Research Interests

• Philosophy of Religion and Philosophical Theology (contemporary and medieval) 
• Metaphysics (especially the metaphysics of participation) 
• Medieval Philosophy and Theology (e.g. Eriugena, Anselm, Hildegard of Bingen, Aquinas, Julian of Norwich, Nicholas of Cusa) 
• Contemplative Studies (especially Christian contemplative traditions or cross-cultural contemplative approaches) 
• Religion and Ecology (especially ecotheology, the book of nature, contemplative ecologies, the metaphysics of nature) 
• Romanticism and Philosophy (especially Owen Barfield and Coleridge) 
• Esoteric Studies (especially Sophiology)

Biography

Jacob Sherman is Professor and Chair of the Philosophy and Religion Department at the California Institute of Integral Studies and Chair of the program in Philosophy, Cosmology, and Consciousness at CIIS. He teaches, as well, in the Ecology, Spirituality, and Religion program at CIIS. Professor Sherman received his PhD in philosophy of religion from the University of Cambridge. He taught previously at King’s College London and from 2014 – 17 held a visiting appointment as University Lecturer in Philosophy of Religion at the University of Cambridge. By training a philosopher, theologian, and religious studies scholar, he is the author of Partakers of the Divine: Contemplation and the Practice of Philosophy, and editor, with Jorge Ferrer, of The Participatory Turn: Spirituality, Mysticism, Religious Studies. The author of over two dozen peer-review articles, essays, and chapters, his writings have appeared in publications such as The Journal of the American Academy of Religion, Modern Theology, the International Journal of Philosophy and Theology, and Theology and Science. He is an elected Fellow of the International Society for Science and Religion, serves on the steering committee for the Contemplative Studies Unity at the American Academy of Religion, and is the Owen Barfield Subject Editor for the Journal of Inklings Studies.

Education

PhD, University of Cambridge; MA, Philosophy, Cosmology and Consciousness (CIIS)

Courses

PARP 6150 The Book of Nature; PARP 6833 The Evolution of Religious Consciousness: From the Paleolithic to the Axial Age; PARP 6834 The Evolution of the Modern Self: From Axial Roots to Postmodern Threshold; PARP-6286 Evolution of Modern Society: Spirituality in a Secular Age; PARP 6130 Religious Metaphysics after Modernity