The Revelation of Nature

Book excerpt: This title was first published in 2001. "The Revelation of Nature" embraces pragmatism, aesthetics and metaphysics in an effort to narrate a fundamental relationship between the contemporary world and the natural source and site for any world of meaning. Beginning with an exploration of Heidegger's seminal insight into the way we exist - that human existence must be understood in its everydayness - Matthews links these ideas to Heidegger's interpretation of the development of Western history in terms of its grounding metaphysical determinations to do with truth, reality and the nature of things. Matthews concludes that our everyday lives are informed and shaped by intellectual precepts and normative modes of behaviour that promote the combination and enslavement of both nature and ourselves within a mass technological grid. This book breaks new ground in theology, without underpinning the analysis with a particular religious viewpoint.