Tripp chats with Leon Niemoczynski about a philosophical approach to sacred nature. 

Leon Niemoczynski teaches in the Departments of Philosophy and Theology at Immaculata University near Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; and he is also currently a Visiting Assistant Professor of Philosophy in the Department of Philosophy and Religious Studies at East Stroudsburg University, East Stroudsburg, Pennsylvania.

Dr. Niemoczynski’s research focuses on the philosophy of nature, where he is especially interested in issues pertaining to philosophical naturalism, logic and metaphysics, aesthetics, German idealism, philosophical ecology, animal ethics, environmental philosophy, and environmental philosophy’s relationship to the philosophy of religion. He is the author/co-editor of Animal Experience: Consciousness and Emotions in the Natural World (Open Humanities Press, 2014), A Philosophy of Sacred Nature: Prospects for Ecstatic Naturalism (Lexington Books, 2014) and as sole author, Charles Sanders Peirce and a Religious Metaphysics of Nature (Lexington Books, 2011).

He has published in numerous anthologies and journals including Process Studies, The Review of Metaphysics, The American Journal of Theology and Philosophy, and The Journal for the Study of Religion, Nature, and Culture, to name but just a few. His most recent book chapter covered the philosophy of Quentin Meillassoux and the radical theology of John D. Caputo, which was published in The Future of Continental Philosophy of Religion (Indiana University Press, 2014).

Leon is currently working on his newest book tentatively titled Speculative Naturalism: An Ecological Metaphysics which draws from the metaphysics and theological panentheistic-process perspectives of C.S. Peirce and Alfred North Whitehead, Gilles Deleuze, Friedrich Schelling, G.W.F. Hegel, and Quentin Meillassoux.

He resides in the Pocono Mountains of northeastern Pennsylvania with his wife Nalina.