Human liberation has become an epochal challenge in today’s world, requiring not only emancipation from oppressive structures but also from the oppressive self. It is a multidimensional struggle and aspiration in which knowledge – self, social and spiritual – can play a transformative role. ‘Knowledge and Human Liberation: Towards Planetary Realizations’ undertakes such a journey of transformation, and seeks to rethink knowledge vis-à-vis the familiar themes of human interest, critical theory, enlightenment, ethnography, democracy, pluralism, rationality, secularism and cosmopolitanism. The volume also features a Foreword by John Clammer (United Nations University, Tokyo) and an Afterword by Fred Dallmayr (University of Notre Dame).

In this book, author Ge Ling Shang provides a systematic comparison of original texts by Zhuangzi (fourth century BCE) and Nietzsche (1846–1900), under the rubric of religiosity, to challenge those who have customarily relegated both thinkers to relativism, nihilism, escapism, pessimism, or anti-religion. Shang closely examines Zhuangzi's and Nietzsche's respective critiques of metaphysics, morals, language, knowledge, and humanity in general and proposes a conception of the philosophical outlooks of Zhuangzi and Nietzsche as complementary. In the creative and vital spirit of Nietzsche, as in the tranquil and inward spirit of Zhuangzi, Shang argues that a surprisingly similar vision and aspiration toward human liberation and freedom exists—one in which spiritual transformation is possible by religiously affirming life in this world as sacred and divine.

Does humanity possess the freedom to think and act, or are we always caused and determined to think and act--exactly how we think and act--by things outside of our control? If we are always causally determined to think and act by things outside of our control, then how can humans be genuinely responsible for any of our thoughts or following actions? However, if humanity is genuinely free and responsible for at least some of our thoughts and actions, then how can the Christian rationally affirm the doctrine that God is totally sovereign and predestines all things? In Human Freedom, Divine Knowledge, and Mere Molinism, Timothy A. Stratton surveys the history of theological thought from Augustine to Edwards and reaches surprising historical conclusions supporting what he refers to as "limited libertarian freedom." Stratton goes further to offer multiple arguments appealing to Scripture, theology, and philosophy that each conclude humanity does, in fact, possess libertarian freedom. He then appeals to the work of Luis de Molina and offers unique arguments concluding that God possesses middle knowledge. If this is the case, then God can be completely sovereign and predestine all things without violating human freedom and responsibility.

Nasir-i Khusraw was a leading Ismaili poet and theologian-philosopher of the Fatimid period whose writings have had a major formative influence on the Ismaili communities of Iran, Afghanistan and Central Asia. The bulk of his surviving work was produced in exile in a remote mountainous region of Badakhshan where he sought refuge from persecution in his native district of Balkh. This is the first of his doctrinal treatises to be translated into English. Consisting of a series of 30 questions and answers, it addresses some of the central theological and philosophical issues of his time from an Ismaili perspective, ranging from the creation of the world and the nature of the soul to the questions of human free will and accountability in the afterlife.

Rather than see love as a natural form of affection, Love As Human Freedom sees love as a practice that changes over time through which new social realities are brought into being. Love brings about, and helps us to explain, immense social-historical shifts—from the rise of feminism and the emergence of bourgeois family life, to the struggles for abortion rights and birth control and the erosion of a gender-based division of labor. Drawing on Hegel, Paul A. Kottman argues that love generates and explains expanded possibilities for freely lived lives. Through keen interpretations of the best known philosophical and literary depictions of its topic—including Shakespeare, Plato, Nietzsche, Ovid, Flaubert, and Tolstoy—his book treats love as a fundamental way that we humans make sense of temporal change, especially the inevitability of death and the propagation of life.

Paul D. Molnar discusses issues related to the concepts of freedom and necessity in trinitarian doctrine. He considers the implications of “non-conceptual knowledge of God” by comparing the approaches of Karl Rahner and T. F. Torrance. He also reconsiders T. F. Torrance's “new” natural theology and illustrates why Christology must be central when discussing liberation theology. Further, he explores Catholic and Protestant relations by comparing the views of Elizabeth Johnson, Walter Kasper and Karl Barth, as well as relations among Christians, Jews and Muslims by considering whether it is appropriate to claim that all three religions should be understood to be united under the concept of monotheism. Finally, he probes the controversial issues of how to name God in a way that underscores the full equality of women and men and how to understand “universalism” by placing Torrance and David Bentley Hart into conversation on that subject.