List of pantheists

Giordano Bruno

Baruch Spinoza

Ludwig van Beethoven

Ralph Waldo Emerson

Albert Einstein

Alan Watts

Pantheism is the belief that the universe (or nature as the totality of everything) is identical with divinity, or that everything composes an all-encompassing, immanent God. Pantheists thus do not believe in a distinct personal or anthropomorphic god. Some Eastern religions are considered to be pantheistic.

Pantheists

• Vyasa (3rd millennium BCE) writer of Mahabharata.^[1]
• Nammalvar (3059 BCE), one of the twelve Alvars.^[2]
• Lao Tzu (604 BCE–?), name traditionally given to the writer of the Tao Te Ching, and considered the founder of philosophical Taoism.^[3]
• Michio Kaku (1947–), Japanese-American futurist, theoretical physicist and popularizer of science. Kaku is a Professor of Theoretical Physics at the City College of New York. ^[4]
• Heraclitus (c. 535 BCE–c. 475 BCE), pre-Socratic Greek philosopher, a native of the Greek city Ephesus, Ionia, on the coast of Asia Minor. He was of distinguished parentage. Little is known about his early life and education, but he regarded himself as self-taught and a pioneer of wisdom. From the lonely life he led, and still more from the riddling nature of his philosophy and his contempt for humankind in general, he was called "The Obscure" and the "Weeping Philosopher".^[5]
• Adi Shankara^[6](509–477 BCE) or (788–820 CE) known for consolidating the doctrine of Advaita Vedānta.
• Johannes Scotus Eriugena (c. 815–c. 877), Irish theologian, Neoplatonist philosopher, and poet.^[7]
• Amalric of Bena (died c. 1204–1207), French theologian, father of medieval pantheism, after whom the Amalricians are named.
• Giordano Bruno (1548–1600), Italian Dominican friar, philosopher, mathematician and astronomer. He was burned alive for his pantheist views.^[8]
• Baruch Spinoza (1632–1677), Jewish-Dutch philosopher, has been called the "prophet"^[9] and "prince"^[10] of pantheism.
• Gotthold Ephraim Lessing (1729–1781), German writer, philosopher, dramatist, publicist and art critic. His alleged confession of Spinozism led to what is known as the pantheism controversy of the 1780s.
• Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831), German philosopher, one of the creators of German Idealism^[11]
• Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling (1775–1854), German philosopher.^[12]
• Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832), German writer, artist, and politician. His body of work includes epic and lyric poetry written in a variety of metres and styles; prose and verse dramas; memoirs; an autobiography; literary and aesthetic criticism; treatises on botany, anatomy, and colour; and four novels. In addition, numerous literary and scientific fragments, and over 10,000 letters written by him are extant, as are nearly 3,000 drawings.^[13]
• Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827), German composer and pianist. A crucial figure in the transition between the Classical and Romantic eras in Western art music, he remains one of the most famous and influential of all composers. His best-known compositions include 9 symphonies, 5 concertos for piano, 32 piano sonatas, and 16 string quartets. He also composed other chamber music, choral works (including the celebrated Missa Solemnis), and songs. He has also been labeled a theist as well.^{[14][15][16][17]}
• Hans Christian Ørsted (1777–1851), Danish physicist and chemist who discovered that electric currents create magnetic fields.^[18]
• Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882), American essayist, lecturer, and poet, who led the Transcendentalist movement of the mid-19th century.^[19]
• Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862), American author, poet, philosopher, freemason, abolitionist, naturalist, tax resister, development critic, surveyor, historian, and leading transcendentalist.^[20][21]
• Walt Whitman (1819–1892), American poet, essayist and journalist.^[22]
• Robert G. Ingersoll (1833–1899), lawyer, Civil War veteran, political leader, orator, and notable agnostic.^[23]
• Felix Klein (1849–1925), German mathematician.^[24]
• Gustav Mahler (1860–1911), Late-Romantic Austrian composer and one of the leading conductors of his generation.^[25]
• Claude Debussy (1862–1918), French composer.^[26]
• Carl Jung (1875–1961), Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist who founded analytical psychology. Jung proposed and developed the concept of the collective unconscious from a pantheistic worldview.^[27][28][29]
• Albert Einstein (1879–1955), German theoretical physicist, one of the most prolific intellects in human history, identified with Spinoza's God and called his own views on God "pantheistic".^[30][31]
• D. H. Lawrence (1885–1930), English novelist, poet, playwright, essayist, literary critic and painter.^[32]
• Robinson Jeffers (1887–1962), American poet, known for his work about the central California coast.^[33]
• Isidor Isaac Rabi (1898–1988), Galician-born American physicist and Nobel laureate, recognized in 1944 for his discovery of nuclear magnetic resonance, which is used in magnetic resonance imaging. He was also involved in the development of the cavity magnetron, which is used in microwave radar and microwave ovens.^[34]
• Ansel Adams (1902–1984), American photographer and environmentalist.^[35]
• Janusz Korczak (1878–1942), Polish-Jewish educator, children's author, and pediatrician.^[36]
• Alan Watts (1915–1973), British philosopher, writer, and speaker.^[37]
• Pete Seeger (1919–2014), American folk singer.^[38]
• Jose Mujica (1935–), Uruguay president.^[39]
• Alan Vega (1938–), American vocalist, primarily known for his work with electronic protopunk duo, Suicide.^[40]

References

1. Alexander Duff. India and India missions. p. 68.
2. "Journal: Humanities, Volumes 40-44", publisher = University of Madras, p. 76 - 90
3. Levine, Michael P.; 1994; Pantheism: A Non-theistic Concept of Deity; Routledge, 1994; ISBN 0-203-01477-4, ISBN 978-0-203-01477-6
4. http://eternian.wordpress.com/2010/01/30/kaku2/
5. Vijay Tankha (2006). "Heraclitus of Ephesus". Ancient Greek Philosophy: Thales to Gorgias. Pearson Education India. p. 71. ISBN 9788177589399. By equating god with nature, Heraclitus could be regarded as a pantheist — everything is god.
6. "Dialogues on the Hindu Philosophy Comprising the Nyaya, the Sankhya, the Vedant ... by K. M. Banerjea", p. 434
7. Alexander Campbell Fraser "Philosophy of Theism", a collection of lectures from 1896 pg 80-82
8. Levine, Michael P.; 1994; Pantheism: A Non-theistic Concept of Deity; Routledge, 1994; ISBN 0-203-01477-4, ISBN 978-0-203-01477-6
9. Picton, J. Allanson, "Pantheism: Its Story and Significance", 1905
10. Fraser, Alexander Campbell "Philosophy of Theism", William Blackwood and Sons, 1895, p 163
11. Levine, Michael P.; 1994; Pantheism: A Non-theistic Concept of Deity; Routledge, 1994; ISBN 0-203-01477-4, ISBN 978-0-203-01477-6
12. Levine, Michael P.; 1994; Pantheism: A Non-theistic Concept of Deity; Routledge, 1994; ISBN 0-203-01477-4, ISBN 978-0-203-01477-6
13. Robert C. Holub (1986). Jost Hermand, ed. The Romantic School and Other Essays: Heinrich Heine. Continuum International Publishing Group. p. 223. ISBN 9780826402912. Goethe was as little a deist as Fichte; for he was a pantheist.
14. Jane Stuart Smith, Betty Carlson (1995). The Gift of Music: Great Composers and Their Influence (3 ed.). Crossway. p. 62. ISBN 9780891078692. Beethoven loved the natural world, but as a pantheist who worships nature rather than the Creator. "Beethoven was not the man to bow to anyone — even God!" said David Ewen.
15. Ludwig van Beethoven: The Complete Guide. PediaPress. pp. 50–52. Retrieved 23 October 2012.
16. Oscar Thompson (2005). How to Understand Music. Kessinger Publishing. p. 136. ISBN 9781417992027. To begin with, Beethoven was strongly individualistic and, in a sense, harshly antisocial. He realized the stature of his own genius. In Nature only did he recognize his equal and for that reason he was a pantheist of the most ardent order.
17. T. C. W. Blanning (2008). The Triumph of Music: The Rise of Composers, Musicians and Their Art. Harvard University Press. p. 99. ISBN 9780674031043.
18. Joseph McCabe (1945). A Biographical Dictionary of Ancient, Medieval, and Modern Freethinkers. Haldeman-Julius Publications. Retrieved 1 July 2012. His name is still a classic in the literature of his science and he was in his time a man of high international repute. In regard to religion he was, like Goeth, a Pantheist, as he shows particularly in his Aanden i Naturen (2 vols. 1849).
19. Levine, Michael P.; 1994; Pantheism: A Non-theistic Concept of Deity; Routledge, 1994; ISBN 0-203-01477-4, ISBN 978-0-203-01477-6
20. Howe, Daniel Walker, What Hath God Wrought: The Transformation of America, 1815–1848. ISBN 978-0-19-507894-7, p. 623.
21. Harding and Bode, eds., The Correspondence of Henry David Thoreau, 294. "I was born to be a pantheist."
22. Levine, Michael P.; 1994; Pantheism: A Non-theistic Concept of Deity; Routledge, 1994; ISBN 0-203-01477-4, ISBN 978-0-203-01477-6
23. "I am a pantheist" Interviews, Robert G. Ingersoll, p. 246.
24. Silvan S. Schweber (2000). "3". In the Shadow of the Bomb: Bethe, Oppenheimer, and the Moral Responsibility of the Scientist. Princeton University Press. p. 86. ISBN 9780691049892. There is another thread that tied Felix Klein to Wilhelm von Humboldt: his belief in a preestablished harmony. With Klein and his fellow mathematicians, the Leibnizian preestablished harmony became more specific. It became a preestablished harmony between physics and mathematics and the foundation of their pantheistic faith.
25. Henry-Louis de La Grange (1995). "May–August 1906". Gustav Mahler: Volume 3. Vienna: Triumph and Disillusion (1904–1907). Oxford University Press. p. 455. ISBN 9780193151604. His pantheistic beliefs made him see the manifestations of God's will everywhere, and sensed its 'miracles and secrets ... and contemplated them with the deep respect and touching astonishment of a child'.
26. Léon Vallas (1933). Claude Debussy: His Life and Works. Oxford University Press, H. Milford. p. 225. He made a pantheistic profession of faith: I do not practise religion in accordance with the sacred rites. I have made mysterious Nature my religion. I do not believe that a man is any nearer to God for being clad in priestly garments, nor that one place in a town is better adapted to meditation than another. When I gaze at a sunset sky and spend hours contemplating its marvelous ever-changing beauty, an extraordinary emotion overwhelms me. Nature in all its vastness is truthfully reflected in my sincere though feeble soul. Around me are the trees stretching up their branches to the skies, the perfumed flowers gladdening the meadow, the gentle grass-carpetted earth, ... and my hands unconsciously assume an attitude of adoration. ... To feel the supreme and moving beauty of the spectacle to which Nature invites her ephemeral guests! ... that is what I call prayer.
27. Andrew Reid Fuller, Psychology and Religion: Eight Points of View, p. 111, "Jungian pantheism"
28. Spencer, John, "New Heavens, New Earth, 2002, p 25 "It was from this pantheistic world-view that the famous psychologist Carl Jung developed his notion of a “collective unconscious,”"
29. WK Kay, "Jung and world religions" 1997, Taylor & Francis "He believed himself to be possessed of two personalities, one pointing towards science and the other towards pantheism and the arts.".
30. Einstein, Albert "Gelegentliches", Soncino Gesellschaft, Berlin, 1929, p. 9, ""This firm belief, a belief bound up with a deep feeling, in a superior mind that reveals itself in the world of experience, represents my conception of God. In common parlance this may be described as "pantheistic" (Spinoza)."
31. Isaacson, Walter (2008). Einstein: His Life and Universe. New York: Simon and Schuster, pp. 388-389. Reported by the New York Times 25 April 1929 under the headline "Einstein believes in 'Spinoza's God'"
32. Levine, Michael P.; 1994; Pantheism: A Non-theistic Concept of Deity; Routledge, 1994; ISBN 0-203-01477-4, ISBN 978-0-203-01477-6
33. Levine, Michael P.; 1994; Pantheism: A Non-theistic Concept of Deity; Routledge, 1994; ISBN 0-203-01477-4, ISBN 978-0-203-01477-6
34. John S. Rigden (2000). Rabi, Scientist and Citizen. Harvard University Press. p. 229. ISBN 9780674004351. Rabi is deeply religious. Eschewing religious practices, and an anthropomorphic concept of God, Rabi has what Einstein referred to as a "cosmic religious feeling" — a religious sense that transcends dogma and institutions.
35. "We are now sufficiently advanced to consider resources other than materialistic, but they are tenuous, intangible, and vulnerable to misapplication. They are, in fact, the symbols of spiritual life -- a vast impersonal pantheism -- transcending the confused myths and prescriptions that are presumed to clarify ethical and moral conduct. The clear realities of nature seen with the inner eye of the spirit reveal the ultimate echo of God. ..." - Adams, Ansel (1950). My Camera in the National Parks. Boston: Houghton Mifflin. p. 97. Retrieved June 30, 2009.
36. Adir Cohen (1994). The Gate of Light: Janusz Korczak, the Educator and Writer Who Overcame the Holocaust. Fairleigh Dickinson Univ Press. p. 75. ISBN 978-0-8386-3523-0. Korczak's God is a pantheistic one, embracing the entire world.
37. "As an unabashed pantheist I am naturally a full-blooded transubstantiationist, knowing full well that the ground wheat of bread and crushed grapes of wine are the body and blood of Christ, the Anointed One, or olive-oiled man who is so slippery that he has no hangups." - Watts, Alan (2007). In My Own Way: An Autobiography. New World Library. p. 72. ISBN 978-1-57731-584-1. Retrieved June 30, 2009.
38. Wendy Schuman. "Pete Seeger's Session". Beliefnet, Inc. Retrieved 16 August 2013. I feel most spiritual when I’m out in the woods. I feel part of nature. Or looking up at the stars. [I used to say] I was an atheist. Now I say, it’s all according to your definition of God. According to my definition of God, I’m not an atheist. Because I think God is everything. Whenever I open my eyes I’m looking at God. Whenever I’m listening to something I’m listening to God.
39. Montevideo Portal (October 7, 2013). Montevideo Portal "Biografía novelada" Check |url= value (help). Commandant Facundo tells about the life of Jose 'Pepe' Mujica and his exceptional path: from playful and working child, to revolted and in love young, from fighter and political militant to pantheist, earth-lover farmer." (Original Spanish: "Comandante Facundo narra la vida de José Pepe Mujica y su trayectoria excepcional: de niño travieso y trabajador, a joven rebelde y enamorado; de combatiente y militante político, a panteísta cultivador amante de la tierra.)
40. Paul Lester (October 10, 2008). "Suicide: How the godfathers of punk kept the faith". The Jewish Chronicle Online. Vega is similarly ambivalent. He alludes to the "miraculous" nature of his career with Suicide and fateful meeting with Rev, begging the question - does he believe in a higher power? "I distrust the name ‘God' but, yes, I do believe in a higher power," he says. He adds that he shares the rationalist stance of Spinoza, the 17th-century Jewish philosopher and "pantheist theologian". "God is in all of us," he says, before deciding: "There is an immense power. There has to be."

External links

• Pantheist Index
• Pantheist Panorama