Breathing through Cascading Ecologies: The Gift of Hope

Abstract

[Figure: see text]In the Roman Catholic tradition, recent doctrinal reaffirmations of the gift of a common home, the beauty of cultural pluralism, and the splendour of truth expressed in Christianity and other world religions challenge theologians to look beyond natural degradation, mounting social conflict, and the pervasive loss of day-to-day religious cohesion to discern a renewed basis and horizon of transcendent hope. By developing an aesthetic context focused on the art theory exemplified in the work of Paul Gauguin, Käthe Kollwitz, and Wassily Kandinsky, this article elucidates the palate of psychic, affective, and intellectual responses that advise human participation in the dynamic and interrelated natural, social, and religious ecologies of world process. Reflecting on aesthetically contextualized and theologically guided engagements of contemporary philosophy, the essay continues to offer accounts of Bernard Lonergan’s post-Hegelian notion of sublation and Romano Guardini’s post-Heideggerian notion of polarity. It concludes by arguing that analogous contentions among the self-presence and encounter of aesthetic appreciation, the preserving and transforming moments of evolutionary process, and the uniquely particular and broadly idealized moments of cultural construction appear to collaborate as they draw the reader’s attention to a providential horizon enveloping world process and infusing its every dimension with hope.