Feeling Lost in the Noise?
Discover Mediated by Meaning — a philosophical method to transform confusion into clarity, anxiety into purpose, and fragmentation into meaning.
What You’ll Learn
The four levels of knowing that unlock clarity
How stories and belief systems shape perception and action
A 10-minute daily practice to re-align meaning and responsibility
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About the Book
Mediated by Meaning bridges two intellectual worlds—Jordan Peterson’s psychology and Bernard Lonergan’s philosophy—to offer a rigorous path to authentic self-transcendence.New
📘 Published by Pickwick Publications (Wipf & Stock).New
About the Author
Steven Umbrello
Steven Umbrello is currently the Managing Director at the Institute for Ethics and Emerging Technologies and a research fellow at the University of Turin working on the theology of Bernard Lonergan applied to artificial intelligence. He is also an associate researcher at the Collège des Bernardins, where he works on digital humanism, and was previously a research fellow at the Delft University of Technology and the Center for Religious Studies at the Bruno Kessler Foundation. He is the editor of several international academic journals, including the International Journal of Technoethics, the Journal of Responsible Technology, and the Journal of Ethics and Emerging Technologies. He was formerly a Stiftung Südtiroler Sparkasse Global Fellow at Eurac Research, where he worked on the philosophy, religion, and society program. He is the author of several books, including his most recent, Technology Ethics: Responsible Innovation and Design Strategies (2024).
Endorsements
“Many are the legitimate aficionados of Lonergan who, understandably so, keep a wary distance from Peterson, and many are the Peterson acolytes who know little or nothing about the layered and nuanced insights of Lonergan. It takes a creative, judicious, and synthesizing mind and imagination to see where Lonergan and Peterson meet and why. Mediated by Meaning by Steven Umbrello has done what seems to be the impossible, but he has midwifed a dialogue between Lonergan and Peterson in a discerning and convincing way. This is, indeed, a 10-bell book worthy of many a meditative read, the path taken worth the walking and destination reached worthy of a fuller dia-logos.”
“In 2016, when JP was catapulted to international fame—notoriety, according to many—it was as if a flare had gone off at night, illuminating the disposition of forces on a battlefield. Many were shocked both by the outpouring of vitriol aimed at this individual and by the passionate defense mounted by his followers, no one more than Peterson himself, who, up to this point, had spent his academic career conscientiously wrestling with meaning in the service of clinical psychology. To understand our current cultural moment, one simply must grasp the Peterson phenomenon. Steven Umbrello’s Mediated by Meaning offers a vital resource for those willing to take up this challenge.”
“In Mediated by Meaning, Steven Umbrello undertakes a thoroughgoing integration of the thought of Jordan Peterson and Bernard Lonergan. Through his clear and rigorous analysis, Umbrello reveals the complementarity of Peterson’s and Lonergan’s ideas. He argues that Lonergan’s general method for “integrating cognition, values, and human decision-making” can bring greater coherence to Peterson’s important psychological and cultural insights. At the same time, Umbrello shows how Peterson’s practical orientation puts meat on the bones of Lonergan’s abstract framework. This level-headed treatment of two major thinkers should be read by anyone interested in how meaning and value are created and transformed.”