The article analyses mystical teaching of Hasidism in the early works of Martin Buber (before publication of “I and Thou” in 1923) in the context of the concept of Orientalism by E. Said. Analysis is based on the M. Buber’s appeal to Hasidic sources in the 1900s-1910s (in particular, in his first two collections, “Rabbi Nachman of Bratslav” and “The Legend of Baal Shem”). Two factors allow examining Hasidism in the early Buber’s writings in the context of (...) Orientalism: a growing interest in the Orient in the circles of European Jewish intellectuals during late 19th cent, as well as the negative stereotype of traditional East European Jew (Ostjuden, “an Eastern Jews”) present in the modernized Jewish society. The article demonstrates that this stereotype is closely related to the criticism of Hasidism by representatives of the Jewish Enlightenment (Haskalah). In particular, the accusations of traditional Eastern European Jews of inclination to vanity and prejudice, as well as of subjugation to the infinite power of the miracle workers (tzadikim), clearly have a source in maskilic criticism of Hasidism. The Buber’s turn towards Hasidism took place in mid-1900s. It was connected with Buber’s interest in Oriental mysticism, and with his social activities as “cultural Zionist”. Overcoming the “Ostjude” stereotype turned out to be an essential part of Buber’s cultural program. Buber reconstructs Jewish mysticism as an integral phenomenon, the subject of academic study. According to Buber, the most striking manifestation of this phenomenon is the Eastern-Euro pean mystical movement of Hasidism. It is from Ostjuden that the source of Hasidic wisdom is linked, which in the essays of the cycle of “Judaism” is a true “light from the East.”. (shrink)

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin , eminent Jesuit scientist and religious write, was one of the great Christian mystics of the twentieth century. Yet scholars of mysticism rarely discuss his works or typology of mysticism. I argue that the little studied, early Writings in Time or War, together with his late autobiographical essays, provide the hermeneutical key for understanding Teilhard's pan‐christic mysticism. My paper examines especially the experiential and cosmic dimensions of his pan‐christic mysticism of (...) union and communion with Christ through all things. This mysticism belongs to the kataphatic rather than apophatic tradition of Christian mysticism. It is deeply rooted in, and in full continuity with, the catholic tradition but through introducing innovative elements, it is at the same time also thoroughly transformative. I show this in relation to Teilhard's understanding of the Spiritual Exercises and, in particular, to that of the “Sacred Heart” whose meaning he greatly extended by understanding it in a universal, cosmic sense. He so frequently used the metaphors of fire and heart—well known, traditional images of Christian mysticism—that I describe Teilhard's mysticism as a fire and heart mysticism. I also discuss the significance of his typology of mysticism in relation to the comparative study of mysticism. (shrink)

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, eminent Jesuit scientist and religious write, was one of the great Christian mystics of the twentieth century. Yet scholars of mysticism rarely discuss his works or typology of mysticism. I argue that the little studied, early Writings in Time or War, together with his late autobiographical essays, provide the hermeneutical key for understanding Teilhard's pan‐christic mysticism. My paper examines especially the experiential and cosmic dimensions of his pan‐christic mysticism of union (...) and communion with Christ through all things. This mysticism belongs to the kataphatic rather than apophatic tradition of Christian mysticism. It is deeply rooted in, and in full continuity with, the catholic tradition but through introducing innovative elements, it is at the same time also thoroughly transformative. I show this in relation to Teilhard's understanding of the Spiritual Exercises and, in particular, to that of the “Sacred Heart” whose meaning he greatly extended by understanding it in a universal, cosmic sense. He so frequently used the metaphors of fire and heart—well known, traditional images of Christian mysticism—that I describe Teilhard's mysticism as a fire and heart mysticism. I also discuss the significance of his typology of mysticism in relation to the comparative study of mysticism. (shrink)

Few figures have been of such enduring importance as Ibn Sina, also known as Avicenna (980-1037 AD), the great Persian philosopher and physician of the Abassid period. This work is a study of the fourth part of Ibn Sina's late and most comprehensive book al-Isharat wat-Tanbihat, Remarks and Admonitions, a book which Ibn Sine describes as 'the cream of the truth', containing 'the best pieces of wisdom' expressed 'in sensitive words'. The present volume includes an introduction, discussing the nature of (...) the fourth part of al-Isharat and the procedures followed in analyzing and translating it; a lengthy analysis of Ibn Sina's ideas on the three main topics in this part of al-Isharat (the nature of happiness, the stations of the knowers, and the signs manifested by the knowers); and a translation of this part. The work shows that, to Ibn Sina, knowledge of the eternal aspects of the universe, primarily of God, is the highest human objective and the only thing that secures human happiness or heavenly existence. While no permanent knowledge of this kind is possible for a human being on earth, signs of its temporary acquisition are evidenced in many ways, one of which is possession of powers that a person who does not know the secrets of the universe may consider extraordinary. Although the focus of this volume is on the fourth part of al-Isharat, many references are made to some of Ibn Sina's other writings by way of clarifying certain points and placing this part of al-Isharat in the context of Ibn Sina's general philosophy. (shrink)

Ian Hacking has defined himself as a philosopher in the analytic tradition. However, he has also recognized the profound influence that Michel Foucault had on much of his work. In this article I analyse the specific imprint of certain works by Foucault—in particular Les mots et les choses—in two of Hacking’s early works: Why Does Language Matter to Philosophy? and The Emergence of Probability. I propose that these texts not only share a debt of Foucauldian thought, but (...) also are part of what I believe is Hacking’s central project: the analysis of the historical and situated conditions of possibility for the emergence of concepts and of objects, inspired also by the French philosopher’s thought. (shrink)

__Winner of the 2011 Bainton Prize for Reference Works__ The “canon” of Hispanic mysticism is expanding. By taking a more inclusive approach to studying mysticism in its “marginal” manifestations, we draw mysticism—in all its complex iterations—back toward its rightful place at the center of early modern spiritual experience.

Towards the end of 1911, Russell complains that philosophy has unfortunately not produced a set of religious beliefs that he can rely on in his personal life. Early in his career philosophy had appeared very promising. But the adoption of G.E. Moores's philosophical views put paid to the "last hope of getting any creed out of philosophy". My paper is an attempt to show that Russell ought to celebrate, and not complain about the products of his philosophical endeavours. His (...) correspondence with Lady Ottoline Morrell contains a fascinating methodological hypothesis on the relationship between emotions and understanding: an hypothesis that can be used to produce the religion that Russell is after in 1911. This view will later form the basis of some of Russell's most obscure writings on religion - namely, his work on mysticism. (shrink)

In her important work, Hasidism as Mysticism: Quietistic Elements in Eighteenth Century Hasidic Thought, the late Rivkah Schatz-Uffenheimer depicted early eighteenth-century Hasidism as a movement with pronounced ‘quietist tendencies’. In this paper I raise several difficulties with this thesis. These follow from social-activist features of early Hasidism as well as from a selection from the writings of leading early Hasidic masters. I conclude that a major stream of thought in early Hasidim was not quietist in (...) tendency. Finally, I compare the intentions of the masters I cite to some non-quietist themes in Eastern mystical thought. (Published Online July 10 2006). (shrink)

The purpose of this study is exposition on the themes of method and mysticism in the work of Simone Weil. Nearly a decade before the onset of her first mystical experience, Weil developed a method to be rigorously applied in daily philosophical reflection. She outlines this method in her dissertation on Descartes (1929-1930). I examine the question of how Weil applied method to philosophical reflection on her mystical experiences (onset 1938-1939). I analyze Weil’s mystical experiences as a type of (...) transformative experience in L. A. Paul’s strict sense of the term. On Paul’s view, an experience is transformative if it is both epistemically and personally transformative. An experience is epistemically transformative if the only way to know what it is like to have it is to have it yourself. An experience is personally transformative if it changes your point of view, including your core preferences (Paul, 2014). I present a thought experiment and textual evidence to motivate the claim that Weil’s mystical experiences meet Paul’s conditions for transformative experience. I then propose two epistemological facts that can be revealed by philosophical reflection on mystical experience. First, it is possible to read meaning erroneously in the appearances of things. Second, it is possible to come to hold to the certainty of a conviction for reasons that elude the intellect. My findings suggest that Weil’s late views on philosophy accommodate these two epistemological constraints, thereby demonstrating a possible connection between Weil’s mystical experiences and her mature views on the nature, scope, and proper method of philosophy. However, my preliminary findings also suggest that Weil’s early work on method may have anticipated these epistemological obstacles prior to the onset of her first mystical experience. Thus, further exposition of Weil’s method is needed to support or elucidate the claim (Rozelle-Stone and Davis, 2021) that Weil’s epistemology underwent significant changes because of her mystical experiences. (shrink)

This article combines the disciplines of textual/linguistic analysis, anthropology, and perceptual psychology to examine selected ancient Jewish mystical texts that claim to describe the praxis for ascents into heaven and encounters with angelic spirits in order to reconstruct the psychosocial context of these literary works. Specifically, the article examines Hekhalot or "Divine Palaces" texts that deal with hydromancy, giving attention to their mythic–symbolic assumptions, their described preparatory and triggering rituals, and their accounts of the ASC (altered states of consciousness) (...) visions resulting from these rituals that are experienced by the practitioners. The article suggests that these accounts correlate with ASC practices identified in the literature and additionally suggests that although the mystical texts are written to resemble biblical accounts of revelatory experiences, the texts under consideration are more than works of fabulous imagination; they are literary artifacts of an actual ecstatic ASC praxis among the Jews of Late Antiquity. (shrink)

Interiority and Law presents a groundbreaking reassessment of a medieval Jewish classic, Baḥya ibn Paquda's Guide to the Duties of the Hearts. Michaelis reads this work anew as a revolutionary intervention in Jewish law, or halakha. Overturning perceptions of Baḥya as the shaper of an ethical-religious form of life that exceeds halakha, Michaelis offers a pioneering historical and conceptual analysis of the category of "inner commandments" developed by Baḥya. Interiority and Law reveals that Baḥya's main effort revolved around establishing a (...) new legal formation - namely, the "duties of the hearts" - which would deal entirely with human interiority. Michaelis takes up the implications of Baḥya's radical innovation, examining his unique mystical model of proximity to God, which he based on an increasingly growing fulfillment of the inner commandments. With an integrative approach that puts Baḥya in dialogue with other medieval Muslim and Jewish religious thinkers, this work offers a fresh perspective on our understanding of the interconnectedness of the dynamic, neighboring religious traditions of Judaism and Islam. Contributing to conversations in the history of religion, Jewish studies, and medieval studies on interiority and mysticism, this book reveals Baḥya as a revolutionary and demanding thinker of Jewish law. (shrink)

v. 1. Llibre de virtuts e de pecats -- v. 2. Llibre del gentil e dels savis -- v. 6. Començaments de filosofia.

v. 1. Doctrina pueril. Libre de l'ordre de cavalleria. Libre de clerecia. Art de confessió -- v. 2, <4-6 >. Libre de contemplació en Deu .

Bergson interprets Plotinian mysticism in the light of his distinction between two different kinds of mysticism: one which translates union with God into action, the other which translates it into contemplation. Plotinus embodies the highest expression of the latter, intellectual mysticism. This thesis runs through Bergson’s oeuvre from his early works to Les Deux Sources de la morale et de la religion. The present study traces its origins back to a reading of Ennead VI 9 (...) on the basis of notes in the philosopher’s own hand, in all likelihood pertaining to the lecture course he delivered at the Collège de Fance in 1901-1902. These notes, here published for the first time, show that a careful engagement with the Plotinian text led Bergson to stress the continuity between two forms of ecstasy, regarded as stages in the soul’s return to its source: in the first stage, the soul reverts to the intelligible and identifies with it (intellectual ecstasy); in the second, the intellect, united with itself, attains ultimate unity (supra-intellectual ecstasy). In both cases, the soul does not identify with God’s creative will and hence the ecstasy it experiences is still a theoretical, or intellectual, one. (shrink)

• Examines the Oldawan, the Ancient Soul of Africa, and its correlation with what modern psychologists have defined as the collective unconscious • Draws on archaeology, DNA research, history, and depth psychology to reveal how the biological and spiritual roots of religion and science came out of Africa • Explores the reflections of our African unconscious in the present confrontation in the Americas, in the work of the Founding Fathers, and in modern psychospirituality The fossil record confirms that humanity originated (...) in Africa. Yet somehow we have overlooked that Africa is also at the root of all that makes us human--our spirituality, civilization, arts, sciences, philosophy, and our conscious and unconscious minds. In this African-revisioned look at the unfolding of human history and culture, Edward Bruce Bynum reveals how our collective unconscious is African. Drawing on archaeology, DNA research, history, depth psychology, and the biological and spiritual roots of religion and science, he demonstrates how all modern human beings, regardless of ethnic or racial categorizations, share a common deeper identity, both psychically and genetically, connected with a primordial African unconscious. Exploring the beginning of early religions, spirituality, and mysticism in Africa, along with philosophy, art, and science, the author looks at the Egyptian Nubian role in the rise of civilization and the emergence of Kemetic Egypt, revealing how and why ancient Egypt was separated from the rest of Africa in the Western mind--despite it being the most sophisticated expression of the Mother Continent. He examines the Oldawan, the Ancient Soul, and its correlation with what modern psychologists have defined as the collective unconscious. Revealing the spiritual and psychological ramifications of our shared African ancestry, the author examines its reflections in the present confrontation in the Americas, in the work of the Founding Fathers, and in modern Black spirituality, which arose from African diaspora religion and philosophy. By recognizing our shared African unconscious, the matrix that forms the deepest luminous core of human identity, we can learn to see and feel that the differences between one person and another are merely superficial and ultimately there is no real separation between the material and the spiritual. (shrink)

The publication of Moshe Idel’s book, Kabbalah: New Perspectives marks a turning point in the field of Jewish mysticism. In this volume, Moshe Idel offered phenomenology as an alternative key to appreciating the history and ideas of Jewish mystical traditions. This study returns to this book in order to assess and critique the meaning and function of phenomenology in his early scholarship, as a prelude to the developing and possibly changing methodologies that he has employed in numerous studies (...) published since the appearance of his now classic study. The study considers the connection between phenomenology and experience and its role within the multiple perspectives suggested in the volume. Moshe Idel’s methodology is thus appreciated within the larger context of his work, positioned within the history of scholarship in the field and serves as a measure of the turn to new perspectives. (shrink)

Volume 4 of’ “The Early Works” series covers the period of Dewey’s last year and one-half at the University of Michigan and his first half-year at the University of Chicago. In addition to sixteen articles the present volume contains Dewey’s reviews of six books and three articles, verbatim reports of three oral statements made by Dewey, and a full-length book, The Study of Ethics. Like its predecessors in this series, this volume presents a “clear text,” free of interpretive (...) or reference material. Apparatus, including references, corrections, and emendations, is confined to appendix material. Fredson Bowers, the Consulting Textual Editor, has provided an essay on the textual principles and procedures, and Wayne A. R. Leys, Professor of Philosophy at Southern Illinois University, has written an Introduction discussing the relationship between Dewey’s writings of this period and his later work. That Dewey’s scholarship and writing was at an especially high level during 1893 and 1894 may be considered an index to the significance of this two-year period. (shrink)

Revolutionizing received opinion of Taoism's origins in light of historic new discoveries, Harold D. Roth has uncovered China's oldest mystical text--the original expression of Taoist philosophy--and presents it here with a complete translation and commentary. Over the past twenty-five years, documents recovered from the tombs of China's ancient elite have sparked a revolution in scholarship about early Chinese thought, in particular the origins of Taoist philosophy and religion. In _Original Tao,_ Harold D. Roth exhumes the seminal text of Taoism--_Inward (...) Training (Nei-yeh)_--not from a tomb but from the pages of the _Kuan Tzu,_ a voluminous text on politics and economics in which this mystical tract had been "buried" for centuries. _Inward Training_ is composed of short poetic verses devoted to the practice of breath meditation, and to the insights about the nature of human beings and the form of the cosmos derived from this practice. In its poetic form and tone, the work closely resembles the _Tao-te Ching_; moreover, it clearly evokes Taoism's affinities to other mystical traditions, notably aspects of Hinduism and Buddhism. Roth argues that _Inward Training_ is the foundational text of early Taoism and traces the book to the mid-fourth century B.C. (the late Warring States period in China). These verses contain the oldest surviving expressions of a method for mystical "inner cultivation," which Roth identifies as the basis for all early Taoist texts, including the _Chuang Tzu_ and the world-renowned _Tao-te Ching._ With these historic discoveries, he reveals the possibility of a much deeper continuity between early "philosophical" Taoism and the later Taoist religion than scholars had previously suspected. _Original Tao_ contains an elegant and luminous complete translation of the original text. Roth's comprehensive analysis explains what _Inward Training_ meant to the people who wrote it, how this work came to be "entombed" within the _Kuan Tzu,_ and why the text was largely overlooked after the early Han period. (shrink)

Revolutionizing received opinion of Taoism's origins in light of historic new discoveries, Harold D. Roth has uncovered China's oldest mystical text -- the original expression of Taoist philosophy -- and presents it here with a complete translation and commentary. Over the past twenty-five years, documents recovered from the tombs of China's ancient elite have sparked a revolution in scholarship about early Chinese thought, in particular the origins of Taoist philosophy and religion. In _Original Tao,_ Harold D. Roth exhumes the (...) seminal text of Taoism -- _Inward Training _ -- not from a tomb but from the pages of the _Kuan Tzu,_ a voluminous text on politics and economics in which this mystical tract had been "buried" for centuries. _Inward Training_ is composed of short poetic verses devoted to the practice of breath meditation, and to the insights about the nature of human beings and the form of the cosmos derived from this practice. In its poetic form and tone, the work closely resembles the _Tao-te Ching_; moreover, it clearly evokes Taoism's affinities to other mystical traditions, notably aspects of Hinduism and Buddhism. Roth argues that _Inward Training_ is the foundational text of early Taoism and traces the book to the mid-fourth century B.C.. These verses contain the oldest surviving expressions of a method for mystical "inner cultivation," which Roth identifies as the basis for all early Taoist texts, including the _Chuang Tzu_ and the world-renowned _Tao-te Ching._ With these historic discoveries, he reveals the possibility of a much deeper continuity between early "philosophical" Taoism and the later Taoist religion than scholars had previously suspected. _Original Tao_ contains an elegant and luminous complete translation of the original text. Roth's comprehensive analysis explains what _Inward Training_ meant to the people who wrote it, how this work came to be "entombed" within the _Kuan Tzu,_ and why the text was largely overlooked after the early Han period. (shrink)

This is the first article recreating the full history of research on the Ukrainian philosopher Hryhorii Skovoroda made by students and teachers of the Kyiv Theological Academy in the second half of the 19th – beginning of the 20th century. The analysis highlights the qualitative diversity of research interpretations of Skovoroda’s figure and his creative work in cultural, historical, and biographical contexts, while identifying common features that unite those different scientific perceptions. The article demonstrates that the academic research interest in (...) Skovoroda’s heritage was both due to the desire to introduce this little-known at that time figure of the Ukrainian thinker by creating a variety of attractive images, and to prove that idealistic direction prevailed in local philosophy since the beginning of its formation. Disclosing the multilayered structure of interpretations of Skovoroda present in the scientific studies of theological academic researchers, enabled the author to show simultaneous unity and diversity of theoretical and methodological approaches found within the national academic interpretational field and determined by different philosophical, scientific, cultural, educational, and sociopolitical priorities of researchers. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:A New Essenism: Heinrich Graetz and MysticismJonathan M. ElukinSince the Reformation, European Christians have sought to understand the origins of Christianity by studying the world of Second Temple Judaism. These efforts created a fund of scholarly knowledge of ancient Judaism, but they labored under deep-seated pre judices about the nature of Judaism. When Jewish scholars in nineteenth-century Europe, primarily in Germany, came to study their own history as part (...) of the Wissenschaft des Judentums movement, they too looked to the ancient Jewish past as a crucia l element in understanding Jewish history.A central figure in the Wissenschaft movement was Heinrich Graetz (1817–1891). 1 In his massive history of the Jews, the dominant synthesis of Jewish history until well into the twentieth century, Graetz constructed a narrative of Jewish history that imbedded mysticism deep within the Jewish past, finding its origins in the first-cen tury sectarian Essenes. 2 Anchoring mysticism among the Essenes was crucial for Graetz’s larger narrative of the history of Judaism, which he saw as a continuing struggle between the corrosive effects of mysticism [End Page 135] and the rational rabbinic tradition. An unchanging mysticism was a mirror image of the unchanging monotheistic essence of normative Judaism that dominated Graetz’s understanding of Jewish history. Ironically, this narrative model of the history of mystic ism may have been influenced by Christian attacks on Judaism itself, a point which I can briefly take up at the conclusion of the article. First let us turn to the role that the Essenes played in Graetz’s historical ideology of mysticism.Graetz inherited a long intellectual tradition about the identity of first-century sectarians. Ever since the fourth-century historian Eusebius asserted that the therapeutae, a group mentioned by Philo, were actually Christian monks, the religious identity of these Alexandrian sectarians—distinct from the Essenes—had been the subject of constant debate. 3 Were they Jews or Christian ascetics? During the Middle Ages the tradition articulated by Eusebius gave the Church an additional claim for the antiquity of one of its central institutions. The religious identity of the Essenes, a seemingly similar sectar ian group mentioned by Josephus and other ancient historians, also became a point of dispute. 4 The secluded, monastic life of the Essenes made them equally likely candidates to be proto-Christians. The dispute over the alleged Christian nature of the therapeutae and the Essenes would survive, after generations of Catholic and Protestant sch olarly polemic, into nineteenth-century scholarship on late antique Judaism. 5It was in the work of Graetz that the Essenes and their putative relationship to Christianity received the fullest treatment by a Jewish historian. 6 Since the only documented therapeutae were in Alexandria, they could not be considered [End Page 136] likely sources—even if they were Jewish—for a nascent Palestinian Christianity. The Essenes offered more fertile ground to explore the relationship between Judaism and early Christianity.Graetz’s argument that Jesus and Christianity had their origins among the Essenes developed in the context of a fierce scholarly polemic between Christians and Jews in the nineteenth century as well as in the context of internal Jewish debates. Before exp loring this larger background, let us first see how Graetz made his case for the connection between Jesus and the Essenes. Making this connection was crucial for Graetz if Christianity was to be understood as the first systematic expression of a mysticism that had flourished among the Essenes.The Essenes were the first, according to Graetz, to articulate a firmly held belief in the coming of the Messiah, a belief which had grown in intensity during the turmoil and oppression of Roman rule. 7 Christianity, “or rather this Essenism intermingled with foreign elements,” had its origins in this messianic longing. 8 It was no surprise that John the Baptist was the first to proclaim the arrival of the Messiah, since he was so obviously an Essene. 9 Graetz makes his case for John’s Essene background on the apparent similarity of their habits, most notably the common theme of daily immersion and the fact that both John the Baptist (“oder richtiger der Essäer” [“or rather... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Buddhist-Christian Studies 22 (2002) 133-135 [Access article in PDF] Response to Harry L. Wells Frances S. Adeney Louisville Presbyterian Theological Seminary Current understandings of how religions may reflect divine truth often use a model developed in England by Alan Race that designates attitudes toward other religions as exclusive, inclusive, or pluralist. John Hick's use of this seemingly simple paradigm, in conversation with scholars in the United States, presupposes the (...) reality of the divine, along with the unknowability of that reality through any human effort or religious tradition. Hick mediates that tension by calling on practitioners of all religions to recognize the relativity of their beliefs and, on that basis, tolerate the religions of others. Both use of and critiques of that model have generated lively discussion among scholars and practitioners of religions.Consider, for example, two possible ways to move beyond this model. The first is theological. Attempts to describe the divine by speaking of transcendence, immanence, or emptiness stretch human ability to conceptualize and communicate. Enlarging the understanding of God from within a tradition itself to a view that understands God's presence to be active in all traditions, moves us beyond the pluralist category. A second way of going beyond the current model does not attempt to elucidate pan-religious conceptions of the divine but strives to analyze particular traditions themselves. The history of particular traditions and their encounters with one another influence the theologies of the religions themselves and shape theories of religious otherness purported by those traditions. Finding a particular historical set of conditions and beliefs conducive to a positive pluralism that maintains the integrity of each tradition without relativizing all positions would move us beyond Hick's current relativizing pluralist position. These two approaches each struggle with a different side of the tension resulting from presuppositions in the theory of religions put forward in the exclusivist, inclusivist, pluralist model. The first grapples with the ontological issues and the second addresses the epistemological issues of that tension.Harry Wells chooses to work with the first—the ontological assumption of divine reality. He outlines a Christian Trinitarian relational view of God that not only encompasses but goes beyond the pluralist category as outlined by John Hick. At the same time, he finds the source for that view in a particular historical tradition of Christianity—the early church fathers. [End Page 133]Wells begins by wondering how he can move beyond Raimon Panikkar's pluralism, which, he claims, already moves beyond Hick's understanding of the pluralist category. Wells then outlines his own pluralist understanding by describing a dynamic and relational understanding of the divine. In so doing, he entertains the notion of knowing something of noumenal reality, no matter how indirectly, through the eyes of a particular tradition. By drawing the circle of divine presence very widely, Wells attempts to express from within the Christian tradition a view of God that allows for a distinctive divine work through other traditions. The practitioner, through experience, encounters a reality that changes perceptions both of the divine and of the religious other.Here Wells moves beyond the necessity of deconstructing all absolute claims to truth by different religions in order to maintain a pluralist position. Rather than relativize all particular religious traditions, as Hick suggests, Wells utilizes a perspectival approach and projects from it a view of the divine that allows for truth in other traditions. In this way he removes the debilitating necessity of embracing agnosticism by all religious traditions and shows, rather, how pluralist claims may be formed from within a single deeply held tradition.This broader understanding of the divine, rooted in early Christian mysticism according to Wells, does not rule out tolerance of other religions but embraces tolerance for reasons of faith, rather than through agnosticism. In effect, Wells argues that a theological orientation growing from an encounter with divine mystery influences the articulation of a specific tradition and its stance toward other religions.While avoiding the dualism inherent in studying religions only phenomenonologically and, at the same time, postulating a noumenal reality, this approach is not without its dangers. One... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Hellenistic and Early Modern PhilosophyChristopher S. CelenzaJon Miller and Brad Inwood, editors. Hellenistic and Early Modern Philosophy. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2003. Pp. xii + 330. Cloth, $60.00.There are at least two ways of writing the history of philosophy: the first and most common among those self-identified as "philosophers" treats philosophers of the past as if they were in live dialogue with the present. Only (...) the text is dissected, studied, and analyzed as the interpreter attempts to reconstruct, examine, and occasionally challenge the arguments under consideration. Practitioners of this first way assume that systematic and seemingly internally coherent styles of thought are most worthy of the name "philosophy." These thinkers believe that the term "philosophy," as Richard Rorty pointed out long ago, has an "honorific" sense: philosophy as such stands above other forms of thought, it is regulative in scope, and it serves as something that examines the conclusions of other, necessarily less rigorous fields. The second way is more explicitly contextualist, seeking to understand what a past thinker may have meant in his own time, what outside factors may have shaped his arguments, and how his thought may be part of broader historical currents that are none the less worthy of being remembered and studied now. Practitioners of this way are more likely to believe that ambiguities or seeming deficiencies of clarity that we find in the work of a past thinker are unlikely to be resolved by hypothetical, propositional reconstruction; rather the ambiguities are apparent to us because we are differently situated, so that the study of history is a more powerful tool in helping us satisfactorily access the work of a past thinker than rationalistic reconstruction. (Full disclosure: I am an advocate of the second way.) This volume presents studies that fall into both of the two camps, as Jerome Schneewind points out in his cogent introduction.The volume has a manifest unity: almost all of the articles are concerned in some way with different Hellenistic schools of thought and the way early modern thinkers used, re-imagined, and interpreted them. The studies are often meticulous and all are stimulating. Anthony Long offers a wonderfully synthetic presentation of ancient Stoicism as a coherent system, after which he examines the way Spinoza, Justus Lipsius, and the eighteenth-century Anglican bishop Joseph Butler measure up; unsurprisingly, they don't measure up that well. Margaret Osler seeks to illuminate the way Gassendi appropriated certain aspects of Epicureanism. Philip Mitsis argues that modern scholarship on Locke has not taken Locke's interest in Cicero's De officiis as a tool for teaching morality seriously. Donald Rutherford studies Leibniz's critique of Stoicism, which "centers," he writes, on their "failure to offer an adequate explanation of the nature of moral progress and of the dependence of human happiness on the hope for such progress" (62-63). Catherine Wilson presents a study of the corpuscular aspect of Epicurean natural philosophy among Leibniz and his contemporaries. Jon Miller eloquently and thoughtfully discusses the way Grotius and Spinoza worked with the natural law theory of the Stoics. Among a number of excellent articles, perhaps the most interesting is Stephen Menn's. Menn makes a compelling case that Descartes's intellectual autobiography in the Discourses may be seen as part of a tradition. In it, the writer presents himself as reaching a moment of dissatisfaction with the intellectual customs with which he has come into contact and as needing to strike off into new directions, unencumbered by the vestiges of those customs. While others, most notably Dan Garber, have shown that, as Menn puts it, "none of Descartes's contemporaries seem to have thought in 1637 that they were witnessing a revolution" (142), Menn's study is striking because it shows the depth of the tradition within which Descartes was working. Next, Gail Fine finds that the Cyrenaics, as presented by Sextus Empiricus, seem to have [End Page 207] endorsed "the view that there are truths, beliefs, and knowledge about the subjective" (214). Steven Nadler seeks to show that there is no mysticism in Spinoza's thought, even though it was not uncommon in Spinoza's own day to... (shrink)

Volume 1 of The Early Works of John Dewey, 1882-1898 is entitled Early Essays and Leibniz's New Essays Concerning the Human Understanding, 1882-1888. Included here are all Dewey's earliest writings, from his first published article through his book on Leibniz. The materials in this volume provide a chronological record of Dewey's early development--beginning with the article he sent to the Journal of Speculative Philosophy in 1881 while he was a high-school teacher in Oil City, Pennsylvania, and (...) closing with his widely-acclaimed work on Leibniz in the Grigg's Series of German Philosophical Classics, written when he was an Assistant Professor at the University of Michigan. During these years be-tween 1882 and 1888, Dewey's life course was established: he decided to follow a career in philosophy, completed doctoral studies at Johns Hopkins University, became an Instructor at the University of Michigan, was promoted to Assistant Professor, and accepted a position as Chairman of the Department of Philosophy at the University of Minnesota. With the publication of Psychology, he became well known among scholars in this country; a series of articles in the British journal Mind brought him prominence in British philosophical circles. His articles were abstracted in the Revue philosophique. None of the articles collected in this volume was reprinted during the author's lifetime. For the first time, it is now possible for Dewey scholars to study consecutively in one publication all the essays which originally appeared in many periodicals. (shrink)

This third volume in the definitive edition of Dewey's early work opens with his tribute to George Sylvester Morris, the former teacher who had brought Dewey to the University of Michigan. Morris's death in 1889 left vacant the Department of Philosophy chairmanship and led to Dewey's returning to fill that post after a year's stay at Minnesota. Appearing here, among all his writings from 1889 through 1892, are Dewey's earliest comprehensive statements on logic and his first book on ethics. (...) Dewey's marked copy of the galley-proof for his important article The Present Position of Logical Theory, recently discovered among the papers of the Open Court Publishing Company, is used as the basis for the text, making available for the first time his final changes and corrections. The textual studies that make The Early Works unique among American philosophical editions are reported in detail. One of these, A Note on Applied Psychology, documents the fact that Dewey did not co-author this book frequently attributed to him. Six brief unsigned articles written in 1891 for a University of Michigan student publication, the Inlander, have been identified as Dewey's and are also included in this volume. In both style and content, these articles reflect Dewey's conviction that philosophy should be used as a means of illuminating the contemporary scene; thus they add a new dimension to present knowledge of his early writing. (shrink)

This third volume in the definitive edition of Dewey's early work opens with his tribute to George Sylvester Morris, the former teacher who had brought Dewey to the University of Michigan.

A contribution to the sixth installment of the Common Knowledge symposium “Apology for Quietism,” this article focuses on the early-twentieth-century Quaker historian and philosopher of mysticism, Rufus Jones, who treated Quietism as in polar opposition to the work of Quakerism “here in this world.” Consequently, he placed Quietism within a negatively-constructed framework of belief, identifying much of its influence in Quaker history on the spiritual teachings of the Miguel de Molinos, Madame Guyon, and François Fénelon. This article examines (...) Jones's premise that Quietism was “no more than a noble mood, too rare and abstract to be translated into real human life.” It contends that Jones's aversion to Quietist influences in Quaker history had more to do with his own personal ambivalences, his response to the violence of World War I, his modernizing agenda, and his distorted understanding of Quietist spirituality than with anything inherent to Quietism itself. (shrink)

This third volume in the definitive edition of Dewey's early work opens with his tribute to George Sylvester Morris, the former teacher who had brought Dewey to the University of Michigan. Morris's death in 1889 left vacant the Department of Philosophy chairmanship and led to Dewey's returning to fill that post after a year's stay at Minnesota. Appearing here, among all his writings from 1889 through 1892, are Dewey's earliest comprehensive statements on logic and his first book on ethics. (...) Dewey's marked copy of the galley-proof for his important article The Present Position of Logical Theory, recently discovered among the papers of the Open Court Publishing Company, is used as the basis for the text, making available for the first time his final changes and corrections. The textual studies that make The Early Works unique among American philosophical editions are reported in detail. One of these, A Note on Applied Psychology, documents the fact that Dewey did not co-author this book frequently attributed to him. Six brief unsigned articles written in 1891 for a University of Michigan student publication, the Inlander, have been identified as Dewey's and are also included in this volume. In both style and content, these articles reflect Dewey's conviction that philosophy should be used as a means of illuminating the contemporary scene; thus they add a new dimension to present knowledge of his early writing. (shrink)

This third volume in the definitive edition of Dewey's early work opens with his tribute to George Sylvester Morris, the former teacher who had brought Dewey to the University of Michigan. Morris's death in 1889 left vacant the Department of Philosophy chairmanship and led to Dewey's returning to fill that post after a year's stay at Minnesota. Appearing here, among all his writings from 1889 through 1892, are Dewey's earliest comprehensive statements on logic and his first book on ethics. (...) Dewey's marked copy of the galley-proof for his important article The Present Position of Logical Theory, recently discovered among the papers of the Open Court Publishing Company, is used as the basis for the text, making available for the first time his final changes and corrections. The textual studies that make The Early Works unique among American philosophical editions are reported in detail. One of these, A Note on Applied Psychology, documents the fact that Dewey did not co-author this book frequently attributed to him. Six brief unsigned articles written in 1891 for a University of Michigan student publication, the Inlander, have been identified as Dewey's and are also included in this volume. In both style and content, these articles reflect Dewey's conviction that philosophy should be used as a means of illuminating the contemporary scene; thus they add a new dimension to present knowledge of his early writing. (shrink)

Parmenides of Elea was the most important and influential philosopher before Plato. He rejected as impossible the scientific inquiry practiced by the earlier Presocratic philosophers and held that generation, destruction, and change are unreal and that only one thing exists. In this book, Patricia Curd argues that Parmenides sought to reform rather than to reject scientific inquiry, and she offers a more coherent account of his influence on later philosophers._ _The Legacy of Parmenides_ examines Parmenides' arguments, considering his connection to (...) earlier Greek thought and how his account of what-is could have served as a model for later philosophers. Curd also explores the theories of his successors, including the Pluralists, the Atomists, the later Eleatics, and the later Presocratics. She concludes with a discussion of the importance of Parmenides' work to Plato's _Theory of Forms._ _The Legacy of Parmenides_ challenges traditional views of early Greek philosophy and provides new insights into the work of Parmenides. "_The Legacy of Parmenides_ represents a milestone... of Parmenides' interpretation. It is full of ideas and tells a coherent story about Parmenides and early Greek thought." --_ Alexander Nehamas, Princeton University___ "Professor Curd offers a genuinely original and possibly correct interpretation of the core thesis of the poem of Parmenides in a field so well worked over that saying something both new and true is profoundly difficult, this is a notable achievement." --_ Thomas M. Robinson, University of Toronto___ "This will be a substantial book in the story of early Greek philosophy, and future writers on the tradition from Thales through Plato will not be able to ignore it without missing an important interpretive alternative. It will be of value to students of Presocratic philosophy or the Greek tradition, as well as to students of the scientific revolution, cosmology, the origins of logic, or comparative mysticism." --_ Scott W. Austin, Texas A&M University___ PATRICIA CURD_ is professor at Purdue University where she works primarily in Ancient Philosophy. She is a co-editor of _Readings in Ancient Greek Philosophy_, and is the editor of _A Presocratics Reader._. (shrink)

Between 1873 and 1876, Felix Klein published a series of papers that he later placed under the rubric anschauliche Geometrie in the second volume of his collected works (1922). The present study attempts not only to follow the course of this work, but also to place it in a larger historical context. Methodologically, Klein’s approach had roots in Poncelet’s principle of continuity, though the more immediate influences on him came from his teachers, Plücker and Clebsch. In the 1860s, Clebsch (...) reworked some of the central ideas in Riemann’s theory of Abelian functions to obtain complicated results for systems of algebraic curves, most published earlier by Hesse and Steiner. These findings played a major role in enumerative geometry, whereas Plücker’s work had a strongly qualitative character that imbued Klein’s early studies. A leitmotif in these works can be seen in the interplay between real curves and surfaces as reflected by their transformational properties. During the early 1870s, Klein and Zeuthen began to explore the possibility of deriving all possible forms for real cubic surfaces as well as quartic curves. They did so using continuity methods reminiscent of Poncelet’s earlier approach. Both authors also relied on visual arguments, which Klein would later advance under the banner of intuitive geometry (anschauliche Geometrie). (shrink)

The topic of this chapter, the early philosophical influence of Henri Bergson (1859-1941) on Simone de Beauvoir, may surprise those who remember Beauvoir’s reference to Bergson in her Memoirs of a Dutiful Daughter where she denies Bergson’s importance. She writes there of her interests in 1926: “I preferred literature to philosophy, and I would not have been at all pleased if someone had prophesized that I would become a kind of Bergson; I didn’t want to speak with that abstract (...) voice which, whenever I heard it, failed to move me.” But in this case, as in so many others, Beauvoir’s diaries present a very different picture. Her unpublished 1926 diary, written when Beauvoir was eighteen years old and beginning her study of philosophy, contains several pages of quotations from Bergson’s Time and Free Will: An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness (1889), which Beauvoir describes, in an entry dated August 16, as “a great intellectual intoxication.” The entry continues: “whereas in reading other philosophers I have the impression of witnessing more or less logical constructions, here finally I am touching palpable reality and encountering life. Not only myself, but art, the truths suggested by poets, and everything that I studied this year is magnificently explained. Simply a call to intuition…. in short the method that I spontaneously apply when I want to know myself and the most difficult problems disappear. How many things [there are] in the 180 pages of Bergson’s The immediate givens of consciousness” Intriqued by this diary passage, I began analyzing Beauvoir’s early philosophy for evidence of Bergson’s influence, focusing on Bergson’s three most important texts: Time and FreeWill (1889), Matter and Memory: An Essay on the Relation of the Body to the Mind (1896), and Creative Evolution (1907). My analysis uncovered evidence of Bergson’s influence in several of Beauvoir’s important early texts, especially She Came to Stay, Beauvoir’s metaphysical novel written from 1937 to 1941, but also Beauvoir’s essays in existential ethics and The Second Sex (1949). Indeed Bergson now seems to me to be a key to understanding the roots of Beauvoir’s philosophy. In this paper, I will narrow my focus to Bergson’s philosophical methodology, and its influence on She Came to Stay, identifying three Bergsonian elements of Beauvoir’s philosophical methodology. First of all, Beauvoir takes seriously Bergson's criticism of intellectual understanding and accepts his implicit challenge to do philosophy through the novel. Secondly, Beauvoir shares with Bergson a methodological interest in exposing distortions in perception and thinking. Finally, they both rely on a methodological turn to immediate experience, which discloses our freedom. Beauvoir did not follow Bergson completely or uncritically. She did not follow him, for example, in the vitalist system building of Creative Evolution or the mysticism of his later work, Two Sources of Morality and Religion. In Beauvoir’s short story cycle, When Things of the Spirit Come First, written from 1935-37, which Beauvoir describes as “clarifying the genesis” of her later work, (QPS, viii) she satirizes her early intellectual passions, including Paul Claudel’s morality of feminine self-sacrifice, André Breton’s Surrealism, and Bergson's philosophy. Furthermore, Beauvoir’s early work, including She Came to Stay, focuses on an aspect of reality ignored by Bergson’s early work, i.e. the problem of the opposition of self and other. (shrink)

ABSTRACT This paper offers an account of the early career of Martha Kneale, née Hurst, and of the five papers she published between 1934 and 1950. One on metaphysical and logical necessity, from 1938, is particularly interesting. In it she considers the metaphysics of time and offers an explanation of ‘the necessity of the past’, which has some resemblance to Kripke’s ideas about metaphysical necessities, in that it assigns an important role to experience in how we come to know (...) them. But Kneale’s view is very different from Kripke’s, depending not on doctrines about rigid designation but rather on recognition of the failure of the atomist/empiricist account of ‘simple’ and ‘complex’ concepts. That account cannot deal with such things as the relations of the determinates of a determinable like colour. A plausible corollary of this, which Kneale exploits, is that some of our experience reveals to us that there are phenomena which are intrinsically complex in having multiple distinguishable aspects, but where those aspects are inseparable. Other of the papers show Kneale to have been pursuing interesting lines of thought about McTaggart’s argument against the reality of time and on the mind-body problem. (shrink)

In the past 250 years, David Hume probably had a greater impact on the field of philosophy of religion than any other single philosopher. He relentlessly attacked the standard proofs for God's existence, traditional notions of God's nature and divine governance, the connection between morality and religion, and the rationality of belief in miracles. He also advanced radical theories of the origin of religious ideas, grounding such notions in human psychology rather than in divine reality. In the last decade of (...) his life Hume wrote 'I cou'd cover the Floor of a large Room with Books and Pamphlets wrote against me'. Indeed, most of these targeted his writings on religion. This, the third part of the Early Responses to Hume series, and perhaps the most eagerly awaited, collects responses to Hume's writings on religion published during his life, namely, 'Of Miracles', 'Of a Particular Providence and a Future State', The Natural History of Religion , and the posthumously published works Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion , 'Of Suicide' and 'Of the Immortality of the Soul'. The set covers a wide range of the replies Hume's writings provoked, including contributions by Philip Skelton, William Adams, Thomas Rutherforth, William Warburton, Anthony Ellys, John Douglas, John Leland, Thomas Stona, Voltaire, George Campbell, Herman Andrew Pistorius, Duncan Shaw, William Samuel Powell, Thomas Hayter, Joseph Milner, William Paley, Charles Moore, Richard Joseph Sulivan, John Hey, Samuel Vince, Lord Brougham and Thomas De Quincey. (shrink)

The renowned Christian theologian Bernard Lonergan was also a professor, teaching courses on theological method at universities in Canada, the United States, and Italy. This volume records his lectures and teaching materials, thus preserving and elucidating his intellectual development between the publication of Insight in 1957 and Method in Theology in 1972. The present volume contains a record of the lectures delivered in 1962, 1964, and 1968. This is the most 'interactive' volume yet published in the Collected Works series. (...) The audio recordings of the 1962 and 1968 lectures are now available on the website www.bernardlonergan.com, as are PDF files of original papers from his 1964 institute at Georgetown. These lectures help to elucidate the development of Lonergan's ideas on such key notions as horizon, conversion, and meaning, as well as his evolving opinion on how best to divide theology into fields of specialization. (shrink)

Avery’s et al. ’s 1944 paper provides the first direct evidence of DNA having gene-like properties and marks the beginning of a new phase in early molecular genetics (with a strong focus on chemistry and DNA). The study of its reception shows that on the whole, Avery’s results were immediately appreciated and motivated new research on transformation, the chemical nature of DNA’s biological specificity and bacteria genetics. It shows, too, that initial problems of transferring transformation to other systems and (...) prominent criticism of its results nurtured skepticism. Avery’s experiment was downplayed and neglected particularly by many of those scientists who worked in the new fields of biochemical and biophysical genetics, genetic phage, and TMV research. This was not due to the fact that the implications of the paper could not be connected to generally accepted knowledge. Contrary to a widespread belief, the assumed uniformity of DNA as opposed to proteins was not used as an argument against the validity of Avery’s et al.’s finding. The indifference rather reflected, among other things, the disciplinary gap between the chemically oriented microbiologists and the old and new geneticists who remained committed to genetic and physical methods (in particular x-ray studies) and clung to the assumption that proteins were the sole carriers of biological specificity. The responses to Avery’s et al.’s paper show how different research interests in the areas between microbiology, genetics, and biochemistry interacted with the prejudices, dogmas, individual farsightedness or short-sightedness, and scientific authority during a pivotal period of early molecular biology. (shrink)

Alain Badiou’s elaboration of a subject faithful to an event is commonly known today in the academic world and beyond. However, his first systematic account of the subject was already published in 1982 and did not mention the ‘event’ at all. Therefore, this article aims at tracing back both the structural and the historical conditions that directed Badiou’s elaboration of the subject in the early work up until the publication of L’Être et l’Événément in 1988. On the one hand, (...) it investigates to what extent the Badiouan subject can be considered an exceptional product of the formalist project of the Cahiers pour l’Analyse as instigated by psychoanalytical discourse and a certain Marxist discourse insofar as both were centered upon a theory of the subject. On the other hand, this article examines the radical political implications of this subject insofar as Badiou has directed his philosophical aims towards the political field as a direct consequence of the events of May ’68. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:186 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY direction and made meaningful, whereas for Fichte they are the cognitively recognized goals of human activity. Nonetheless, I still find Lacroix' thoroughgoing teleological interpretation of Kant a bit bothersome, at points strained, although there is little doubt that teleology plays a large part in Kant's thought with respect to the realm of reason. Moreover, I'm not convinced that Kant's thought is as unified and internally (...) consistent as Lacroix would like to find it. In all fairness, however, it should be mentioned that he does not ignore the inconsistencies in Kant's thought. Lacroix' Kant interpretation certainly warrants serious consideration, for it has at least two outstanding features: It makes Kant's doctrine of the noumenal realm much more palatable than most other interpretations. Secondly, it goes a long way toward drawing out the full significance of Kant's comment, "I have therefore found it necessary to deny knowLedr in order to make room for jaith." And it is only by bringing out the significance of this statement that Kant's work can be shown to be primarily metaphysical in intention. Finally, the work's greatest virtue may be that it pulls the shroud of formalism off Kant's thought and shows it to possess a dynamic concern for living man, a concern that few, if any, have seen in it before. Incidentally, Lacroix' book is full of observations on the reception and interpretation of Kant's thought by various twentieth-century French philosophers, and these offer some nice insights into the different directions French thought is taking today. TED B. HUMPHREY Arizona State University Wordsworth--A Philosophical Approach. By Melvin Rader. (Oxford: The Clarendon Press, 1967. Pp. x -4-217.38s.) Wordsworth's poems have brought tears to many a rational mind, but Melvin Rsder manages to keep sane and sober while he expounds the poet's ideas in plain prose and interprets critically the wealth of feeling, imagination, metaphor and myth in which the ideas are clothed. This rendering of Wordsworth's mind is eloquent in its own way, sad performs a useful service to readers who are apt to miss the train of thought within the flow of poetry and of communion with the landscapes of the English Lakes. The analysis shows how, after an early enthusiasm for Locke's and Hartley's "chemistry" of experience, the poet expresses philosophically dimensions of human nature and experience that had been neglected by the more clinical models of "association~sm." Wordsworth's own statement reveals this aspect of his thinking: "Imagination...is that chemical faculty by which elements of the most different nature and distant origin are blended together into one harmonious and homogeneous whole" (p. 139). Here the words "different" and "d'tstant," as Racier points out, exclude the types of association by resemblance and contiguity that are basic to Locke and Hartley. The hberation of Coleridge, and the imaginative transcendence of Wordsworth from these limitations of rationalistic empiricism is a major theme of Rader's work. However, Ruder shows that much of Wordsworth's naturalism is traceable to Hartley's influence. Cudworth's "dynamic idealism" which pictured nature as alive and insisted on the power of ideas, was another major source. Shaftesbury's analysis of the emotional aspects of human nature which his tutor, John Locke, excluded from his Essay because they are not in "the understanding" was also an inspiration to Wordsworth. The definite conversion to transcendentalism was completed by the Kantian romanticists, who suggested to Coleridge that the categorical imperative could be transformed into an a pr/or/gospel. The subsequent divergence of Coleridge and Wordsworth is described in detail by Ruder, and reveals the fact that naturalism retained a stronger hold on Wordsworth than it did on Coleridge. Wordsworth did not follow Coleridge into his romantic spiritual nationalism, but developed a nature-mysticism and "animism" (to use Rader's term). Though this mysticism is not an articulate philosophy, Rader follows it with sympathy and under- BOOK REVIEWS 187 standing. He picks his way philosophicelly ~darough the many preludes, interludes and epilogues of the long, autobiographical poem, The Prelude. He succeeds in interpreting philosophically.Wordsworth's absorption in "the... (shrink)

While numerous commentators have discussed Kant’s views on mysticism in general, very few of them have examined Kant’s specific views on different types of mystical experience. I suggest that Kant’s views on direct mystical experience differ substantially from his views on indirect mystical experience (IME). In this paper, I focus on Kant’s complex views on IME in both his pre-critical and critical writings and lectures. In the first section, I examine Kant’s early work, Dreams of a Spirit-Seer, where (...) he defends the possibility that the Swedish mystic Emanuel Swedenborg’s alleged visions of the spirit-world are veridical cases of IME. In the second section, I discuss Kant’s views on IME during his critical period. I first argue that the epistemology of Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason accommodates the possibility of IME. I then examine Kant’s views on Swedenborgian visions in his lectures from the 1770s to the 1790s and argue that his critical views on Swedenborg are largely continuous with his pre-critical views in Dreams. Finally, I examine passages in Kant’s late works, Religion within the Bounds of Reason Alone and The Conflict of the Faculties, where he discusses three non-Swedenborgian types of IME. In the final section, I explore briefly how Kant’s views on IME relate to contemporary debates among analytic philosophers of religion regarding the nature and possibility of mystical experience. (shrink)

Through reading the early work of Walter Benjamin—up to and including the Trauerspiel, author Monad Rrenban elicits a cohesive conception of the wild, inforgettable form, philosophy, as inherent in everything. This book, distinct in its analysis and depth of analysis, elaborates the wild, unforgettable form—philosophy in relation to language, the discipline and the practice of philosophy, criticism, and the politics of death.

This essay deals with the relationship between the mystical and meaning in Ludwig Wittgenstein’s early philosophical work, especially the Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus. The interpretation offered here is intended not primarily for professional scholars of Wittgenstein or historians of the early 20th century philosophy, but for those broadly interested in connections between mysticism and meaning and in what contributions Wittgenstein’s early work might make to the subject. My goal is to explain his conception of the relationship between the (...) mystical and meaning to the interdisciplinary reader not well versed in Wittgenstein’s early philosophy or the vast body of scholarship that has grown up around it, without entirely ignoring the insights into other areas of philosophy that have made the Tractatus highly respected even by those philosophers who most vigorously and completely disagree with his idiosyncratic views. (shrink)