September 23, 2019
Dr. Steve Blakemore, professor of Christian thought at WBS, is writing a book on the human soul which will be published in the first half of 2020. The project is entitled Recovering the Soul: Aquinas’s and Spinoza’s Surprising and Helpful Affinity on the Nature of Mind-Body Unity.
“We are excited for Steve as he prepares to release Recovering the Soul,” said Dr. Chris Lohrstorfer, vice president for academic affairs. “Steve is an accomplished scholar, gifted professor, and experienced pastor. Readers will get to experience his scholarly mind and pastoral heart while reading this work.”
In Recovering the Soul, Blakemore probes the overlapping concepts used by Aquinas and Spinoza to describe the human soul. Each of these philosophers employs what Blakemore describes as “a kind of organizing principle of ‘force’ that is at work in living creatures, and specifically for our purposes in human beings.”
Blakemore’s examination of Aquinas and Spinoza will break new ground in philosophical studies. “Their conceptions of the mind-body relationship specifically, and human existence more broadly, have some very interesting parallels that have not been observed sufficiently by other interpretation of their work,” Blakemore said.
Recovering the Soul will be published by Pickwick Publishing and has an anticipated release date in the late spring of 2020.