List of Figures Preface Introduction PART ONE: HUMANNESS, METAPHYSICS, AND BEING 1. Secular Meditations Death Birth Embodiment Consciousness Self-Identity Space Time Interconnectedness 2. The Many Dimensions of Humanness Experience and Conceptualization Flatland: An Imaginative Model Imagination and Judgment Intentionality Sensing Conceptualization Reference to Being Implicit Features of Inwardness 3. Toward a Definition of Humanness Observational Differences The Proximate Inner Ground: Rationality The Ultimate Ground: Metaphysicality "Soul" as Center of Meaning The Human Being as the Sick Animal The Human Being as Religious Animal The Human Being as Historical 4. Metaphysics and Practicality The Meaning of Practicality Immanence Transcendence Relativity of Norms Levels of Transcendence Subjectivity and the Sacred Immanence and Transcendence Metaphysics and Practicality 5. Abstract and Concrete Identifying the Context of the Terms Bodiliness and Concreteness Concreteness and Universality Object, Subject, Praxis PART TWO: READING THE TRADITION Section A. The Ancient-Medieval Tradition 6. Parmenides "Heart" as Starting Point The Logic of Being Historical Aftermath Heidegger's Approach 7. Plato Metaphor and Allegory Dreaming in the Cave In the Light Geometry as Paradigm Eros and the Good Epilogue on Plotinus 8. Aristotle Empiricism and the Principles of Changing Being The Hierarchy of Changing Being Knowing and Being Revisiting the One and the Good 9. Aquinas Being and the Sensorily Given Essence-Esse and God Assimilation and Transformation of Aristotle "The Mystical" Analogy and the Transcendentals Presence to Being Section B. The Modern Tradition 10. Rene Descartes Methodic Doubt and the Cogito Being and God Cogito, World, God Response 11. Baruch Spinoza Being as a Single Substance Freedom Unity Response 12. Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz The Monad Hierarchy First Principles Response 13. Immanuel Kant The Ground of Kant's Thought Sensibility Categories Reason The Moral Order Critique of Judgment Response 14. G.W.F. Hegel The Comprehension of Christian Revelation The Phenomenology of Spirit The Logic of the Logos Nature and Spirit Absolute Spirit Response 15. Alfred North Whitehead Whitehead and Modern Physics Whitehead and Plato Response 16. Martin Heidegger Situating Heidegger Being, Truth, and Being-in-the-World The Light of Being Historicity and Authenticity The Play of the Fourfold The History of Truth and the Return to Meditative Thinking Response Epilogue: The Metaphysical Basis of Dialogical Pluralism Abbreviations Notes Bibliography Index