The Third Annual Thomas Berry Award and Lecture will be
held at the United Nations State of the World Forum in
New York City on August 30, 2000.
As part of the UN Millenium Peace Summit, this event,
sponsored by the Center for Respect of Life and Environment
(CRLE)1
and hosted by the Forum on Religion and Ecology, celebrates
the life and work of Thomas Berry, one of the foremost
thinkers in revisioning human-earth relations for a
more humane and sustainable future for all life on the
planet. This year’s award recipient and lecturer
is Tu Weiming, a leading Asian scholar, Professor of
Chinese History and Philosophy at Harvard University,
and Director of the Harvard-Yenching Institute. He is
the author of Neo-Confucian Thought in Action: Wang
Yang-min’s Youth (University of California
Press, 1976), Centrality and Commonality: An Essay
on Confucian Religiousness (State University of
New York, 1989), Confucian Thought: Selfhood as Creative
Transformation (State University of New York, 1985),
Way, Learning, and Politics: Essays on the Confucian
Intellectual (State University of New York, 1993),
and editor of The Living Tree: The Changing Meaning
of Being Chinese Today (Stanford University Press,
1994), China in Transformation (Harvard University
Press, 1994), and Confucian Traditions in East Asian
Modernity (Harvard University Press, 1996).
This event marks an occasion of unique importance
in the development of the epic of evolution as a primary
context for situating the role of the human in the millennium.
The epic of evolution is a story which reinvigorates
our sense of wonder and awe in relation to the unfolding
of our planet and the larger universe. Renewing our
deep connectedness to the earth is the aim of this “new
story” which Thomas Berry and Brian Swimme have
developed, inspired in part by the thought of Pierre
Teilhard de Chardin.
For more information on this event, please contact
Rick Clugston at:
Center
for Respect of Life and Environment
2100 L. Street NW
Washington, DC 20037
Phone: 202–778–6133
Email: CRLE@aol.com
2
From his academic beginning as a cultural historian,
Thomas Berry has evolved over the last thirty years
to become a historian of the earth. He sees himself
not as a theologian but as a geologian. The movement
from human history to cosmological history has been
a necessary progression for Berry. In his own lifetime
he has witnessed the emergence of a planetary civilization
as cultures have come in contact around the globe, often
for the first time. At the same time, the very resources
for sustaining such a planetary civilization are being
undermined by massive environmental destruction.
Thomas Berry began his academic career as a historian
of Western intellectual history. His thesis at Catholic
University on Giambattista Vico’s philosophy of
history was published in 1951. Vico was trying to establish
a science of the study of nations comparable to what
others had done for the study of nature.
Influenced by Vico, Berry has developed a comprehensive
historical perspective in periodization, an understanding
of the depths of contemporary barbarism, and the need
for a new mythic wisdom to extract ourselves from our
cultural pathology and deep alienation. Berry has described
contemporary alienation as especially pervasive due
to the power of the technological trance, the myth of
progress, and our own autism in relation to nature.
With the "New Story" and the Dream of the
Earth, Berry hopes to overcome this alienation and
evoke the energies needed to create a viable and sustainable
future. He calls this effort to create a new basis for
human-earth relations, the “Great Work.”
When Berry set out for China in 1948, he met William
Theodore de Bary on the boat leaving from San Francisco.
De Bary was on his way to China as the first Fulbright
scholar of Chinese studies. Berry intended to study
language and Chinese philosophy in Beijing. Their time
in China, while fruitful, was cut short by Mao’s
Communist victory in 1949. After they returned to the
States they worked together to found the Asian Thought
and Religion Seminar at Columbia University.
Berry taught Asian religions at Seton Hall (1956–1960),
St. John’s University (1960–1966), and Fordham
University (1966–1979). Berry founded a Ph.D. program
in the History of Religions at Fordham and wrote numerous
articles on Asian religions in addition to two books,
one on Buddhism and the other on Religions
of India. Originally published by Anima Press, both
are now distributed by Columbia University Press.
What distinguished Berry’s approach to religion
was his effort not only to discuss the historical unfolding
of the traditions being studied, but also to articulate
their spiritual dynamics and contemporary significance.
Equally important in Berry’s approach has been
his balanced effort to highlight the distinctive contributions
of both the Western traditions and Asian religions.
In addition, he has shown a long-standing appreciation
for the spirituality of indigenous traditions in both
Asia and the Americas.
In a short monograph published in 1968, Berry demonstrates
the originality of his interpretations of the spiritual
dynamics of Asian religious thought. This work, the
“Five Oriental Philosophies,” describes the
phenomenological essence of these traditions as well
as their historical unfolding. He includes Hinduism,
Buddhism, Confucianism, Taoism, and Zen in his discussions.
Berry has been able to appreciate the deep spiritual
impulses and devastating human sorrows which have given
rise to the world’s religions. From this perspective
he has discerned which spiritual resources are needed
to create a comprehensive multicultural perspective
within the earth community. For Berry, tolerance of
diversity of religious ideas is comparable to protecting
diversity of species in the natural world; human diversity
and biological diversity are two aspects of a vital
ecological whole.
Confucianism has had special significance for Berry
because of its cosmological concerns, its interest in
self-cultivation and education, and its commitment to
improve the social and political order. With regard
to Confucian cosmology, Berry has identified the important
understanding of the human as a microcosm of the cosmos.
Essential to this cosmology is a “continuity of
being” and thus a “communion” between
various levels of reality—cosmic, social, and personal—similar
to the ideas of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, Alfred North
Whitehead, and other contemporary process thinkers.
In addition to a remarkable ability to appreciate the
diversity and uniqueness of the great world religions,
Berry has a lively interest in and empathy for native
religions. His own research, writing, and teaching in
the field of Native America religions has been extensive.
Berry’s appreciation for native tradition and for
the richness of their mythic, symbolic, and ritual life
has been enhanced by his encounters with the ideas of
Carl Jung and Mircea Eliade. Jung’s understanding
of the collective unconscious, his reflections on the
power of archetypal symbols, and his sensitivity to
religious processes has made him an important influence
on Berry’s thinking. Moreover, Mircea Eliade’s
studies in the history of religions have been enormously
useful in Berry’s understanding of both Asian and
native traditions. This is due in large part to Eliade’s
ability to interpret broad patterns of meaning embedded
in comparable symbols and rituals across cultures.
Within this larger framework of interpretive categories,
Berry is able to articulate the special feeling in native
traditions for the sacredness of the land, the seasons,
and the animal, bird, and fish life. Native peoples
respect creation because they respect the Creator. They
have a deep reverence for the gift of all life and for
human dependency on nature to sustain life. They have
perfected some of the ancient techniques of shamanism
(i.e., utilizing ritual fasting and prayer to call on
the powers in nature for personal healing and communal
strength). They have cultivated an ability to use resources
without abusing them and to recognize the importance
of living lightly on the earth. This is not to suggest
that native peoples were the ideal ecologists. As in
the Chinese case, abuses certainly have occurred. However,
for Berry these two traditions, Confucianism and Native
American religions, remain central to the creation of
a new ecological spirituality for our times.
In formulating his idea of the “New Story,”
Berry is much indebted to the thought of Pierre Teilhard
de Chardin. In particular, Berry has derived, from Teilhard
and other writers such as Loren Eiseley, an enormous
appreciation for developmental time. As Berry writes
frequently, since Charles Darwin’s Origin of
Species we have become aware of the universe not
simply as a static cosmos but as an unfolding cosmogenesis.
The theory of evolution provides a distinctive realization
of change and development in the universe that resituates
us in a huge sweep of geological time. With regard to
developmental time, Teilhard suggested that the whole
perspective of evolution changes our understanding of
ourselves in the universe. For Berry, the New Story
is the primary context for understanding the immensity
of cosmogenesis. It is similar to what Loren Eiseley
refers to as “The Immense Journey” or “The
Firmament of Time.”
From Teilhard, Berry has also derived an understanding
of the psychic-physical character of the unfolding universe.
This implies that if there is consciousness in the human
and if humans have evolved from the earth, then from
the beginning some form of consciousness or interiority
is present in the process of evolution. Matter, for
both Teilhard and Berry, is not simply dead or inert,
but a numinous reality consisting of both physical and
spiritual dimensions. Consciousness, then, is an intrinsic
part of reality, the thread that links all life-forms.
There are various forms of consciousness but, in the
human, self-consciousness or reflective thought arises.
For Berry this implies that we are one species among
others and as self-reflective beings we need to understand
our particular responsibility for the continuation of
the evolutionary process. We have reached a juncture
where we are realizing that we will determine which
life-forms survive and which will become extinct. We
have become co-creators as we have become conscious
of our role in this extraordinary, irreversible developmental
sequence of the emergence of life-forms.
Berry’s approach has been much more inclusive
in terms of cultural history and religion while Teilhard’s
has been remarkably comprehensive scientifically. These
two approaches have come together in Berry’s collaborative
effort with mathematical cosmologist Brian Swimme entitled,
The Universe Story. Here, for the first time,
is the narration of the story of the evolution of the
solar system and the earth along with the story of the
evolution of homo sapiens and human cultures and societies.
While not claiming to be definitive or exhaustive, The
Universe Story sets forth a model for the telling
of a common creation story. It marks a new era of self-reflection
for humans, one that Berry has described as the “ecological
age” or the beginning of the “ecozoic age.”
Berry’s ideas on the New Story began in the early
1970s as he pondered the magnitude of the social, political,
and economic problems facing the human community. He
first published the “New Story” in 1978 as
the initial booklet of the Teilhard Studies series.
Berry opens his essay by observing, “We are in
between stories.” He notes how the old story was
functional because “It shaped our emotional attitudes,
provided is with life purpose, and energized action.
It consecrated suffering, integrated knowledge, and
guided education.” This context of meaning provided
by the old stories is no longer operative. Berry proposes
a new story of how things came to be, where we are now,
and how our human future can be given some meaningful
direction. In losing our direction we have not lost
our values and orientation for human action. This is
what the New Story can provide.
Berry states that in order to communicate values within
this new frame of reference (the earth story) we need
to identify the basic principles of the universe process
itself. These are the primordial intentions of the universe
toward differentiation, subjectivity, and communion.
Differentiation refers to the extraordinary variety
and distinctiveness of everything in the universe. No
two things are completely alike. Subjectivity or consciousness
is the interior numinous component present in all reality.
Communion is the ability to relate to other people and
things due to the presence of subjectivity and difference.
Together these create the grounds for the inner attraction
of things for one another. These are principles that
can become the basis of a more comprehensive ecological
and social ethics that see the human community as dependent
upon and interactive with the earth community. Only
such a perspective can result in the survival of both
humans and the earth. As Berry has stated, humans and
the earth will go into the future as one single multiform
event or we will not go into the future at all.
This New Story is born out of Berry’s own intellectual
formation as a Western cultural historian, turning toward
Asian religions, examining indigenous traditions, and
finally culminating in the study of the scientific story
of the universe itself. It is a story of personal evolution
against the background of cosmic evolution. It is the
story of one person’s intellectual journey in relation
to an Earth history. It is the story of all of our histories
in conjunction with planetary history. It is a story
awaiting new tellings, new chapters, and ever-deeper
confidence in the beauty and mystery of its unfolding.
It is this story which provides a comprehensive context
for orienting human life toward the “Great Work”
of our time. As Berry suggests, history calls us in
the late twentieth century to create new, life sustaining
human-earth relations. The life, beauty, and diversity
of the planet need to be preserved and enhanced for
future generations. This is the “Great Work”
to which we are each called by Thomas Berry.
1
Thomas Berry received his Ph.D. from the Catholic University
of America in European intellectual history with a thesis
on Giambattista Vico. Widely read in Western history and
theology, he also spent many years studying and teaching
the cultures and religions of Asia. He has lived in China
and traveled to other parts of Asia. He has authored two
books on Asian religions, Buddhism and Religions
of India, both of which are distributed by Columbia
University Press. For some twenty years, he directed the
Riverdale Center of Religious Research along the Hudson
River. During this period he taught at Fordham University
where he chaired the history of religions program and
directed twenty-five doctoral theses. His major contributions
to the discussions on the environment are his books: The
Dream of the Earth (Sierra Club Books, 1988), with
Brian Swimme, The Universe Story (Harper San Francisco,
1992), and his latest book, The Great Work: Our Way
into the Future (Random House/Bell Towers, 1999).
The Third Annual Thomas Berry Award and Lecture will be
held at the United Nations State of the World Forum in
New York City on August 30, 2000.
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2
The Center for Respect of Life and Environment (CRLE),
an affiliate of The Human Society of the United States
(HSUS), was founded in 1986 to foster an ethic of compassion
toward all sentient beings and respect for the integrity
of nature. CRLE seeks to clarify and promote the ethical,
intellectual, and practical foundations for a global
humane society and a sustainable future. They pursue
four major program goals:
- Religion and Ecology supports the ecological reform
of world religions, promoting those beliefs and practices
in each tradition that contribute to a viable and
vibrant earth.
- Creating Global Earth Ethics promotes ecocentric
ethics and values to guide development policies and
professional practices.
- Sustainable Livelihoods in Sustainable Communities
encourage lifestyles as well as economic and social
policies that enhance the social, spiritual, and ecological
well-being of life.
- Greening Academia, through University Leaders for
a Sustainable Future, seeks to transform college and
university operations, curricula, research, and outreach
to embody and teach sustainability.
Thomas Berry has served on the board of CRLE since
1988 and is the HSUS Scholar-in-Residence. He received
the HSUS James Herriot Award in 1992 in recognition
of the contributions of his thoughts to growing public
appreciation of and concern for the animals of this
world. He is a friend and mentor to all those involved
in the HSUS family of organizations.
Return to text
Copyright © 1999
Mary Evelyn Tucker.
Reprinted with permission.
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