Local Gods

A Philosophy of Spiritual Diversity
Erscheinungsjahr 2026
ISBN: 978-0-231-21542-8
Verlag: Columbia University Press

Buch, Englisch, 244 Seiten, Print PDF, Format (B × H): 140 mm x 216 mm

Indigenous activism against telescope construction on Maunakea involves the deity of volcanoes and fire. In India, a village goddess is visited at her place of residence. Across Asia, ancestors are venerated at family shrines. In many places around the world, spiritual matters and practices are local and contextual. Yet philosophy of religion often takes universalizing monotheism as the norm and overlooks other traditions, which it categorizes with oversimplified terms such as polytheism and animism.

Leah Kalmanson offers a new approach to understanding the world’s varied religious traditions: a philosophy of spiritual diversity. Drawing on perspectives from Asian, Pacific, Indigenous American, and African traditions on engaging gods, ghosts, ancestors, and other types of spiritual agents and forces, Local Gods reimagines philosophy of religion from standpoints it typically neglects. A philosophy of spiritual diversity foregrounds the numinous, subtle, and supernormal factors that pervade many aspects of everyday life but slip through the cracks of discourse on religion. Instead of relying on theological frameworks, it turns to theories and methods that are internal to the traditions it considers. This radically plural philosophy highlights creativity and imagination while opening pathways for critique and political engagement. Exploring a vast range of approaches to spiritual matters, this book asks us to find ethical relations with not only the gods we might call our own but also the gods of others.

Autoren/Hrsg.

Kalmanson, Leah

Fachgebiete

• Geisteswissenschaften Religionswissenschaft Religionswissenschaft Allgemein Religionsphilosophie, Philosophische Theologie
• Geisteswissenschaften Philosophie Metaphysik, Ontologie
• Geisteswissenschaften Religionswissenschaft Religionswissenschaft Allgemein Vergleichende Religionswissenschaft
• Geisteswissenschaften Religionswissenschaft Religionswissenschaft Allgemein Religionssoziologie und -psychologie, Spiritualität, Mystik

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Acknowledgments
Introduction: A Visit to the Local God
1. Ancestry and Locality
2. Manifestation and Liberation
3. Transmutation and Deification
4. Diaspora and Globalization
5. Nations Under Gods
Conclusion
Notes
Bibliography
Index

Über Autor(innen)

Leah Kalmanson is associate professor and Bhagwan Adinath Professor of Jain Studies in the Department of Philosophy and Religion at the University of North Texas. She is the author of Cross-Cultural Existentialism: On the Meaning of Life in Asian and Western Thought (2020) and coauthor of A Practical Guide to World Philosophies: Selves, Worlds, and Ways of Knowing (2021).