Show Summary Details

Page of

PRINTED FROM OXFORD HANDBOOKS ONLINE (www.oxfordhandbooks.com). © Oxford University Press, 2018. All Rights Reserved. Under the terms of the licence agreement, an individual user may print out a PDF of a single chapter of a title in Oxford Handbooks Online for personal use (for details see Privacy Policy and Legal Notice).

date: 26 January 2021

Abstract and Keywords

Atheism, humanism, and naturalism are three expressions of nontheism. They are “ideal types,” abstractions from the empirical messiness of the phenomena they describe. These types represent three levels of complexity and depth. Humanism sublates atheism, that is, transforms and lifts it higher. In turn, naturalism sublates (aufheben) humanism. At its best, naturalism assumes a pragmatic form. After an arguing for a serial relationship of increasing sophistication and intensification among atheism, humanism, and naturalism, the chapter culminates with an overview of George Santayana’s pragmatic religious naturalism. The thesis of the chapter is that Santayana provides the most sophisticated and capacious account of anti-supernaturalism and nontheism as a religious orientation.

Keywords: atheism, humanism, naturalism, Dewey, Santayana, piety, spiritual, pragmatic, supernaturalism, poetry

William Hart

Department of Religious Studies, Macalester College

Access to the complete content on Oxford Handbooks Online requires a subscription or purchase. Public users are able to search the site and view the abstracts and keywords for each book and chapter without a subscription.

Please subscribe or login to access full text content.

If you have purchased a print title that contains an access token, please see the token for information about how to register your code.

For questions on access or troubleshooting, please check our FAQs, and if you can''t find the answer there, please contact us.