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The First Islamic Reviver: Abu Hamid al-Ghazali and his Revival of the Religious Sciences
by Kenneth GardenBuilding on recent revisionist scholarship, this book offers a new account of the last two decades of the life of the seminal eleventh-century Islamic thinker Ab
The First Jesuits
by John W. O'MalleyJohn W. O’Malley gives us the most comprehensive account ever written of the Society of Jesus in its founding years, one that heightens and transforms our understanding of the Jesuits in history and today. Following the Society from 1540 through 1565, O’Malley shows how this sense of mission evolved. He looks at everything—the Jesuits’ teaching, their preaching, their casuistry, their work with orphans and prostitutes, their attitudes toward Jews and “New Christians,” and their relationship to the Reformation. All are taken in by the sweep of O’Malley’s story as he details the Society’s manifold activities in Europe, Brazil, and India.
The First Jewish Environmentalist: The Green Philosophy of A.D. Gordon
by Yuval JobaniHailed by philosopher Martin Buber as "the true teacher", pioneer, philosopher and dreamer, Aharon David Gordon (1856--1922) is increasingly being recognized as the first Jewish environmentalist. Long before global warming became a major threat, Gordon warned against the mounting dangers of human assault on nature and urged us to open ourselves to nature and re-attune with it. Rather than trying to conquer nature, Gordon argued, we should merge with it; rather than being a master or slave of nature, we should become nature's friend and ally. Since childhood, nature fertilized and shaped Gordon's mindscape, as it eventually did his philosophical writings. Gordon's fresh insights on critical contemporary issues--such as ecology, gender, social justice, and post-secularism--have inspired not only a rapidly growing body of scholarly literature, but also communal readings and study among young readers whose imagination has been captured by Gordon's thoughts and dreams. The First Jewish Environmentalist introduces Gordon's ideas and sets them in their historical context, shedding new light on the interconnections between religion, culture, education, and the environment. Expanding his canonical status beyond the realm of Hebrew culture, the book situates Gordon in the tradition of nature-intoxicated prophets such as Rousseau, Thoreau, and Tolstoy, and extracts from his writings empowerment and inspiration for seekers advocating the protection of our planet.
The First Jewish Environmentalist: The Green Philosophy of A.D. Gordon
by Yuval JobaniHailed by philosopher Martin Buber as "the true teacher", pioneer, philosopher and dreamer, Aharon David Gordon (1856--1922) is increasingly being recognized as the first Jewish environmentalist. Long before global warming became a major threat, Gordon warned against the mounting dangers of human assault on nature and urged us to open ourselves to nature and re-attune with it. Rather than trying to conquer nature, Gordon argued, we should merge with it; rather than being a master or slave of nature, we should become nature's friend and ally. Since childhood, nature fertilized and shaped Gordon's mindscape, as it eventually did his philosophical writings. Gordon's fresh insights on critical contemporary issues--such as ecology, gender, social justice, and post-secularism--have inspired not only a rapidly growing body of scholarly literature, but also communal readings and study among young readers whose imagination has been captured by Gordon's thoughts and dreams. The First Jewish Environmentalist introduces Gordon's ideas and sets them in their historical context, shedding new light on the interconnections between religion, culture, education, and the environment. Expanding his canonical status beyond the realm of Hebrew culture, the book situates Gordon in the tradition of nature-intoxicated prophets such as Rousseau, Thoreau, and Tolstoy, and extracts from his writings empowerment and inspiration for seekers advocating the protection of our planet.
First Light: A History of Creation Myths from Gilgamesh to the God Particle
by G.R. EvansDid the universe start with a bang, or has it existed always? Was there a supernatural being behind it all, or just mindless forces? The beginning of things has forever tested the limits of curiosity, and such questions have both challenged atheists and inspired believers. Ancient cultures resorted to myth and symbolism to tell vibrant stories about human origins. Later civilizations added philosophical and scientific explanations: but these are not definitive. The nature and meaning of existence – the 'why' as much as the 'how' questions – are in the end mysterious. In this lively and wide-ranging book, G R Evans explores the world's myriad creation stories against the background of the biggest question there is: what are we doing here? Discussing Swahili legends that resemble the Book of Genesis, Greek tales about the Titans, Native American, Inca and Mesopotamian mythologies, and Vedic creation cycles that begin with a cosmic egg or seed, the author surveys polytheist, monotheist and dualist ideas about supernatural power. Tracing the history of humanity as it has struggled, over many millennia, to make sense of itself, The Creation Myth will attract students of religion, history and philosophy and general readers alike.
The First Modern Jew: Spinoza and the History of an Image
by Daniel B. SchwartzPioneering biblical critic, theorist of democracy, and legendary conflater of God and nature, Jewish philosopher Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677) was excommunicated by the Sephardic Jews of Amsterdam in 1656 for his "horrible heresies" and "monstrous deeds." Yet, over the past three centuries, Spinoza's rupture with traditional Jewish beliefs and practices has elevated him to a prominent place in genealogies of Jewish modernity. The First Modern Jew provides a riveting look at how Spinoza went from being one of Judaism's most notorious outcasts to one of its most celebrated, if still highly controversial, cultural icons, and a powerful and protean symbol of the first modern secular Jew. Ranging from Amsterdam to Palestine and back again to Europe, the book chronicles Spinoza's posthumous odyssey from marginalized heretic to hero, the exemplar of a whole host of Jewish identities, including cosmopolitan, nationalist, reformist, and rejectionist. Daniel Schwartz shows that in fashioning Spinoza into "the first modern Jew," generations of Jewish intellectuals--German liberals, East European maskilim, secular Zionists, and Yiddishists--have projected their own dilemmas of identity onto him, reshaping the Amsterdam thinker in their own image. The many afterlives of Spinoza are a kind of looking glass into the struggles of Jewish writers over where to draw the boundaries of Jewishness and whether a secular Jewish identity is indeed possible. Cumulatively, these afterlives offer a kaleidoscopic view of modern Jewish cultureand a vivid history of an obsession with Spinoza that continues to this day.
The First Modern Jew: Spinoza and the History of an Image
by Daniel B. SchwartzPioneering biblical critic, theorist of democracy, and legendary conflater of God and nature, Jewish philosopher Baruch Spinoza (1632-1677) was excommunicated by the Sephardic Jews of Amsterdam in 1656 for his "horrible heresies" and "monstrous deeds." Yet, over the past three centuries, Spinoza's rupture with traditional Jewish beliefs and practices has elevated him to a prominent place in genealogies of Jewish modernity. The First Modern Jew provides a riveting look at how Spinoza went from being one of Judaism's most notorious outcasts to one of its most celebrated, if still highly controversial, cultural icons, and a powerful and protean symbol of the first modern secular Jew. Ranging from Amsterdam to Palestine and back again to Europe, the book chronicles Spinoza's posthumous odyssey from marginalized heretic to hero, the exemplar of a whole host of Jewish identities, including cosmopolitan, nationalist, reformist, and rejectionist. Daniel Schwartz shows that in fashioning Spinoza into "the first modern Jew," generations of Jewish intellectuals--German liberals, East European maskilim, secular Zionists, and Yiddishists--have projected their own dilemmas of identity onto him, reshaping the Amsterdam thinker in their own image. The many afterlives of Spinoza are a kind of looking glass into the struggles of Jewish writers over where to draw the boundaries of Jewishness and whether a secular Jewish identity is indeed possible. Cumulatively, these afterlives offer a kaleidoscopic view of modern Jewish cultureand a vivid history of an obsession with Spinoza that continues to this day.
The First Muslim: The Story of Muhammad
by Lesley HazletonThe extraordinary life of the man who founded Islam, and the world he inhabited - and remade.Muhammad's was a life of almost unparalleled historical importance; yet for all the iconic power of his name, the intensely dramatic story of the prophet of Islam is not well known. In The First Muslim, Lesley Hazleton brings him vibrantly to life. Drawing on early eyewitness sources and on history, politics, religion, and psychology, she renders him as a man in full, in all his complexity and vitality.Hazleton's account follows the arc of Muhammad's rise from powerlessness to power, from anonymity to renown, from insignificance to lasting significance. How did a child shunted to the margins end up revolutionizing his world? How did a merchant come to challenge the established order with a new vision of social justice? How did the pariah hounded out of Mecca turn exile into a new and victorious beginning? How did the outsider become the ultimate insider?Impeccably researched and thrillingly readable, Hazleton's narrative creates vivid insight into a man navigating between idealism and pragmatism, faith and politics, non-violence and violence, rejection and acclaim. The First Muslim illuminates not only an immensely significant figure but his lastingly relevant legacy.
First Nations Australian Theatre for Health Equity: Healing Stories
by Sarah Woodland Kamarra Bell-WykesILBIJERRI Theatre Company is Australia's longest established First Nations theatre company, producing powerful works for over 30 years. This open access book documents and critically reflects on their Social Impact stream of performances, aimed at health promotion and education around issues that disproportionately affect First Nations communities in Australia. Over the past 16 years, these works have reached over 25,000 audience members across the country. Productions include 'Chopped Liver' (2006-2009), 'Body Armour' (2011-2013) and 'Viral' (2018-2019)—all dealing with Hepatitis C; 'North West of Nowhere' (2014-2016), which deals with sexual health and healthy relationships; and 'Scar Trees' (2019), which addresses family violence. A new work, ‘Aunty Flo’ (2022) addresses menopause for First Nations women; and a pilot project addressing sexual health for First Nations young people—The Score (2022)—represents a new participatory approach to the Social Impact works, which places community members at the centre of the storytelling process. This book documents this important body of work for the first time, examining the impact on audiences and the cultural, aesthetic, and educational implications of a unique form of theatre for health education and promotion.
First Pure, Then Peaceable: Frederick Douglass Reads James (The Library of New Testament Studies #379)
by Margaret AymerIn 2001, Continuum published the extensive collected papers from African Americans and the Bible, an interdisciplinary conference held at Union Theological Seminary, NYC. In the collection's introduction, Vincent L. Wimbush issued a challenge to take seriously those who "read darkness," and to consider what it is they are doing when they read the Bible as "scripture." Wimbush's focus on "darkness readers," both within and outside of the African diaspora, breaks open the discourse around the nature, meaning, and importance of the Bible. By following the lead of "darkness readers," the Bible is revealed to be more than a collection of ancient documents from an inaccessible past; it is the site upon which modern, contemporary ideological battles have and continue to be waged.In this book Margaret Aymer takes up his challenge. It is an examination of the way in which Frederick Douglass, the nineteenth-century abolitionist, used the epistle of James, particularly Jas 3:17, in his abolitionist speeches, to "read" the "darkness" of slavery and slaveholding Christianity. Within the epistle of James is a rhetoric of the world as "darkness". Douglass uses this to read his contemporary "darkness." As part of her research, Aymer has created an index of biblical references in all of Frederick Douglass' abolitionist speeches as collected by J. W. Blassingame (1841-1860).
First Sight: The Experience of Faith
by Laurence FreemanIn his latest book, Laurence Freeman shows that the basic experience of contemplation is the experience of faith and that we all need to develop this in order to become fully human. We are all capable of it - indeed we are designed for it.Freeman re-defines faith for our secular age. He draws on his wide experience and travels in the modern world to show how a new sense of the spiritual dimension can transform the way we approach education, business, mental health, the environment, inter-religious dialogue and our view of ourselves in society.Moving from this new vision and fresh thinking, illustrated vividly from his own life experience, he leads to practice. Meditation, he shows, offers an accessible and attractive antidote to the current cult of speed and distraction. He does not deny that this needs discipline but because it is radically simple it is a path that all can integrate.First Sight is the sequel to Laurence Freeman's acclaimed book Jesus: the Teacher Within.
First Sight: The Experience of Faith
by Laurence FreemanIn his latest book, Laurence Freeman shows that the basic experience of contemplation is the experience of faith and that we all need to develop this in order to become fully human. We are all capable of it - indeed we are designed for it.Freeman re-defines faith for our secular age. He draws on his wide experience and travels in the modern world to show how a new sense of the spiritual dimension can transform the way we approach education, business, mental health, the environment, inter-religious dialogue and our view of ourselves in society.Moving from this new vision and fresh thinking, illustrated vividly from his own life experience, he leads to practice. Meditation, he shows, offers an accessible and attractive antidote to the current cult of speed and distraction. He does not deny that this needs discipline but because it is radically simple it is a path that all can integrate.First Sight is the sequel to Laurence Freeman's acclaimed book Jesus: the Teacher Within.
The First Ten Books
by Confucius D. C. LauThroughout history, some books have changed the world. They have transformed the way we see ourselves - and each other. They have inspired debate, dissent, war and revolution. They have enlightened, outraged, provoked and comforted. They have enriched lives - and destroyed them. Now Penguin brings you the works of the great thinkers, pioneers, radicals and visionaries whose ideas shook civilization and helped make us who we are.Perhaps the most widely read thinker of all time, Confucius transformed Chinese philosophy with his belief that the greatest goal in life was pursuit of 'The Way': a search for virtue not as a means to rewards in this world or the next, but as the pinnacle of human existence.
The First Thousand Years: A Global History Of Christianity
by Robert Louis WilkenThis sweeping history begins with the life of Jesus and narrates the remarkable story of Christianity as it unfolded over the next thousand years. Unique in its global scope, the book encompasses the vast geographical span of early Christianity, from the regions around the Mediterranean Sea through the Middle East and beyond to central Asia, India, and China. Robert Louis Wilken, beloved professor and renowned author, selects people and events of particular importance in Christian history to bring into focus the full drama of the new religion's development. The coming of Christianity, he demonstrates, set in motion one of the most profound revolutions the world has known. Wilken tracks the growth of Christian communities around the ancient world and shows how the influence of Christianity led not only to the remaking of cultures but also to the creation of new civilizations. He explores the powerful impact of the rise and spread of Islam on Christianity and devotes several chapters to the early experiences of Christians under Muslim rule in the Middle East, Egypt, north Africa, and Spain. By expanding the telling of Christian history to encompass perspectives beyond just those of the West, Wilken highlights how interactions with new peoples and languages changed early Christian practices, even as the shared rituals of Christian people bound them in spiritual unity despite their deep cultural differences.
The First Urban Christians: The Social World of the Apostle Paul (Second Edition)
by Wayne A MeeksIn this classic work, Wayne A. Meeks analyzes the earliest extant documents of Christianity-the letters of Paul-to describe the tensions and the texture of life of the first urban Christians. In a new introduction, he describes the evolution of the field of New Testament scholarship over the past twenty years, including new developments in fields such as archaeology and social history.
First Vision: Memory and Mormon Origins
by Steven C. HarperThis is the biography of a contested memory, how it was born, grew, changed the world, and was changed by it. It's the story of the story of how the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints began. Joseph Smith, the church's founder, remembered that his first audible prayer, uttered in spring of 1820 when he was about fourteen, was answered with a vision of heavenly beings. Appearing to the boy in the woods near his parents' home in western New York State, they told Smith that he was forgiven and warned him that Christianity had gone astray. Smith created a rich and controversial historical record by narrating and documenting this event repeatedly. In First Vision, Steven C. Harper shows how Latter-day Saints (beginning with Joseph Smith) and others have remembered this experience and rendered it meaningful. When and why and how did Joseph Smith's first vision, as saints know the event, become their seminal story? What challenges did it face along the way? What changes did it undergo as a result? Can it possibly hold its privileged position against the tides of doubt and disbelief, memory studies, and source criticism-all in the information age? Steven C. Harper tells the story of how Latter-day Saints forgot and then remembered accounts of Smith's experience and how Smith's 1838 account was redacted and canonized. He explores the dissonance many saints experienced after discovering multiple accounts of Smith's experience. He describes how, for many, the dissonance has been resolved by a reshaped collective memory.
First Vision: Memory and Mormon Origins
by Steven C. HarperThis is the biography of a contested memory, how it was born, grew, changed the world, and was changed by it. It's the story of the story of how the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints began. Joseph Smith, the church's founder, remembered that his first audible prayer, uttered in spring of 1820 when he was about fourteen, was answered with a vision of heavenly beings. Appearing to the boy in the woods near his parents' home in western New York State, they told Smith that he was forgiven and warned him that Christianity had gone astray. Smith created a rich and controversial historical record by narrating and documenting this event repeatedly. In First Vision, Steven C. Harper shows how Latter-day Saints (beginning with Joseph Smith) and others have remembered this experience and rendered it meaningful. When and why and how did Joseph Smith's first vision, as saints know the event, become their seminal story? What challenges did it face along the way? What changes did it undergo as a result? Can it possibly hold its privileged position against the tides of doubt and disbelief, memory studies, and source criticism-all in the information age? Steven C. Harper tells the story of how Latter-day Saints forgot and then remembered accounts of Smith's experience and how Smith's 1838 account was redacted and canonized. He explores the dissonance many saints experienced after discovering multiple accounts of Smith's experience. He describes how, for many, the dissonance has been resolved by a reshaped collective memory.
First Words, Last Words: New Theories for Reading Old Texts in Sixteenth-Century India (AAR Religion in Translation)
by Yigal Bronner Lawrence McCreaFirst Words, Last Words charts an intense "pamphlet war" that took place in sixteenth-century South India. Yigal Bronner and Lawrence McCrea explore this controversy as a case study in the dynamics of innovation in early modern India, a time of great intellectual innovation. This debate took place within the traditional discourses of Vedic Hermeneutics, or M=im=a.ms=a, and its increasingly influential sibling discipline of Ved=anta, and its proponents among the leading intellectuals and public figures of the period. Bronner and McCrea examine the nature of theoretical innovation in scholastic traditions by focusing on a specific controversy regarding scriptural interpretation and the role of sequence-what comes first and what follows later-in determining our interpretation of a scriptural passage. Vy=asat=irtha and his grand-pupil Vijay=indrat=irtha, writers belonging to the camp of Dualist Ved=anta, purported to uphold the radical view of their founding father, Madhva, who believed, against a long tradition of M=im=a.ms=a interpreters, that the closing portion of a scriptural passage should govern the interpretation of its opening. By contrast, the Nondualist Appayya D=ik.sita ostensibly defended his tradition's preference for the opening. But, as this volume shows, the debaters gradually converged on a profoundly novel hermeneutic-cognitive theory in which sequence played little role, if any. First Words, Last Words traces both the issue of sequence and the question of innovation through an in-depth study of this debate and through a comparative survey of similar problems in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, revealing that the disputants in this controversy often pretended to uphold traditional views, when they were in fact radically innovative.
First Words, Last Words: New Theories for Reading Old Texts in Sixteenth-Century India (AAR Religion in Translation)
by Yigal Bronner Lawrence McCreaFirst Words, Last Words charts an intense "pamphlet war" that took place in sixteenth-century South India. Yigal Bronner and Lawrence McCrea explore this controversy as a case study in the dynamics of innovation in early modern India, a time of great intellectual innovation. This debate took place within the traditional discourses of Vedic Hermeneutics, or M=im=a.ms=a, and its increasingly influential sibling discipline of Ved=anta, and its proponents among the leading intellectuals and public figures of the period. Bronner and McCrea examine the nature of theoretical innovation in scholastic traditions by focusing on a specific controversy regarding scriptural interpretation and the role of sequence-what comes first and what follows later-in determining our interpretation of a scriptural passage. Vy=asat=irtha and his grand-pupil Vijay=indrat=irtha, writers belonging to the camp of Dualist Ved=anta, purported to uphold the radical view of their founding father, Madhva, who believed, against a long tradition of M=im=a.ms=a interpreters, that the closing portion of a scriptural passage should govern the interpretation of its opening. By contrast, the Nondualist Appayya D=ik.sita ostensibly defended his tradition's preference for the opening. But, as this volume shows, the debaters gradually converged on a profoundly novel hermeneutic-cognitive theory in which sequence played little role, if any. First Words, Last Words traces both the issue of sequence and the question of innovation through an in-depth study of this debate and through a comparative survey of similar problems in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, revealing that the disputants in this controversy often pretended to uphold traditional views, when they were in fact radically innovative.
First Words of Jesus: From the Cradle to the Cross
by Stu Epperson Jr.If we didn't need a cross, we wouldn't need a manger. This fresh, engaging look at the beginning of Jesus's life and ministry will change the way you comprehend Christ's early years. With unique, thought-provoking insights and commentaries from many of Christianity's leading theologians interspersed throughout, Epperson unwraps, layer by layer, a new understanding of the young boy who was the Son of Man.
The First World War and the Mobilization of Biblical Scholarship (The Library of Hebrew Bible/Old Testament Studies)
by Andrew Mein Nathan MacDonald Matthew A. CollinsThis fascinating collection of essays charts, for the first time, the range of responses by scholars on both sides of the conflict to the outbreak of war in August 1914. The volume examines how biblical scholars, like their compatriots from every walk of life, responded to the great crisis they faced, and, with relatively few exceptions, were keen to contribute to the war effort.Some joined up as soldiers. More commonly, however, biblical scholars and theologians put pen to paper as part of the torrent of patriotic publication that arose both in the United Kingdom and in Germany. The contributors reveal that, in many cases, scholars were repeating or refining common arguments about the responsibility for the war. In Germany and Britain, where the Bible was still central to a Protestant national culture, we also find numerous more specialized works, where biblical scholars brought their own disciplinary expertise to bear on the matter of war in general, and this war in particular. The volume's contributors thus offer new insights into the place of both the Bible and biblical scholarship in early 20th-century culture.
Fisher of Men: A Life Of John Fisher, 1469-1535 - A Critical Biography
by M. DowlingJohn Fisher, 1469-1535 was a figure of European stature during the Tudor age. His many roles included those of bishop, humanist, theologian, cardinal, and ultimately martyr. This study places him in the context of sixteenth-century Christendom, focusing not just on his resistance to Henry VIII, but also on his active engagement with the renaissance and reformation.
Fits, Trances, and Visions: Experiencing Religion and Explaining Experience from Wesley to James
by Ann TavesFits, trances, visions, speaking in tongues, clairvoyance, out-of-body experiences, possession. Believers have long viewed these and similar involuntary experiences as religious--as manifestations of God, the spirits, or the Christ within. Skeptics, on the other hand, have understood them as symptoms of physical disease, mental disorder, group dynamics, or other natural causes. In this sweeping work of religious and psychological history, Ann Taves explores the myriad ways in which believers and detractors interpreted these complex experiences in Anglo-American culture between the mid-eighteenth and early-twentieth centuries. Taves divides the book into three sections. In the first, ranging from 1740 to 1820, she examines the debate over trances, visions, and other involuntary experiences against the politically charged backdrop of Anglo-American evangelicalism, established churches, Enlightenment thought, and a legacy of religious warfare. In the second part, covering 1820 to 1890, she highlights the interplay between popular psychology--particularly the ideas of "animal magnetism" and mesmerism--and movements in popular religion: the disestablishment of churches, the decline of Calvinist orthodoxy, the expansion of Methodism, and the birth of new religious movements. In the third section, Taves traces the emergence of professional psychology between 1890 and 1910 and explores the implications of new ideas about the subconscious mind, hypnosis, hysteria, and dissociation for the understanding of religious experience. Throughout, Taves follows evolving debates about whether fits, trances, and visions are natural (and therefore not religious) or supernatural (and therefore religious). She pays particular attention to a third interpretation, proposed by such "mediators" as William James, according to which these experiences are natural and religious. Taves shows that ordinary people as well as educated elites debated the meaning of these experiences and reveals the importance of interactions between popular and elite culture in accounting for how people experienced religion and explained experience. Combining rich detail with clear and rigorous argument, this is a major contribution to our understanding of Protestant revivalism and the historical interplay between religion and psychology.
Fittingness and Environmental Ethics: Philosophical, Theological and Applied Perspectives (Routledge New Critical Thinking in Religion, Theology and Biblical Studies)
by Michael S. NorthcottThis volume focuses on ‘fittingness’ as an ethical-aesthetical idea, and in particular examines how the concept is beneficial for environmental ethics. It brings together an innovative set of contributions to argue that fittingness is a significant but under-investigated facet of human ethical deliberation with both ethical and aesthetic dimensions. In widely diverse matters – from architecture to table manners – individuals and communities make decisions based on ‘fittingness’, also expressed in related terms, such as appropriateness, prudence, temperance, and mutuality. In the realm of environmental ethics, fittingness denotes a relation between conscious embodied persons and their habitats and is of relevance to judgements about how humans shape, and take up with, the non-human environment, and hence to ethical decisions about the development and use of the environment and non-human creatures. As such, fittingness can be of great benefit in reframing human relationships to the non-human, stimulating a way of living in the world that is fitting to the preservation of its fruitfulness, goodness, beauty, and truth.
Fittingness and Environmental Ethics: Philosophical, Theological and Applied Perspectives (Routledge New Critical Thinking in Religion, Theology and Biblical Studies)
by Michael S. Northcott Steven C. Van Den HeuvelThis volume focuses on ‘fittingness’ as an ethical-aesthetical idea, and in particular examines how the concept is beneficial for environmental ethics. It brings together an innovative set of contributions to argue that fittingness is a significant but under-investigated facet of human ethical deliberation with both ethical and aesthetic dimensions. In widely diverse matters – from architecture to table manners – individuals and communities make decisions based on ‘fittingness’, also expressed in related terms, such as appropriateness, prudence, temperance, and mutuality. In the realm of environmental ethics, fittingness denotes a relation between conscious embodied persons and their habitats and is of relevance to judgements about how humans shape, and take up with, the non-human environment, and hence to ethical decisions about the development and use of the environment and non-human creatures. As such, fittingness can be of great benefit in reframing human relationships to the non-human, stimulating a way of living in the world that is fitting to the preservation of its fruitfulness, goodness, beauty, and truth.