David J. Temple is the author of a book, First Principles and First Values, that I am very excited about. But there is no such person as Temple. The endnotes in the book give us an explanation.

David J. Temple is a pseudonym created for enabling ongoing collaborative authorship at the Center for World Philosophy and Religion. The two primary authors behind David J. Temple are Marc Gafni and Zak Stein. For different projects specific writers will be named as part of the collaboration. In this volume Ken Wilber joins Dr. Gafni and Dr. Stein.

I think I first became aware of Zak Stein when his essay, COVID-19: A WAR BROKE OUT IN HEAVEN, was published on March 26, 2020 by Emerge, an initiative of Perspectiva which is led by Jonathan Rowson.

My goal in writing this is to offer something helpful to those who are searching for a path out of reaction and into reflection as a basis for right action. You can find opinions, graphs, and facts about the pandemic elsewhere. I am instead tracking the impact of events on human development and attempting to understand how the events unfolding are profoundly increasing each person’s everyday “task demands.” At a certain point, humility about what can be known and done dawns on us, and a great learning process begins. Until then there is no way forward; we must let go of yesterday’s frameworks in order to be ready for tomorrow.  This crisis can be characterised in many ways, but it cannot be stressed strongly enough that we are in an abrupt educational crisis of a particular kind.

Zak Stein is also on The Consilience Project Team, although that project appears to now be stalled.

I first became aware of Ken Wilber and Integral Theory about ten years ago. My worldview was once again in transition and I was retired with time to explore. I also found the work of Frank Visser, a critic of Wilber and Integral. For various reasons, I did not go very far down the Integral path. However, it seems to me that metamodernists are standing on the shoulders of giants, Wilber being one.

I was only vaguely aware of Marc Gafni and only vaguely aware of the controversy surrounding him. I decided to dig a little deeper. There are Allegations of sexual assault.

In 2004, Gafni was accused by two women of sexual assaulting them during the 1980s when they were teenagers. In 2004, he acknowledged a nine-month relationship with a 14-year-old girl when he was 19. He denied the relationship was abusive, describing it as consensual. As a result of these allegations, Gafni returned his rabbinical ordination from Rabbi Shlomo Riskin to spare his former teacher "any further embarrassment" after Riskin expressed he wanted to revoke Gafni's ordination on the grounds that Gafni's theology had extended "beyond the bounds of Orthodoxy".

From the References in Wikipedia it is clear that this story did not fade away. I read Marc Gafni Tells His Story — and Experts Respond which was published on November 3, 2016. I also read Marc Gafni Named In Latest Sexual Abuse Lawsuit Against Yeshiva University which was published on August 23, 2019. I read the affidavit filed by Jane Doe on August 14, 2019. I could find no more recent information on this matter. I also skimmed the Marc Gafni Controversy and Additional Resources on his own website.

I am not drawing conclusions, but it does seem wise to me that the Center for World Philosophy and Religion is publishing using a pseudonym. For now, my focus will be on the content of the book First Principles and First Values rather than the characters behind it. I like the vision of the Center.

The vision of the Center is a world united in and through diversity by a New Story of Value that dignifies humanity and welcomes us home to the Universe. We imagine a world that keeps the sacred covenant between generations guided by a memory of the future. Our hope is that our writings and teachings will serve to catalyze a now necessary reweaving of the human story. We call this New Story CosmoErotic Humanism.