This book represents a series of incursions or philosophical forays between realms of Byzantine and Russian thought and territory long claimed by Western philosophy and theology. Beginning with thoughts inevitably rooted in the West, it seeks to penetrate as deeply as possible into Byzantine and Russian philosophical and spiritual landscapes, and to return with fresh insights. These are also incursions that move back and forth between the visible and the invisible realms, in the traditions of Plato and his successors as well as the great monastics of Eastern Christianity. Foltz argues from various perspectives that the problematic relation between transcendence and immanence finds its answer in the philosophical and theological legacy of Eastern Christian thought, which has always sought to bring together strands tenaciously held separate in the West. This book transports contemporary readers to an ancient conceptual landscape as it expertly handles both Western and Byzantine ideaswith a familiarity unusual to contemporary scholars. It is essential reading for all those wishing to engage the heart of Byzantine thought and employ its lessons to address the problems which plague Western philosophy and culture.

Bruce V. Foltz received his Ph.D. in philosophy from the Pennsylvania State University. He is Professor Emeritus at Eckerd College in St. Petersburg, Florida, and he has served regularly as a Visiting Professor at St. John's College Graduate Institute in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Foltz has founded or co-founded three professional societies, including the International Association for Environmental Philosophy and the Society for Nature, Philosophy, and Religion. His writings have focused on Heidegger, Russian and Byzantine Philosophy, mysticism, and the philosophy of the natural environment, and his approach to philosophy draws on Ancient Greek, Byzantine, and Russian philosophy as well as contemporary European methodologies such as hermeneutics and phenomenology. His monographs include Inhabiting the Earth: Heidegger, Environmental Ethics, and the Metaphysics of Nature and The Noetics of Nature: Environmental Philosophy and the Holy Beauty of the Visible. He is also co-editor of two volumes: Rethinking Nature: Essays in Environmental Philosophy and Toward an Ecology of Transfiguration: Orthodox Christian Perspectives on Environment, Nature, and Creation. His writings have been translated into Arabic, Greek, Portuguese, Romanian, and Russian.

Introduction: Why Byzantium?.- Part One. From Creation to Creator.- Chapter 1. Strange Beauty: Environmental Aesthetics After Humanism.- Chapter 2. Hidden Patency: On the Iconic Character of Human Life.- Chapter 3. The Challenge of Secularism to Philosophical Ethics.- Chapter 4. Reflections on Faith and Science.- Part Two. Nature and the Holy.- Chapter 5. Toward the Mystery.- Chapter 6. Saving Sophia: Notes Toward an Orthodox Philosophy of Nature.- Chapter 7. Nature and Divine Wisdom: How (Not) to Speak of Sophia.- Chapter 8. Discerning the Spirit in Creation: Orthodox Christianity and Environmental Science.- Chapter 9. The Truth of Nature: Environmental Theology and the Epistemology of Asceticism.- Part Three. Byzantine Essays.- Chapter 10. "As We Also Forgive": Asceticism and Forgiveness in the Lord's Prayer, According to St. Maximos the Confessor.- Chapter 11. Being as Communion: On the Ontology of Love in the Byzantine Tradition.- Chapter 12. TÔ HETERON: The Problem of Otherness in Western Philosophy and Christian Theology.- Chapter 13. The Prayer of the Heart and the Heart of Prayer: On the Eastern Orthodox Practice of Prayer.- Part Four. Byzantine Thought and Modern Culture.- Chapter 14. Representation of the Divine in the Christian East.- Chapter 15. Heresy and Iconography: Reflections on Carolingian Aesthetics and Its Modern Successors.- Chapter 16. From Fichte to Florensky: The Transformation of German Idealism within Russian Philosophy.- Chapter 17. The Fluttering of Autumn Leaves: Logic, Mathematics, and Metaphysics in Florensky's The Pillar and Ground of the Truth.- Part Five. Higher Education and Western Culture.- Chapter 18. One Dimensional Learning: The Dialectic of Sacred and Secular as the Enduring Possibility of the University.- Chapter 19. Approaches to Teaching a Great Books Core at an Orthodox College.