A growing consensus of scientists, scholars, and visionaries now recognize that the Earth community is facing an unprecedented evolutionary challenge. The ecological, political, and spiritual crisis of late modernity calls for a fundamental reorientation of our civilization, including a transformation of both our institutions and our own consciousness. The cultural historian Thomas Berry has called this task "the Great Work."
The Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness (PCC) program has been designed to help shape the intellectual, moral, and spiritual leadership necessary for meeting this historic challenge. Drawing upon some of the most powerful ideas and impulses of our philosophical, scientific, and religious traditions, the faculty has constructed an intensive multidisciplinary course of study to help accelerate students' journeys into their particular leadership roles within this work.
The PCC curriculum was designed in the early 1990s by a group of distinguished scholars, teachers, and activists who share a sense of the unique gravity and promise of our moment in history. The program is inspired by a three-fold vision: to revive the original essence of Western philosophy as the love of wisdom, to pursue a truly multidisciplinary study of cosmology with a focus on the evolutionary unfolding of the universe and the Earth community, and to explore the inner worlds of consciousness and the psyche. Central to the PCC vision is the conviction that these three aspirations profoundly overlap and affect each other.
Each of the major areas in PCC encompasses specific fields. Philosophy at PCC embraces such subjects as the evolution of consciousness, Western esotericism, ecofeminism, and new paradigm studies. Cosmology in PCC includes reflection on the latest discoveries from astronomic, evolutionary, and complexity sciences as well as the emergence of cosmological and ecological perspectives in politics, culture, and religion. The study of Consciousness in PCC incorporates depth psychology, archetypal studies, cultural history, transpersonal theory, mythology, and religious studies. While the program is primarily grounded in the Western cultural and intellectual tradition, it is enriched by insights from Asian spiritual philosophies and indigenous world views. Finally, the perspectives studied and developed within the PCC community are tested in the fire of one's own experience.
The Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness program supports those called to meet our historic challenge in three distinct but related areas:
- By offering new perspectives and paradigms to build a better world. These include the emerging new cosmology, as well as cultural, psychospiritual, and eco-social accounts of who we are, where we have come from, and where we might be heading.
- By exploring new ways of thinking and being that are both visionary and pragmatic and that resist the paradigm of fragmentation and reductionism that continues to reign within the dominant culture.
- By offering students a challenging, supportive, and heartful learning community in which to find their voice as leaders, capable of understanding world views and assessing their merits through a deep and broad grasp of cultural history and contemporary critiques.
