An actology—introduced by the first book in this series, Actology: Action, Change and Diversity in the Western Philosophical Tradition—is a conceptual structure characterized by action, change, and diversity, and that envisages reality as action in changing patterns. The previous book in this series, Actological Readings in Continental Philosophy, reads a number of continental philosophers through this lens. This new book, An Actology of the Given, takes a somewhat different approach: it explores the concepts of the gift, givenness, giving, and other cognates in the light of reality understood as action in patterns rather than as beings that change: and it does so by discussing some anthropology, the writings of a number of continental philosophers, biblical texts, social policy, and a variety of other givens.

Actological Readings in Continental Philosophy is what it says it is. The book asks how we might understand the writings of a number of continental philosophers actologically: that is, with reality understood as action in changing patterns rather than as beings that change. It also asks how the different continental philosophies might enable us to develop an actology: an understanding of reality as action in changing patterns. The philosophers whom we study are Immanuel Kant, Friedrich Nietzsche, Edmund Husserl, Martin Heidegger, Emmanuel Levinas, Gilles Deleuze, Hans-Georg Gadamer, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Gaston Bachelard, Michel Foucault, and Michel Serres. A whole new way of understanding reality casts new light on their philosophies and raises and answers some significant new questions.

An actology—introduced by the first book in this series, Actology: Action, Change and Diversity in the Western Philosophical Tradition—understands reality as action in changing patterns. Actological Readings in Continental Philosophy reads a number of continental philosophers through this lens, and An Actology of the Given explores the concepts of the gift, givenness, and giving in the light of reality understood as action in changing patterns. Mark’s Gospel: An Actological Reading is what it says it is. This fifth book in the series, An Actological Metaphysic, is a more systematic treatment of cosmology and of such concepts as truth, knowledge, causality, time, space, life, and society, to see what happens when they are understood actologically: that is, with reality understood as action in changing patterns.

An actology—introduced by the first book in this series, Actology: Action, Change and Diversity in the Western Philosophical Tradition—understands reality as action in changing patterns. Actological Readings in Continental Philosophy reads a number of continental philosophers through this lens, and An Actology of the Given explores the concepts of the gift, givenness, and giving in the light of reality understood as action in changing patterns. Mark’s Gospel: An Actological Reading is what it says it is. An Actological Metaphysic is a more systematic treatment of cosmology and of such concepts as truth, knowledge, causality, time, space, life, and society, to see what happens when they are understood actologically—that is, with reality understood as action in changing patterns. An Actological Theology similarly asks what Christian theology might look like if God, the universe, ourselves, and everything else is understood as action in changing patterns.

This might look like an ordinary commentary on Mark’s Gospel, but it isn’t one. It understands reality as Action, actions, change, diversity, movement, and the dynamic, rather than as Being, beings, the unchanging, the unitary, rest, and the static, and it reads Mark’s Gospel in the light of that distinctive understanding of reality. It is all about action, change, and diversity, and it understands God, Jesus, and ourselves as action, change, and diversity. The initial chapter introduces the action-based understanding of reality as action in changing patterns—an actology, rather than an ontology. Then follows a section-by-section close study of the Gospel. The result is a unique and somewhat unexpected reading of the text and a distinctive theology to match.

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While acknowledging its theory-ladeness, Chalmers (history and philosophy, U. of Sydney) defends the objectivity of scientific knowledge against those critics for whom such knowledge is both subjective and ideological. Annotation copyrighted by Book News, Inc., Portland, OR

Includes extra sessions.