The Cosmos as a World City

A Hylomorphic Foundation for Civic Renewal

Bibliographic Data

ID3322516
AuthorsWilliam M R Simpson (0000-0002-6734-5711, Durham University, corresponding author)
Year2025
Volume16
Issue8
Pages991
Publication date2025-07-30
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueReligions (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 2077-1444 • E-ISSN: 2077-1444
PublisherMDPI AG (PUBLISHER • IT)
DOI10.3390/rel16080991
OpenAlexW4412761429
LanguageEN
References cited27

This paper contends that the West's civic crisis is, at root, a cosmological crisis: civic renewal requires metaphysical repair. It is insufficient to endorse virtue ethics and demand civic virtues without a deeper account of reality that can sustain them. What is needed is a cosmology-one informed by contemporary science-in which nature, personhood, and political community are meaningfully situated within an ordered whole. Drawing on the Platonic isomorphism between soul, city, and cosmos, I outline a hylomorphic framework with the potential to integrate key elements of neo-Aristotelian, Stoic, and Thomist metaphysics with developments in contemporary physics. Against the dominant atomistic and holistic paradigms, I argue that hylomorphism offers a more adequate account of personhood, the polis, and the cosmos itself as an intelligible whole

Art history · Political science · Sociology · Classical Philosophy and Thought · Engineering · History · Law · Medieval Philosophy and Theology · Theology and Philosophy of Evil

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