UNH Speakers Bureau

Romantic Pantheism

 

Program Description:

There has been a little revival of interest in pantheism recently, the belief that God and nature are ultimately the same thing. In its modern form, however, pantheism goes back to the Romantic movement of the early nineteenth century in Germany, Britain, and the United States. It grew out of the rediscovery of the seventeenth-century Dutch Jewish philosopher Spinoza, but just as much out of a new appreciation for the beauty and creative powers of nature. Today it seems to respond to the environmental crisis as well as to the claim that science must be hostile to religious feeling.


Speaker:

Michael Ferber

Michael Ferber is a professor and director of graduate studies in the English department at the University of New Hampshire. His research interests include romantic poetry, western literature from the Greeks forward, and war and peace studies. He has written or edited five books about Romanticism and a dictionary of literary symbols. When he was a graduate student during the Vietnam War he was indicted for conspiracy to violate the draft law and stood trial with with Benjamin Spock the baby doctor and Rev. Coffin, chaplain of Yale.

Other topics offered by Michael Ferber