parts.
François-Pierre-Gontier de Biran, usually known as Maine de Biran, was a French philosopher.
Victor Cousin was a French philosopher. He was the founder of "eclecticism", a briefly influential school of French philosophy that combined elements of German idealism and Scottish Common Sense Realism. As the administrator of public instruction for over a decade, Cousin also had an important influence on French educational policy.
Jean-Gaspard-Félix Laché Ravaisson-Mollien was a French philosopher, 'perhaps France's most influential philosopher in the second half of the nineteenth century'. He was originally and remains more commonly known as Félix Ravaisson.
Naturalistic pantheism, also known as scientific pantheism, is a form of pantheism. It has been used in various ways such as to relate God or divinity with concrete things, determinism, or the substance of the universe. God, from these perspectives, is seen as the aggregate of all unified natural phenomena. The phrase has often been associated with the philosophy of Baruch Spinoza, although academics differ on how it is used. Natural pantheists believe that God is the entirety of the universe and that God speaks through the scientific process.
Charles Hartshorne was an American philosopher who concentrated primarily on the philosophy of religion and metaphysics, but also contributed to ornithology. He developed the neoclassical idea of God and produced a modal proof of the existence of God that was a development of Anselm of Canterbury's ontological argument. Hartshorne is also noted for developing Alfred North Whitehead's process philosophy into process theology.
Nature worship also called naturism or physiolatry is any of a variety of religious, spiritual and devotional practices that focus on the worship of the nature spirits considered to be behind the natural phenomena visible throughout nature. A nature deity can be in charge of nature, a place, a biotope, the biosphere, the cosmos, or the universe. Nature worship is often considered the primitive source of modern religious beliefs and can be found in pantheism, panentheism, deism, polytheism, animism, Taoism, totemism, Hinduism, shamanism, some theism and paganism including Wicca. Common to most forms of nature worship is a spiritual focus on the individual's connection and influence on some aspects of the natural world and reverence towards it. Due to their admiration of nature, the works of Edmund Spenser, Anthony Ashley-Cooper and Carl Linnaeus were viewed as nature worship.
In monotheistic belief systems, God is usually viewed as the supreme being, creator, and principal object of faith. In polytheistic belief systems, a god is "a spirit or being believed to have created, or for controlling some part of the universe or life, for which such a deity is often worshipped". Belief in the existence of at least one god is called theism.
The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to metaphysics:
Articles related to philosophy of religion include:
Pandeism is a theological doctrine that combines aspects of pantheism with aspects of deism. Unlike classical deism, which holds that the creator deity does not interfere with the universe after its creation, pandeism holds that such an entity became the universe and ceased to exist as a separate entity. Pandeism purports to explain why God would create a universe and then appear to abandon it, and pandeism seeks to explain the origin and purpose of the universe.
The belief that God became the Universe is a theological doctrine that has been developed several times historically, and holds that the creator of the universe actually became the universe. Historically, for versions of this theory where God has ceased to exist or to act as a separate and conscious entity, some have used the term pandeism, which combines aspects of pantheism and deism, to refer to such a theology. A similar concept is panentheism, which has the creator become the universe only in part, but remain in some other part transcendent to it, as well. Hindu texts like the Mandukya Upanishad speak of the undivided one which became the universe.
A number of Christian writers have examined the concept of pandeism, and these have generally found it to be inconsistent with core principles of Christianity. The Roman Catholic Church, for example, condemned the Periphyseon of John Scotus Eriugena, later identified by physicist and philosopher Max Bernhard Weinstein as presenting a pandeistic theology, as appearing to obscure the separation of God and creation. The Church similarly condemned elements of the thought of Giordano Bruno which Weinstein and others determined to be pandeistic.
Criticism of pandeism has been carried out in various ways by proponents of other theological models, particularly of atheism and theism. Proponents of pandeism have themselves published collections containing criticism from various viewpoints, including those written from Christian, Jewish, Islamic, New Thought, and Atheist perspectives, as part of efforts to increase awareness and debate regarding Pandeism. At times, ideological foes have accused political and religious figures of secretly being pandeists, as a means of casting aspersions on those accused.
