The Superhumanities
Historical Precedents, Moral Objections, New Realities
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The Superhumanities
Historical Precedents, Moral Objections, New Realities
A bold challenge to rethink the humanities as intimately connected to the superhuman and to “decolonize reality itself.”
What would happen if we reimagined the humanities as the superhumanities? If we acknowledged and celebrated the undercurrent of the fantastic within our humanistic disciplines, entirely new cultural worlds and meanings would become possible. That is Jeffrey J. Kripal’s vision for the future—to revive the suppressed dimension of the superhumanities, which consists of rare but real altered states of knowledge that have driven the creative processes of many of our most revered authors, artists, and activists. In Kripal’s telling, the history of the humanities is filled with precognitive dreams, evolving superhumans, and doubled selves. The basic idea of the superhuman, for Kripal, is at the core of who and what the human species has tried to become over millennia and around the planet.
After diagnosing the basic malaise of the humanities—that the truth must be depressing—Kripal shows how it can all be done differently. He argues that we have to decolonize reality itself if we are going to take human diversity seriously. Toward this pluralist end, he engages psychoanalytic, Black critical, feminist, postcolonial, queer, and ecocritical theory. He works through objections to the superhumanities while also recognizing the new realities represented by the contemporary sciences. In doing so, he tries to move beyond naysaying practices of critique toward a future that can embrace those critiques within a more holistic view—a view that recognizes the human being as both a social-political animal as well as an evolved cosmic species that understands and experiences itself as something super.
What would happen if we reimagined the humanities as the superhumanities? If we acknowledged and celebrated the undercurrent of the fantastic within our humanistic disciplines, entirely new cultural worlds and meanings would become possible. That is Jeffrey J. Kripal’s vision for the future—to revive the suppressed dimension of the superhumanities, which consists of rare but real altered states of knowledge that have driven the creative processes of many of our most revered authors, artists, and activists. In Kripal’s telling, the history of the humanities is filled with precognitive dreams, evolving superhumans, and doubled selves. The basic idea of the superhuman, for Kripal, is at the core of who and what the human species has tried to become over millennia and around the planet.
After diagnosing the basic malaise of the humanities—that the truth must be depressing—Kripal shows how it can all be done differently. He argues that we have to decolonize reality itself if we are going to take human diversity seriously. Toward this pluralist end, he engages psychoanalytic, Black critical, feminist, postcolonial, queer, and ecocritical theory. He works through objections to the superhumanities while also recognizing the new realities represented by the contemporary sciences. In doing so, he tries to move beyond naysaying practices of critique toward a future that can embrace those critiques within a more holistic view—a view that recognizes the human being as both a social-political animal as well as an evolved cosmic species that understands and experiences itself as something super.
256 pages | 1 halftones | 6 x 9 | © 2022
Philosophy: Philosophy of Religion
Religion: Philosophy of Religion, Theology, and Ethics, Religion and Society
Reviews
Table of Contents
Prologue. Teaching the Superman
Introduction. How the Book Came to Be
1. Legitimate Science Fiction: From the History of Religions to the Superhumanities
2. “The Truth Must Be Depressing”: Immunological Responses of the Intellectual Body
3. The Human as Two: Toward an Apophatic Anthropology
4. Theory as Two: Rewriting the Real
Conclusion. The Solid Rock Was Once Flowing
Epilogue. Phoenix Reborn
Acknowledgments and the Sigil
Notes
Index
Introduction. How the Book Came to Be
1. Legitimate Science Fiction: From the History of Religions to the Superhumanities
2. “The Truth Must Be Depressing”: Immunological Responses of the Intellectual Body
3. The Human as Two: Toward an Apophatic Anthropology
4. Theory as Two: Rewriting the Real
Conclusion. The Solid Rock Was Once Flowing
Epilogue. Phoenix Reborn
Acknowledgments and the Sigil
Notes
Index
Awards
American Academy of Religion: AAR Award for Excellence - Constructive-Reflective Studies
Finalist