Mystical Theology and Platonism in the Time of Cusanus engages with the history of mystical theology and Neoplatonic philosophy through the lens of the 15th century philosopher and theologian, Nicholas of Cusa. The volume comprises nineteen essays that break down the barriers between medieval and Renaissance studies, reinterpreting Cusanus’ place in the history of thought by exploring the archive that informed his thinking, while also interrogating his works by exploring them from the standpoint of their later (...) reception by modern philosophers and theologians. The volume also offers tribute to the career of Donald F. Duclow, a leading scholar in the field of Cusanus studies in particular and of the history of mystical theology and Neoplatonic philosophy more generally. (shrink)

The article deals with the problem of the divine light in the mystical works of St Symeon the New Theologian in the context of the Eastern Christian ascetical tradition. The author focuses on the passages referring to the divine light in the works of Evagrios Pontikos, St Isaac the Syrian, St Maximus the Confessor, and in the Makarian corpus. As is shown in the present contribution, none of these authors created a fully-developed theory of the vision of the divine (...) light. Being close to these writers in many ideas, St Symeon was generally independent of any of them in his treatment of the theme of vision of light, always basing himself primarily upon his own experience. (shrink)

The most central issue in Imam Khomeini's mysticism is the velayat. The quality of this relationship is one of the important issues of mystical analysis of scholars and its re-reading and explanation can be examined in the context of an important research issue. The present article, with the aim of examining and explaining this relationship and alignment, has tried to examine the texts and knowledge in this field by descriptive-analytical method. Findings of the research indicate that among the mystics (...) who have discussed the velayat, Imam Khomeini (RA) has been very successful in explaining the relationship between mystical velayat with the belief in monotheism, prophethood and Imamate. In fact, Imam Khomeini's mystical worldview provides a mystical explanation of faith in seemingly theological categories that is worth pondering. (shrink)

The Russian academic theological tradition, scarcely known to the West, was the only milieu wherein the development of philosophy of religion in the pre-revolutionary Russia was under way. Philosophical investigation of the phenomenon of religion was being elaborated in the apologetic context, i.e. in critical analysis of non-theistic conceptions of the origin and essence of religion, and the figure of Friedrich Schleiermacher, with his reduction of religion firstly to cosmic feelings and later to the feeling of the ontological dependence, occupied (...) an invariable place in this analysis. The paper deals with critical comments on Schleiermacher’s Speeches on Religion and Christian Faith made by Victor Kudryavtsev-Platonov and his followers, which are being parsed in turn, as well as with historical links of the later Schleiermacher with phenomenology of religion and typological affinities of the earlier Schleiermacher with the theology of religious pluralism. (shrink)

Failing -- Ontology and desire in Dionysius the Areopagite -- Apophatic theology and its vicissitudes -- The death drive: from Freud to Žižek -- The gift and violence -- Divine violence as trauma -- Mystical theology and the four discourses -- Theology as failure.

The 13th-15th centuries were witness to lively and broad-ranging debates about the nature of persons. In this paper, I look at how the uses of ‘person’ in logical/grammatical, legal/political, and theological contexts overlap in the works of 13th-15th century contemplatives in the Latin West, such as Hadewijch, Meister Eckhart, and Catherine of Siena. After explicating the key concepts of individuality, dignity, and rationality, I show how these ideas combine with the contemplative use of first- and second-person perspectives, personification, and introspection (...) to yield a concept of 'person' that both prefigures Locke's classic 17th century definition and deeply influences the development of personalism. (shrink)

Close examination of the works of David Hume shows that his aim to explain the problem of evil is to attack natural theology and introduce it as a situation that is non-epistemological and unsystematic. So, contrary to what the majority of interpretations which typically express that he makes an argument against the existence of God, Hume wants to show that the statements of natural theology are rationally unprovable, and he does not want to totally decline them. As a (...) matter of fact, they ontologically exist, and are epistemologically out of human cognition. This article shows that the popular interpretation is false, and this would be done in two ways: the first is Hume’s statements about the cause of the world, and the second is Hume’s solutions for the problem of evil, that have mystical streaks. Based on these fact, it will be shown that Hume is not an atheist, but he is a mystical fideist. (shrink)

The tradition of negative theology has very deep roots which go back to the Late Greek Antiquity and the Early Christian period. Although Dionysius is usually regarded as “the Father” of negative theology, yet he has not initiated a revolution in the religious philosophy, but rather brought together various elements of thinking regarding the knowledge of God and built a system which is a synthesis of Platonic, neo-Platonic and Christian ideas. The aim of this article is to illustrate (...) the views of some more modern theologians on the nature, types and levels of apophaticism in the Greek Patristic tradition, trying to establish the role that negation can play in facilitating man’s attaining to the knowledge of God. (shrink)

The development of Christian mysticism is deeply bound to poetics. This examination first considers Platonic poetry, Hebrew creation, and Christian kenosis as sources of poetic mysticism, before turning to an elaboration of the role of rhythm, language, and the poetic imagination. The appraisal then considers the historical development of mystical poetry, beginning with early Christian reflection on the figurative and lyrical use of scriptural language to express a deep personal relationship with God. The development of vernacular mysticism, and its (...) adoption of this scriptural model, is then explored through a detailed consideration of four mystical poets (Dante, Jacopone, Hadewijch, and Angelus Silesius). The interaction of poetic form and spiritual content is elaborated throughout, with the aim of demonstrating how poetics allows the mystical writer to achieve a result for the reader otherwise not possible in discursive forms of communication. (shrink)

This essay reconstructs the sophisticated views on free will and determinism of the nineteenth-century Hindu mystic Sri Ramakrishna and brings them into dialogue with the views of three western philosophers—namely, the Scottish Enlightenment philosopher Lord Kames and the contemporary analytic philosophers Saul Smilansky and Derk Pereboom. Sri Ramakrishna affirms hard theological determinism, the incompatibilist view that God determines everything we do and think. At the same time, however, he claims that God, in His infinite wisdom, has endowed ordinary unenlightened people (...) with the illusion of free will for the sake of their moral and spiritual welfare. Kames, I suggest, defends a theological determinist position remarkably similar to Sri Ramakrishna’s. However, I argue that Sri Ramakrishna’s mystical orientation puts him in a better position than Kames to explain why a loving God would implant in us the illusion of free will in the first place. I then show how certain aspects of the views of Smilansky and Pereboom resonate with those of Sri Ramakrishna. (shrink)

Moral violation often takes the form of material harm, which might lead us to suppose that it consists essentially in the harm done. And yet we might suffer the same harm through nature or accident without feeling morally offended. If a hurricane destroys my property, I suffer harm but no offense. If another person deliberately damages my property, I am offended. But why? Wherein lies the difference? My essay employs Arthur Schopenhauer’s ethic of egoism and Paul Tillich’s theology of (...) love to explore the ontological basis of moral offense. I argue that moral offense has its roots, not in a concern for material well-being, but in a fundamental drive for Unity, unity with others and with our own ontological ground. This drive is both conditioned by, and frustrated by, our ontological separateness as individual beings. (shrink)

Some recent considerations of religion and psychiatry have drawn a distinction between pathological and spiritual/mystical experiences of mental phenomena typically regarded as within the realm of psychiatry (e.g. depression, hearing voices, seeing visions/hallucinations). Such a distinction has clinical implications, particularly in relation to whether some religious people who suffer from depression, hear voices, or see visions should be biomedically treated. Approaching this question from a theological and philosophical perspective, I draw a distinction between (what I call) ‘spiritual health’ (SH) (...) and ‘potentially transformative’ (PT) theologies, arguing that a PT model is therapeutically and philosophically more sound than a SH one. I then apply this to the clinical debate in critical dialogue with Dein and Durà-Vilà’s 2009 article, ‘The Dark Night of the Soul: spiritual distress and psychiatric implications’. My primary focus is on depression, though the discussion is also relevant to debates about psychosis and schizophrenia. (shrink)

A Study of Perennial Philosophy and Psychedelic Experience, with a Proposal to Revise W. T. Stace’s Core Characteristics of Mystical Experience ©Ed D’Angelo 2018 -/- Abstract -/- According to the prevailing paradigm in psychedelic research today, when used within an appropriate set and setting, psychedelics can reliably produce an authentic mystical experience. According to the prevailing paradigm, an authentic mystical experience is one that possesses the common or universal characteristics of mystical experience as identified by the (...) philosopher W. T. Stace in his 1960 work Mysticism and Philosophy. Stace’s common characteristics of mystical experience are the basis for the Hood Mysticism Questionnaire, which is the most widely used quantitative measure of mystical experience in experimental studies of psychedelic experience. In this paper, I trace the historical roots of Stace’s common characteristics of mystical experience back to Christian Neoplatonism and apophatic theology, and I trace those, in turn, back to Plato’s concept of the Good and to Aristotle’s concept of God as active intellect. I argue that Stace’s common characteristics of mystical experience are not universal or culturally invariant but are the product of a specifically Christian religious and moral tradition that has its roots in ancient Greek metaphysics. My paper concludes with a revised list of common characteristics of psychedelic experience that is a better candidate for a list of invariant structures of psychedelic experience than Stace’s common characteristics of Christian mystical experience. (shrink)

This article is a study on Paul’s mystical experiences using an interpretive framework that relies on multiple grounds: Alfred Schutz’s phenomenology of the “multiple realities” applied to the problem of religion, political anthropology and general scholarship on Paul. The aim of this study is also multiple: I seek to draw an interpretive insight into those mystical experiences that have been traditionally attributed to Paul by using a hermeneutic lens provided by Schutzian phenomenology, to clarify this hermeneutic method as (...) such and explore its interpretive potential for the phenomenology of religion in general, and to interpret the results of this analysis from the reflexive-historical perspective of political anthropology. (shrink)

Suhrawardi created a revolution in the field of Iranian and Islamic thought by compiling the Illuminated Philosophy. The philosophy of Suhrawardi, which includes the collection of works and philosophical and mystical thoughts of Suhrawardi, is well presented in his book Hikma al-Ishraq. Unlike Farabi, Suhrawardi did not write an independent work about Utopia, but he spoke about the ideal ruler and the right to rule. Moreover, in his allegorical works, more than anything else, he pointed out moral points that (...) can lead the people of a society to salvation. Suhrawardi's philosophy is based on the originality of light, which shows that he had an opinion on the philosophers of Ancient Iran. In addition, Suhrawardi has repeatedly referred to Khosrvanion and Ancient Persian Scholars such as Zoroaster and Key Khosro and, for example, considered Key Khosro's government to be a desirable government in terms of politics and government. Another pillar of Suhrawardi's thought is the Quran and Islamic traditions, and therefore, his opinion about the government and ruler is consistent with Islamic teachings. In addition, he considered himself indebted to the divine philosophers of Greece such as Pythagoras and Plato and other divine scholars of the world such as Hermes, and he also took many of the opinions of his predecessor philosophers such as Farabi and Avicenna; Therefore, it can be assumed that he agrees with Farabi in many respects about utopia and its governing characteristics and conditions. (shrink)

The Glagolitic alphabet was intended as a political and religious tool for the Slavs in the ninth century. This paper argues that despite its quick suppression, Glagolitic – arguably composed by Constantine The Philosopher (a brother of Methodius) from Thessaloniki – could have been a mystical tool. The relevant historical context and hagiographical material are explored to establish the alphabet’s origins. Uspenskij’s distinction regarding the palaeographic and ideographic origins of scripts is then followed. A short survey of the most (...) relevant graphic features of some letters, their arrangement in the alphabet, their names, and their possible origins is accompanied by a more in-depth discussion of some key graphemes and their mystical potential. Tschernochvostoff’s theory of Glagolitic being woven upon three basic Christian symbols is elaborated on and expanded. Finally, the stunning (acrophonic) naming of the letters is shown as coding comprehensible Christian, and arguably mystical, messages in Proto-Slavic. (shrink)

The Middles Ages are often portrayed as a time in which people with physical disabilities in the Latin West were ostracized, on the grounds that such conditions demonstrated personal sin and/or God’s judgment. This was undoubtedly the dominant response to disability in various times and places during the fifth through fifteenth centuries, but the total range of medieval responses is much broader and more interesting. In particular, the 13th-15th century treatment of three groups (martyrs, mothers, and mystics - whose physical (...) ‘defects’ were often understood as signs of special connection to God in this life, and who were often represented as retaining these signs in the life to come) challenge standard notions of beauty, disfigurement, and bodily perfection, particularly as the notion is applied to eternal life and our ultimate end. (shrink)

I examine mystical experience through the history of European religious thought, its modern state, and different spiritual practices of the Patristic epoch. The survey gives some definitions: mystical experience is situated in the field of spirituality along with practices of its acquisition -- ascetics; and the fruits of it -- theology and doctrine. The second part of the article is devoted to a wide field of Christian texts as a representative example of the same experience of the (...) crystallization of mystical experience in ancient tradition, providing a few general types. Reading of religious texts is related very closely with the spiritual condition of the reader and supposes that he/she changes radically in the process of reading, being involved in some existential-hermeneutic circle. (shrink)

The article explores critical elements to understand how Origen elaborates his mystical theology in his Commentary on John. The spiritual progress process implies that rational beings are guided, by God’s Logos, from the practical life to the theoretical one becoming son or daughter of God, in the likeness of the Logos. This process aims at knowing the Father as he is known by the Logos. The article has two parts: 1. The Father’s presence, through the Logos, in rational (...) beings, and 2. a brief characterisation of the salvation, particularly in the perspective of the mediation by the Son of God. (shrink)

During the Transfiguration, the apostles on Tabor, “indeed saw the same grace of the Spirit which would later dwell in them”. The light of grace “illuminates from outside on those who worthily approached it and sent the illumination to the soul through the sensitive eyes; but today, because it is confounded with us and exists in us, it illuminates the soul from inward ”. The opposition between knowledge, which comes from outside - a human and purely symbolic knowledge - and (...) “intellectual” knowledge, which comes from within, Meyendorff says what it already exists at Pseudo-Dionysius: “For it is not from without that God stirs them toward the divine. Rather he does so via the intellect and from within and he willingly enlightens them with a ray that is pure and immaterial”. The assertions of the Calabrian philosopher about an “unique knowledge”, common both to the Christians and the Hellenes and pursuing the same goal, the hesychast theologian opposes the reality of the two knowledge, having two distinct purposes and based on two different instruments of perception: “Palamas admitted the authenticity of natural knowledge, however the latter is opposed to the revealed wisdom, that is why it does not provide, by itself, salvation”. Therefore, in the purified human intellect begins to shine of the Trinity light. Purity also depends on the return of the intellect to itself. In this way, we see how the true knowledge of God is an internal meeting or “inner retrieval” of the whole being of man. As well as in the Syrian mystic, on several occasions we have to make the distinction between the contemplative ways of knowledge: intellection illuminated by grace and spiritual vision without any conceptual or symbolic meaning. For example, Robert Beulay shows that, “The term of ‘intellection’ first of all, is employed by John of Dalyatha to be applied to operations caused by grace”. (shrink)

This article discusses how Nicholas of Cusa’s speculative philosophy harbors an ecumenical spirit that is deeply entwined and in tension with his commitment to incarnational mystical theology. On the basis of my discussion of this tension, I intend to show that Nicholas understands “faith” as a poietic activity whose legitimacy is rooted less in the independent veracity of the beliefs in question than in the potential of particular religious conventions to aid intellectual processes of self-interpretation. In undertaking this (...) analysis, the paper will use Nicholas of Cusa’s De pace fidei—whose overt intention is to show that all forms of religious practice presuppose the same universal faith—as an interpretive lens to explore implications of the philosophical anthropology that Nicholas offers in treatises such as De ludo globi and De venatione sapientiae. Thus, I will argue that Nicholas’ appreciation of the inevitability of religious diversity in the temporal world funds the consistently favored view in his speculative works that “faith” is a virtue only insofar as its adherent genuinely remains in search of understanding and that, consequently, religious beliefs should function as nothing more than tools for creative activity, interpretation, and inquiry. (shrink)

In the texts that presented the theoretical assumptions of the Parc de La Villette, Bernard Tschumi used a large number of terms that contradicted not only the traditional principles of composing architecture, but also negated the rules of social order and the foundations of Western metaphysics. Tschumi’s statements, which are a continuation of his leftist political fascinations from the May 1968 revolution, as well as his interest in the philosophy of French poststructuralism and his collaboration with Jacques Derrida, prove that (...) terms such as disruption, dissociation, disfunction, disjunctions and dispersion not only referred to architectural problems but also applied to political criticism and the deepest foundations of thinking itself. His collaboration with Derrida manifested itself primarily in the publication La Case Vide: La Villette, 1985, in which the architect’s design drawings and texts explaining his concepts related to the Park de La Villette were accompanied by an extensive essay by Derrida, which included theoretical problems taken up by Tschumi in a philosophical context. Architectural and philosophical issues were also combined during seven discussion meetings organised by Peter Eisenman, invited by Tschumi to collaborate on the design of the Parc de La Villette. Eisenman, who, like Tschumi, invited Derrida to participate in the design of the park and also led to the publication of Chora L Works: Jacques Derrida and Peter Eisenman, in which his ideas were confronted with Derrida’s philosophical text. In this case, Derrida’s essay was not a direct commentary on the architect’s concepts, but rather a reflection on the question of the chôra presented by Plato in Timaeus. During the discussion and in his essay, Derrida pointed out that the chôra is a component of the created world, yet it does not belong to it, but precedes it. The originality of the chôra is so radical that she also precedes all the factors of creating the world, including ideas and the Demiurge. Thus a thesis appeared in the metaphysics of the West that the chôra is a form of active abyss, in relation to which all beings are secondary, both those perfect (as ideas or God) and those created, such as the world, things, people or language. This leads to the conclusion that the chôra does not exist, because all existence is a derivative of the chôra. Nor could the chôra be described, since it is a form of developing a space that is preceded by a lack of space characteristic of the chôra. Derrida intended the chôra to be an instance with an exceptional degree of transcendentalism, an anti-metaphysical instance, but also an a-theological one. However, this attempt failed, both in the field of secular philosophy and in the field of theology. Derrida’s characteristics of the chôra to strengthen its transcendentalism and negation of metaphysics had to be expressed in a language that immediately produces new concepts and a new metaphysics that reproduces the categories of the beginning, the origin or the foundation known from earlier philosophical traditions. All forms of criticism of metaphysics are also inspired by negative, apophatic and mystical theology. The undermining of many concepts of permanent meaning and the introduction of new concepts of unstable meaning, characteristic of the philosophy of deconstruction, had many features of originality, but it was directed towards problems whose solutions repeat, with the use of new vocabulary, the findings known in culture since Democritus. Thus, if apophatic philosophy can be regarded as deconstruction avant la lettre, then deconstruction itself in its late versions began to take on the features of a new religion. The exchange of inspiration between theology and deconstruction was manifested in a series of scientific conferences and publications in which Derrida’s philosophical concepts were interpreted within the scope of religious thought. Theological threads began to be found in such concepts of deconstruction as différance or the chôra, while at the same time Derrida himself undertook in his philosophy to study problems such as the Other (L’Autre) or Impossible (Impossible), which belonged to newer theological traditions. As a consequence of the new problems, the deconstruction became closer to the features of a new religion. Philosophy, at least from Kant’s time, has tried to create a system that would take over from religion the tasks of setting moral and political goals. Similarly, Derrida has directed his interest towards the problems of democracy and ethics, which would enable their renewal. Attempts to create a new religion (cleared of old metaphors), a new community or a new democracy bring problems and threats which may be no less troublesome than the previous systems. All promises of freedom carry with them threats, the greater the more they strive for perfection. The renewal of existential orders, sometimes carried out by means of violent changes, is a certain repetitive feature of human cultures. Deep changes, however, do not protect against the return of both old gods and old demons. Tschumi and Derrida were shaped in their youth by the atmosphere of leftist rebellion against the moral and political limitations of ossified communities and the imperfections of democracy. The ethical theme distinguishes many of their works, including the Parc de La Villette. The opposition to the metaphysical traditions of philosophy and architecture contained in this park was prompted by specific political situations and resulted from bringing political issues to the level of philosophical considerations. Achievements made at the level of pure concepts were then subject to elevation, to a kind of sacralization, which made them religious concepts. The deconstruction reached for the stratus of the new religion especially when it found its followers and began to generate moral obligations. In the new situation, terms such as the chôra, l’autre or the Impossible were absolutized and in relation to them a cult and attitude of adoration emerged. The Parc de La Villtette then gained new post-secular meanings, which allow it to be assigned the function of a Temple of Otherness (L’Autre) and Impossible. (shrink)

The Shadow of God in the Philosopher’s Garden. The Parc de La Villette in Paris in the context of the philosophy of chôra I Bernard Tschumi’s project of the Parc de La Villette could have won the competition and was implemented thanks to the political atmosphere that accompanied the victory of the left-wing candidate in the French presidential elections in 1981. François Mitterand’s revision of the political programme and the replacement of radical reforms with the construction of prestigious architectural objects (...) and urban assumptions in the French capital gave Tschumi a unique opportunity to realise ideas that polemicised with traditional forms of social life, questioned the basic principles of architecture and included architectural work in the philosophical disputes over the issues of metaphysics. Tschumi’s theoretical assumptions put forward during the design of the Parc de La Villette highlighted the questions of conflict between the main components of the project and suggested that the intensification of differences was analogous to Jacques Derrida’s creation of the concept of différance. It was this philosopher who in a special commentary to Derrida’s project also introduced the concept of maintenant, which aimed at demonstrating that the architect’s polemical inclinations remain in a hidden balance with his inclinations to affirmation of architectural principles. During the discussion between Derrida and Peter Eisenman, who was to take part in the design of the Parisian park, the concept of the chôra was also put forward, which in the course of the debate led to an additional confusion of architectural and philosophical problems. II In the period from the Antiquity to the Renaissance, the dialogue Timaeus was the most frequently commented work of Plato. At present, the most frequently discussed is the issue of the chôra included in it, which aroused fascination among philosophers, researchers of rhetoric, religion, feminism, but also architecture. The work on the chôra also influenced the development of the interpretation of the Parc de La Villette, among which the topics related to the beginning and the change were highlighted. In early uses of the word chôra in Greek, as in Homer’s 18th Book of Iliad, it meant both dancing and a place to dance. On this occasion, it can be seen that it is not possible to determine which phenomenon took precedence in the creation of the name. It cannot be denied, however, that the word concerned a specific movement, as if circular and returning to an indefinable beginning. Despite gaining more and more general meanings, the word chôra has retained its connection with the dance of people on the threshing floor, the dance of bees (choros meliton) or the dance of stars (choros astron). In Timaeus, the chôra is a space filled with movement with an effect similar to shaking the sieve to husk the grain: it separates similar elements from the dissimilar ones. The juxtaposition of the Parc de La Villette and the chôra already at this stage leads to the suggestion that the park was treated by the architect as a place of dynamic changes leading to the establishment of new social solutions. In his statements, the architect confirmed that the park was to be a space of new politics and ethics. The book by Julia Kristeva La Révolution du langage poétique contributed to the spread of the belief that works of art can play a role as factors of political revolution. In this work, the author put forward the thesis that the chôra is a kind of space, the character of which has a destructive influence on attempts to conclude language games. The chôra gives beginning to words, but at the same time, by leaving a trace of this beginning it forces us to renew their meanings. The chôra understood in this way, turns out to be an irremovable beginning, to which one has to return all the time. Kristeva found manifestations of the chôra’s activity in avant-garde French poetry, to which she attributed the role of a mediator between criticism of metaphysics and aspirations for social change. The chôra, violating the language, introduces some voids into it, as if traces of the abyss, which direct the consciousness towards understanding the necessity of political changes. The Parc de La Villette was to pursue similar objectives in the city space. In his essays, Tschumi considered the problems of creating spaces that would give rise to a radical democracy. The proposed rebellious spaces should have the characteristics of a void, in which contradictory forces would occur as forms of pure activity. The means of achieving this goal was to concentrate contradictions and make them visible. The Parc de La Villette was supposed to collect differences as indelible and at the same time by showing them it was supposed to raise awareness of the social world as a conglomerate of differences. Saturation of the space of the park with subversive values results from the character of this space suppressed in the consciousness, as well as from the social diversity which has not been taken into account so far. The main contradictions contained in space relate to the division that exists between its presentation as a mental problem and a sensual one. The park was the deliberate creation of a place that transcends such a division and creates a separate space for negotiation between architectural theories and its practical applications. The purpose of the park was to become a place of future events, which would not hide their conflicting character coming from diversity of both space and society. The method of composition usually aimed at achieving a harmonious whole has been replaced by Tschumi with a system of juxtaposition of non-coherent elements or those resulting from variations and transformations. Tschumi did not seek direct influence on politics in the Parc de La Villette, but made room for thinking about the possibilities of the future. He introduced problems rather than showed solutions to them. The task of the park was to put the principles of architecture into a kind of vibration that would inspire users to participate in the new community. III Tschumi believes that the quality of architecture depends on the theoretical factor it contains. Such a view led to the creation of architecture that would achieve visibility and comprehensibility only after its interpretation. On his way to creating such an architecture he took on a purely philosophical reflection on the basic building block of architecture, which is space. In 1975, he wrote an essay entitled Questions of Space, in which he included several dozen questions about the nature of space. The questions he formulated could be regarded as analogous to the situation in the philosophy of the time, in which the interest in questioning the most obvious forms of understanding the world and intellectual categories increased. The research on space is an area common to many fields of natural sciences, humanities and artistic creation, but it also deals with other problems, such as issues of experience. The concept of space-time continuum proposed by Hermann Minkowski drew attention to the identity of time and space with the events taking place. Probably regardless of the postulates of physicists commenting on Albert Einstein’s discoveries, also in philosophy it increased the importance of the concept of the event which became dominant in Martin Heidegger’s latest work Contributions of Philosophy: Of the event. Furthermore, Tschumi’s reflections on space entered into relation with the problem of experience, which aroused the interest of a group of French philosophers trying to assimilate Georges Bataille’s concept of “inner experience”. Both Tschumi and Derrida referred to Bataille because his views could be used not only to modify the concept of the subject, but also to change the understanding of what constitutes the area of architecture. The discussion on experience has led to the recognition that the subject is not sovereign, but actually a form of what is on their outside. Such insights make it possible to treat the area of the Parc de La Villette as existing mainly when it is organised by its users. The decisive features of the park are its assumptions, according to which it is a variety of active void that leads to agreeing new social relations with it. The park does not force to participate in already existing moral or political communities, but tries to move into an unknown future in which the scope of free functioning of individuals will be increased. Doubts about the principles of functioning of the individual self and its discovery as a whole composed of non-coherent parts, as well as its dependence on its own depth full of disordered forces, influenced the understanding of architecture as a set of contradictions whose source is a fundamental void anticipating the empty phenomenal space. The use of this phenomenal void in architecture, as well as the rejection of the whole and unity, had a specific political purpose and drew its inspiration from political analyses. In the Parc de La Villette, metaphysics and politics were brought closer together because the philosophy of void was used to create new conditions for community action. It can be argued that the source of this philosophy was the perception of errors in existing societies dependent on the shortcomings of traditional metaphysics. Spacing (espacement) was one of the key terms in Derrida’s philosophy, which was also combined with the concepts of différance and chôra. The study of the nature of space, especially its transition from the level of pure possibility to the level of sensual phenomenon, also contributes to understanding how well designed space can have an impact on its audience. This explanation is based on Tschumi’s assumption that the space of the Parc de La Villette contradicts the integrating approaches and instead exposes contradictions, but it does so in a way that combines incompatible properties into a single piece of architecture. The specificity of such integration is similar to the invention of a musical phrase, which is an ideological message: moral and political. Such a thesis may raise doubts, however, if both the clearly adopted assumptions and those deduced from the work allow for their logically ordered presentation then to a limited extent it may be assumed that the work has achieved a connection between a specific philosophy of space and its practical application. Derrida combined the problem of spatiality with the problem of transcendental imagination in the philosophy of Immanuel Kant, who in the first version of Critique of Pure Reason assumed that pure imagination precedes the appearance of time and space, even in their transcendental forms. The imagination in such a situation can be described as a factor activating time and space, which indicates what function is played by movement in this activity. This leads us to recognize that the ultra originary source of pure forms of sensual intuition is movement, which in early Greek philosophy was identified with void and its lack of resistance to phenomena occurring in it. Derrida’s philosophy in search of a certain super-transcendental source of time and space pointed to différance which, like void or the chôra, does not have material features or even any other form of being. Différance is the primary cause of the disruption of motionlessness and the introduction of activity into motionless time and space, thus its activity can be described as spacing (espacement). Derrida’s discoveries in this respect are not entirely original, because Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel already pointed out when examining the present that it is primarily a differential relation (differente Beziehung), which, being seemingly neutral, influences the present with supernatural force and makes it unidentifiable with itself. Differente Beziehung must similarly influence the originary space, negating its initial character by multiplying its divisions and expanding its boundaries. Différance acts by revealing contradictions wherever there is apparent undifferentiation. Tschumi, composing the Parc de La Villette as a variety of void and a set of incompatible layers, followed the rules of différance or the chôra: he made void visible together with its saturation with contradictions. If space can be considered to be the result of the activity of difference, such activity has a certain regularity, which influences the behaviour of its observers. Differences or contradictions fall into a certain rhythm, which can be considered a manifestation of transcendent order. The problem is that what can be considered the source of such order, namely the logos or God, is partly disorder and error. According to descriptions contained in Timaeus, the world is a combination of forces that drive to order with forces of erroneous necessity that resounds in every order and forces it to return to disorder. Derrida denied the possibility of understanding différance as a theological value, even if it were a negative or apophatic theology, but no categorical denial could be perfect. The assumption that différance or the chôra are not endowed with any substance properties cannot deny their activity, and thus a certain force. Already since Democritus, philosophy has multiplied the names of such a force and the contradictory variety of its manifestations, never forgetting also the necessity for reason to withdraw from the possibility of giving its correct characteristics. Such a withdrawal may be interpreted as an expression of respect and, in certain situations, as a cult of the force that precedes reasonableness. The Parc de La Villette, which is an artistic divagation about the contradictions and forces behind them, can be considered as a place of their sublimation, and therefore as a variation of the temple of what differs from order and disorder. IV In the texts that presented the theoretical assumptions of the Parc de La Villette, Tschumi used a large number of terms that contradicted not only the traditional principles of composing architecture, but also negated the rules of social order and the foundations of Western metaphysics. Tschumi’s statements, which are a continuation of his leftist political fascinations from the May 1968 revolution, as well as his interest in the philosophy of French poststructuralism and his collaboration with Derrida, prove that terms such as “disruption”, “dissociation”, “disfunction”, “disjunction” and “dispersion” not only referred to architectural problems but also applied to political criticism and the deepest foundations of thinking itself. His collaboration with Derrida manifested itself primarily in the publication La Case Vide: La Villette 1985, in which the architect’s design drawings and texts explaining his concepts related to the Parc de La Villette were accompanied by an extensive essay by Derrida, which included theoretical problems taken up by Tschumi in a philosophical context. Architectural and philosophical issues were also combined during seven discussion meetings organised by Eisenman, invited by Tschumi to collaborate on the design of the Parc de La Villette. Eisenman, who, like Tschumi, invited Derrida to participate in the design of the park and also led to the publication of Chora L Works: Jacques Derrida and Peter Eisenman, in which his ideas were confronted with Derrida’s philosophical text. In this case, Derrida’s essay was not a direct commentary on the architect’s concepts, but rather a reflection on the question of the chôra presented by Plato in Timaeus. During the discussion and in his essay, Derrida pointed out that the chôra is a component of the created world, yet it does not belong to it, but precedes it. The originality of the chôra is so radical that she also precedes all the factors of creating the world, including ideas and the Demiurge. Thus athesis appeared in the metaphysics of the West that the chôra is a form of active abyss, in relation to which all beings are secondary, both those perfect (as ideas or God) and those created, such as the world, things, people or language. This leads to the conclusion that the chôra does not exist, because all existence is a derivative of the chôra. Nor could the chôra be described, since it is a form of developing a space that is preceded by a lack of space characteristic of the chôra. Derrida intended the chôra to be an instance with an exceptional degree of transcendentalism, an anti-metaphysical instance, but also an a-theological one. However, this attempt failed, both in the field of secular philosophy and in the field of theology. Derrida’s characteristics of the chôra to strengthen its transcendentalism and negation of metaphysics had to be expressed in a language that immediately produces new concepts and a new metaphysics that reproduces the categories of the beginning, the origin or the foundation known from earlier philosophical traditions. All forms of criticism of metaphysics are also inspired by negative, apophatic and mystical theology. The undermining of many concepts of permanent meaning and the introduction of new concepts of unstable meaning, characteristic of the philosophy of deconstruction, had many features of originality, but it was directed towards problems whose solutions repeat, with the use of new vocabulary, the findings known in culture since Democritus. Thus, if apophatic philosophy can be regarded as deconstruction avant la lettre, then deconstruction itself in its late versions began to take on the features of a new religion. The exchange of inspiration between theology and deconstruction was manifested in a series of scientific conferences and publications in which Derrida’s philosophical concepts were interpreted within the scope of religious thought. Theological threads began to be found in such concepts of deconstruction as différance or the chôra, while at the same time Derrida himself undertook in his philosophy to study problems such as the Other (L’Autre) or the Impossible (Impossible), which belonged to newer theological traditions. As a consequence of the new problems, the deconstruction became closer to the features of a new religion. Philosophy, at least from Kant’s time, has tried to create a system that would take over from religion the tasks of setting moral and political goals. Similarly, Derrida has directed his interest towards the problems of democracy and ethics, which would enable their renewal. Attempts to create a new religion (cleared of old metaphors), a new community or a new democracy bring problems and threats which may be no less troublesome than the previous systems. All promises of freedom carry with them threats, the greater the more they strive for perfection. The renewal of existential orders, sometimes carried out by means of violent changes, is a certain repetitive feature of human cultures. Deep changes, however, do not protect against the return of both old gods and old demons. Tschumi and Derrida were shaped in their youth by the atmosphere of leftist rebellion against the moral and political limitations of ossified communities and the imperfections of democracy. The ethical theme distinguishes many of their works, including the Parc de La Villette. The opposition to the metaphysical traditions of philosophy and architecture contained in this park was prompted by specific political situations and resulted from bringing political issues to the level of philosophical considerations. Achievements made at the level of pure concepts were then subject to elevation, to a kind of sacralization, which made them religious concepts. The deconstruction reached for the status of the new religion especially when it found its followers and began to generate moral obligations. In the new situation, terms such as the chôra, l’Autre or the Impossible were absolutized and in relation to them a cult and attitude of adoration emerged. The Parc de La Villtette then gained new post-secular meanings, which allow it to be assigned the function of a Temple of Otherness (L’Autre) and Impossible. V In the traditional sense, a work of art creates an illustration of the outside world, or of a certain text or doctrine. Sometimes it is considered that such an illustration is not literal, but is an interpretation of what is visible, or an interpretation of a certain literary or ideological message. It can also be assumed that a work of art creates its own visual world, a separate story or a separate philosophical statement. Parc de La Villette represents the last of these possibilities: it is a philosophical statement that develops the premises derived from poststructuralist philosophies and the philosophy of deconstruction. The uniqueness of its being status, however, is that it does so not only at the level of the theoretical assumptions, but also through its functioning as an active philosophical work. This means that a park is a happening philosophy. Its activity, however, does not refer only to the present tense, but is also an attempt to penetrate the future, all otherness and impossibility. This kind of activity assumes that the work, in a sense, does not yet fully exist, but is also still produced in the processes of its interpretation. The theoretical foundations of the park included texts by Tschumi, in which he questioned traditional ways of creating a work of architecture, postulating in return the use of a long series of negations, which were comparable to the crisis of metaphysics characteristic of contemporary philosophy. It is therefore no coincidence that the publication containing Tschumi’s theoretical text on Parc de La Villette was accompanied by an essay by Derrida developing some of the architect’s concepts. The next step in integrating philosophy into the process of park design was a series of discussions between Eisenman and Derrida, who completely moved the creation of the park into the world of thoughts, without accentuating the need for their realization in the material reality. The main topic of these discussions was the problem of the chôra, which was taken up by later commentators and used to interpret the park as a work in which the philosophy of the beginning is manifested relating to issues of politics, morality and religion. The park was therefore interpreted as a space of invention within the scope of creating new rules of functioning of the community and democracy. Thinking about the political future may, however, exceed the horizon of ordinary expectations. Although philosophical thought is always connected with contemporary problems and metaphysics sometimes intertwines with current politics, yet at the same time the customs of philosophy also include crossing horizons and thinking about absolute otherness and impossibility. Initially, the chôra, différance, absolute otherness (tout autre) and the Impossible were concepts of pure philosophy of atheistic character, but with the further development of the discussion, more and more theological motifs began to emerge. One of the reasons for this phenomenon was the fact that radical negations of all being, which were contemplated in contemporary philosophy (by Heidegger and Derrida, among others), had previously been manifested in negative and apophatic theologies (by Master Eckhart, among others).Also the category of the “Other”, taken from Emmanuel Levinas, was clearly connected with the thought about God. A further reason for connecting the chôra with the theological thought was the interest in the philosophy of deconstruction expressed by some theologians. John Caputo in particular managed to persuade Derrida to participate in discussions on the current status of religion. In the late period of Derrida’s writing, further statements on religious topics appeared. All these reasons led to posing a question about the identity of the chôra and God. Although there were no satisfactory conclusions on this issue, the discussion was also important to create an interpretation of the park as a place of worship. The chôra, representing, according to Plato, the preoriginal emptiness is the place of every beginning, but it turns out that it is not neutral to the being created in it. The chôra deposits itself in every being as an irremovable beginning that interferes with its stability. The chôra, therefore, forces us into a palintropical movement, but it also turns out to be a pure compulsion, an erring necessity and a fundamental force from which, in the human perception, motifs useful to the individual and to the community are extracted. All definitions of this force, including its anthropomorphisation, are formulated in such a way that they allow for building private and collective morality upon them. Such definitions are changed depending on variable political situations. It is difficult to determine whether in the processes of changes in the formulation of “God’s names” any essential value is retained, which is not subject to change. The current definitions of the chôra (God?), which can be found, for example, in the philosophy of Caputo, stress that she is a combination of various and contradictory forces. This characteristic inherits much of Plato’s concept, reminds us of Master Eckhart’s views on Gottheit and, at the same time, is not unfamiliar to Tschumi, whose essays were an apologia of contradictions. The current concept of chôra, transferred into the sphere of politics, is the praise of social diversity and the protection of the difference from the forces of order. In the Parc de La Villette, the future community and democracy were elevated as a system of safe existence of individuals in all their singularity. The park is a temple of a future community in which individual beings have nothing in common. (shrink)

Given the significance of Nicholas of Cusa’s ecclesiastical career, it is no surprise that a good deal of academic attention on Nicholas has focused on his role in the history of the church. Nevertheless, it would also be fair to say that a good deal of the attention that is focused on the life and thought of Nicholas of Cusa is the legacy of prior generations of scholars who saw in his theoretical work an opportunity to define the most salient (...) features of transformations in the habits of thinking leading from the Middle Ages into the epoch of modernity. Thus, although contemporary scholars have not been able to achieve any clear consensus on the question of whether Nicholas belongs to the Middle Ages or to modernity, the field of Cusanus studies has become much more attentive to the possibility that the uniqueness and significance of Nicholas’s vision is a function of his ability to synthesize and redeploy a variety of strands in the Catholic intellectual tradition—strands that are as apt to involve practical matters of canon law and church reform as they are to hinge on a unique and richly developed mystical theology. Given the flourishing of the attention devoted to Nicholas in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, the choices about which texts to include in this article were difficult ones. The rationale for this article’s predominant focus on scholarship of the late 20th and early 21st centuries is that, insofar as the recent studies listed here enter into the debates that have been shaped by their predecessors, the sources mentioned here will point readers to the prior work in the field not acknowledged here. (shrink)

This article discusses how Nicholas of Cusa’s speculative philosophy harbors an ecumenical spirit that is deeply entwined and in tension with his commitment to incarnational mystical theology. On the basis of my discussion of this tension, I intend to show that Nicholas understands “faith” as a poietic activity whose legitimacy is rooted less in the independent veracity of the beliefs in question than in the potential of particular religious conventions to aid intellectual processes of self-interpretation. In undertaking this (...) analysis, the paper will use Nicholas of Cusa’s De pace fidei—whose overt intention is to show that all forms of religious practice presuppose the same universal faith—as an interpretive lens to explore implications of the philosophical anthropology that Nicholas offers in treatises such as De ludo globi and De venatione sapientiae. Thus, I will argue that Nicholas’ appreciation of the inevitability of religious diversity in the temporal world funds the consistently favored view in his speculative works that “faith” is a virtue only insofar as its adherent genuinely remains in search of understanding and that, consequently, religious beliefs should function as nothing more than tools for creative activity, interpretation, and inquiry. (shrink)

ON THE PHILOSOPHICAL RESEARCH OF EDITH STEIN (translated by Inna Savynska)The main Polish philosopher Roman Ingarden in his lecture presents a cross-section of Edith Stein writings and demonstrates the shot timeliness of her ideas. Roman Ingarden was a Stein’s friend from the time of her studies in Göttingen;he knew her ideas and conceptions. He wrote that hers was a search for ananswer to the main question: «What is the structure of man?» That is why she proposed a phenomenological analysis by (...) «Empathy». Stein’s theses «On the Problem of Empathy» is the central object in this lecture. In that work, Stein first focuses on such phenomena as the human body, soul, spirit, experience, consciousness. While discussing Stein’s concepts, Ingarden presents also the evolution of her ideas from realistic phenomenology to mystical theology of Saint John of the Cross’ and Saint Theresa of Avila’s. Roman Ingarden did not enter as firmly as Stein into the mystical range, but he opened a path into the transcendence by creating an idea of metaphysical qualities. In her dissertation, Stein first focuses on the phenomenon of the human body and soul. Ingarden considers pairs of phenomenological notions «Leib- Körper», «Seele-Geist». Their relationships form an ontology of a Person. The anthropological questions, which Edith Stein raised in her academic research, bring about a constitutive element of man – Geist. Empathy is an instrument that help to recognize Geist and Personal experience – truth about man. (shrink)

This review works to create a hermeneutic of reading Indian/Hindu texts as treatises on mysticism.

In De visione Dei’s preface, a multidimensional, embodied experience of the second-person perspective becomes the medium by which Nicholas of Cusa’s audience, the benedictine brothers of Tegernsee, receive answers to questions regarding whether and in what sense mystical theology’s divine term is an object of contemplation, and whether union with God is a matter of knowledge or love. The experience of joint attention that is described in this text is enigmatic, dynamic, integrative, and transformative. As such, it instantiates (...) the coincidentia oppositorum and docta ignorantia which, for Cusa, alone can give rise to a vision of the infinite. (shrink)

Reading only the contemporary and popular literature on the Orthodox spiritual life, it is possible to get the impression that Orthodox Christianity affirms only mystical theology and that it has no place for philosophical investigation, rational inquiry, or thinking for oneself. In this paper I show that this view of the relationship between philosophy and the Orthodox Christian life is one-sided and distorted. For while it is certainly true that reason is impotent to lay bare the very nature (...) of God, St. Gregory the Theologian, St. Maximos the Confessor, and St. John of Damascus all see it as a guide and powerful ally in coming to know that God exists and a little of what He is like, as well as in patterning our lives after He who is the source of all life. The explicit statements that these Fathers make as well as the use that they make of reason in their writings show how it can function as a guide for those in the beginning stages of the spiritual life even if it ultimately points beyond itself to the God who is beyond every conception. (shrink)

This is a book on a positive theology according to Ibn Arabi: a Spain Muslim mystics, His theology is a cure for an atheist. You will find from this book that belief in God is not alienation.

In the present article I argue, that our understanding of mysticism in general has its origin in Christian-theological framework. If some scholars are able to decide whether there is one or more mysticisms, there has to be a common understanding of mysticism (referential term). But every scholar gives a different definition, and even scholars dealing with mysticism in the same religious tradition. Sure, any definition can help us to find a referential term to which all scholars dealing with mysticism refer (...) in order to claim, there is a different mysticism. I found more helpful to turn to Balagangadhara’s approach. He says, in such a case we’d better to choose a prototypical example. In our case it is unio mystica. So, mysticism is, what unio mystica is and by studying its characteristic properties we can arrive at understanding what is mysticism and only then will we be able to compare those properties with other kind of mysticism. Since the 19th century, all scholars refer to unio mystica as one kind of mysticism and the other kind is where the unio mystica is absent. If mysticism is what unio mystica is, then there is mysticism in Judaism, Christianity and Islam. But there is no mysticism in Indian traditions and Buddhism because we can hardly find a Jewish, Christian or Muslim notion of God in Indian traditions, Buddhism, Confucianism, Shinto etc. So, if there is no Christian, Jewish or Muslim notion of God there cannot be unio between human and divine, and if there cannot be such a unio, there is no mysticism as well. (shrink)

In theological sources, many symbols are used to explain the transcendent truths of existence. Among the shapes, the circle has the most use of a symbol which is important for Religious, philosophers, and mystics. However, what is refer mostly to the shape of a circle is the rotation of a circular line that begins at a point on a surface and ends at the same point; then, the most superficial and intermediate symbols of facts are explained with it. Contrary, the (...) present article proposes a novel way of drawing a circle, and with this approach, examines some philosophical concepts. We call this drawing "Boiling Circle", because, the rays are coming out boiling from the center. We also have analyzed and introduced a unique example of a mystical-philosophical-religious Architectural building, during which a circular spring has been built. Its water comes out boiling of the center and fills the five circles within itself and twelve eyes around it. This article begins with the drawing of a boiling circle, continues with explaining the philosophical symbols of the boiling circle and boiling spring according to Islamic mysticism, and ends with comparing and expressing the differences between the symbols of the two circles. (shrink)

Mystical Witnessing and Ascetical Life in Oriental Theology -/- In short, our article is focussed on the witnessing work of the Oriental monsticism in its ascetic and mystical dimension. In the vicinity of the apologetic experience of the first centuries, the ascetic experience of the Christian Church is revealed in the monastic practice and attitude. The historical roots of this way of life and witnessing has to be found in the early centuries of Christianity. After presenting some (...) models of saints from this period such as Saint Justin the Martyr and the Philosopher and Saint Clement from Alexandria, we analyze the significance of the apelative „Avva” which means „father”. By virtue of its spiritual qualities, „avva”, in the context of monastic philosophy, it becomes „word and life”. (shrink)

That something may be ‘present’ or ‘located’ at or in every place is a view that many thinkers, past and present, have held. Typically omnipresence is thought to be a divine attribute, but the question as to how some thing can be omnipresent has not been historically confined to the status of a divine being. This book offers an insight into historical accounts of omnipresence and its developments in Ancient, Medieval, Modern, and Contemporary thought. It further widens the study of (...) omnipresence by including less widely studied strand of thought on this topic from mystical, process theological, feminist theological, and phenomenological perspectives. Additionally, whilst the study of omnipresence has typically focused on Christian thinkers, the volume broadens the range of voices on this attribute further, through including Jewish, Islamic, Buddhist, Sanskrit, and Donghak accounts. The volume also includes chapters outlying different views of location, of interest for but also beyond our understanding of omnipresence. Overall, the Handbook provides an introduction to the main facets of omnipresence, both historical and contemporary, and opens up new avenues for research that are yet to be fully explored. (shrink)

Religious fictionalism is the theory that it is morally and intellectually legitimate to affirm religious sentences and to engage in public and private religious practices, without believing the content of religious claims. This article discusses the main features of fictionalism, contrasts hermeneutic, and revolutionary kinds of fictionalism and explores possible historical and recent examples of religious fictionalism. Such examples are found in recent theories of faith, pragmatic approaches to religion, and mystical traditions in religious theology.

The book is the proceeding of a conference in Pisa 12007 on the philosophy of Lanza del Vasto - the unique Western disciple of Gandhi - examined under the items: his thesis work in Philosophy (Fabris), his Greek and Christian methaphysics (Salmeri), his criticism of Hegel (Vigne), the relationship with Gandhi (Manara), Trinity (Vermorel) Indian philosophical traditioon (Trianni), his henologixcal thinking (Reale) his trinitarian metaphysics (Bertini), his mystical thinking (Vannini) a logicaL analysis of his thinking(Drago), his philosophy and theory (...) of non-violence(Cozzo) The relationship with Catholic Church (Tanzarella), Pedagogy (Butturini), sojourn in Pisa (Lanza). (shrink)

The purpose of this article is to discuss Safavid period Islamic philosopher Sadraddin Shirazi’s philosophical methodology and the sources of the school founded by him. The article relies on research conducted on Shirazi philosophy. It shows that Shirazi through synthesizing the methods of the earlier schools that existed in Islam to acquire knowledge devised a new mechanism for acquiring knowledge. Before coming to Shirazi, intellectual movements formed during Islam’s classical period, such as peripateticism, illuminationism, theology and Gnosticism, were of (...) different views regarding the best way to reach the truth. For example, for peripatetics reason, for theologians revelation, for gnostics/mystics intuition or personal experience were important, but ishraqi school was somewhere between peripatetic and Gnostic schools. Sadraddin Shirazi, though, considered all these agents necessary, for they complement each other, and said they should be utilized altogether to obtain ultimate reality. Similarly, considering his philosophical sources, we see that he is influenced almost by all philosophical schools as well as religious sources. However, Ibn Sina and Ibn Arabi’s influence on him was more profound compared to other philosophers. (shrink)

I argue that St. Augustine of Hippo was the first in the history of Christian spirituality who expressed a key tendency of Christian mysticism, which implies a gradual intellectual ascent of the human soul to God, consisting of the three main stages: external, internal, and supernal. In this ascent a Christian mystic proceeds from the knowledge of external beings to self-knowledge, and from his inner self to direct mystical contemplation of God. Similar doctrines may be found in the writings (...) of the Greek Fathers. Although there are many similarities in the overall doctrine and in particular details between them, it does not imply the direct impact of Augustine’s theological thought on the Greek Fathers but rather the influence of the Neoplatonic philosophy on both Western and Eastern Christianity, in particular, of Plotinus’ theory of intellectual cognition. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:diacritics 35.1 (2005) 8-21MuseSearchJournalsThis JournalContents[Access article in PDF]Klossowski's Reading of Nietzsche Impulses, Phantasms, Simulacra, StereotypesDaniel W. SmithIn his writings on Nietzsche, Pierre Klossowski makes use of various concepts—such as intensities, phantasms, simulacra and stereotypes, resemblance and dissemblance, gregariousness and singularity—that have no place in Nietzsche's own oeuvre. These concepts are Klossowski's own creations, his own contributions to thought. Although Klossowski consistently refused to characterize himself as a philosopher ("Je (...) suis une 'maniaque,'" he once said, "Un point, c'est tout!"),1 his work in its entirety was marked by an extraordinary conceptual creation. From this point of view, his Nietzsche and the Vicious Circle can be read as a work in philosophy—at least in the idiosyncratic sense given to this term by Gilles Deleuze, who defined philosophy as the creation or invention of concepts [Deleuze and Guattari 2]. No doubt, Klossowski remains an almost unclassifiable figure—philosopher, novelist, essayist, translator, artist—and attempting to analyze his work through the prism of philosophy may seem to be a reductive approach that belies the complexity of his exceptional oeuvre. Reading Klossowski as a conceptual innovator, however, at least has the advantage of allowing us to chart a consistent trajectory through his difficult and often labyrinthine text, without denying its other dimensions (affective, perceptive, literary, and so on). In what follows, then, I would like to examine three of Klossowski's most characteristic and important concepts—impulses and their intensities, phantasms, and simulacra and their stereotypes—as well as the precise interrelations he establishes among them. Taken together, these three concepts describe what Klossowski terms the tripartite economy of soul, which constitutes the implicit model through which he interprets Nietzsche's thought.1Impulses as Fluctuating IntensitiesKlossowski describes his books on both Nietzsche and Sade as "essays devoted not to ideologies but to the physiognomies of problematic thinkers who differ greatly from each other" ["Postface" 137, emphasis added]. This emphasis on the "physiognomy" of thinkers reflects Nietzsche's insistence on taking the body rather than the mind as a guide for philosophy since the body is a more accessible phenomenon, less surrounded by myth and superstition. "The body and physiology as the starting point," Nietzsche wrote. "Why?... The phenomenon of the body is the richer, clearer, more tangible [End Page 8] phenomenon.... Belief in the body is more fundamental than belief in the soul" [WP §§492, 489, 491]. Klossowski himself, however, when writing of the intensive status of the impulses, frequently makes use of the term "soul" (âme), owing in part, no doubt, to his interest in the theological literature of the mystics, such as Meister Eckhardt and Teresa of Avila. For the mystics, the depth of the soul is something irreducible and uncreated: it eludes the exercise of the created intellect, and can only be grasped negatively.2 Nonetheless, if one can find a similar apophaticism (or "negative theology") in Klossowski, it is related exclusively to the immanent and chaotic movements of the soul's intensive affects, and not to the transcendence of God. What is incommunicable in the soul (or body) are its "impulses"—their fluctuations of intensity, their rises and falls, their manic elations and depressive descents, which are in constant variation.Nietzsche himself had recourse to a highly varied vocabulary to describe what Klossowski summarizes in the term "impulse": "drive" (Triebe), "desire" (Begierden), "instinct" (Instinke), "power" (Mächte), "force" (Kräfte), "impulse" (Reize, Impulse), "passion" (Leidenschaften), "feeling" (Gefülen), "affect" (Affekte), "pathos" (Pathos), and so on.3 Klossowski frequently employs the musical term tonalité to describe these states of the soul's fluctuating intensities—their diverse tones, timbres, and changing amplitudes—which can take on various forms ("aggressiveness, tolerance, intimidation, anguish, the need for solitude, the forgetting of oneself" [NVC 6]). At bottom, what these impulses express are what Klossowski calls the "obstinate singularity" of the human soul, which is by nature noncommunicable; they constitute "the unexchangeable depth" (le fond inéchangeable) or "the unintelligible depth" (le fond unintelligible) of the soul. What makes every individual... (shrink)

The pedagogical work of the Church, in all his aspects, is inseparable related to the divine Word of God. Therefore, we can truly say that the Christian pedagogy is a perennial reality, nourished and defended by the confessional spirit of Orthodox Tradition. The exemplification of this apologetic work is realized first of all through the scriptural arguments of confession. On the other hand, without fathers and teachers we cannot reach the correct level of understanding. Therefore, in our study we will (...) underline the pedagogical figure of the spiritual father, meaning the role and importance of Avva. Not eventually, the concept of pedagogia perennis (in Latin) can be justified through the liturgical dimension of the Church’s life. Here we can discover the mystical and ascetical character of the confession of faith, in an apologetic overview, like St. Paul says: “It is a body and a Spirit … a Lord, a faith, a Baptism, one God and Father of all, Wich is over all and through all in all” (Ef. 4, 4-6). (shrink)

The literature on the Cambridge Platonists abounds with references to Neoplatonism and the Alexandrian Fathers on general themes of philosophical and theological methodology. The specific theme of the spiritual senses of the soul has received scant attention however, to the detriment of our understanding of their place in this important tradition of Christian speculation. Thus, while much attention has been paid to the clear influence of Plotinus and the Florentine Academy, far less has been given to important theological figures that (...) also form a vital part of the tradition the Cambridge Platonists find irresistible. Similarly, scholarship on the spiritual senses has tended to ignore early modern Protestant developments in this tradition focusing instead on patristic, medieval, and later modern figures. In response to these oversights, the present chapter provides a close reading and analysis of the reception and modification of Origen of Alexandria’s (185-252) doctrine of the spiritual senses in the “Discourse on the True Way or Method of Attaining to Divine Knowledge” by the Cambridge Platonist, John Smith (1618-1652). Although Smith accepted much of the doctrine as he found it in Origen his allegiance to modern notions of methodology, derived especially from Descartes, as well as his Protestantism, made taking the doctrine on authority or antiquity alone unacceptable. Smith therefore offered his own case for the spiritual senses, at once intentionally mimicking the Alexandrian’s interpretive synthesis of Platonism and Scripture (“Origen as model”) and echoing Origen’s own words (“Origen as source”). Whereas Origen made spiritual sensibility intelligible by means of Middle Platonic thought, Smith’s Neoplatonism provided the conceptual tools needed to make sense of biblical passages without suggesting a merely metaphorical meaning for sensory language concerning the awareness of spiritual realities. In this way, both tradition and innovation guide Smith’s reformulation of the doctrine of the spiritual senses. In addition to demonstrating Smith’s debt to patristic thought, this chapter also discusses his influence on such leading figures in modern theology as John Wesley (1703-1791) and Jonathan Edwards (1703-1758). The chapter thus presents an important moment in the development of Christian speculation about the spiritual senses that begins to bridge scholarship on the Patristic and Enlightenment periods. (shrink)

This paper examines the nature of “asceticism” (rīyāḍat) in Sufism, revolving around the works of the 13th century Persian Sufi Mawlānā Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī Balkī and exploring two critical inquiries: Firstly, it seeks to determine whether Rūmī’s mystical perspective on asceticism is world-rejecting or world-affirming. Secondly, it investigates potential parallels and divergences between Rūmī and Meister Eckhart’s stances—specifically, through the Dominican’s Sermons and Treatises—and assesses the implications for the two figures. In examining Rūmī’s works, the current research primarily (...) relies on secondary sources within the Persian intellectual tradition to provide an intracultural context. Utilizing horizontal and vertical interpretations, this study examines critical themes in Rūmī’s works, such as love, detachment (zuhd), the world’s deceptive nature, and seclusion. The findings reveal that Rūmī’s asceticism is not “monastic” (ruhbānī); instead, it balances moderate abstinence and worldly engagement, underpinned by the Quran and the ḥadīth teachings. Rūmī and Eckhart underscore asceticism as an inner transformation rather than mere physical austerity, emphasizing inner purification, self-transcendence, and spiritual detachment as routes to divine unity. The two thinkers’ teachings are catalysts for profound personal transformation and a more fulfilling life in today’s world. (shrink)

This text proposes an analysis of the phenomenon of faith in the tradition and spirituality of the Eastern Church. Starting from the relationship between phenomenology and theology, the article uses a theo-phenomenological method to depict the phenomenon of faith both theologically and phenomenologically. This article also argues that non-religious faith—either natural or philosophical—is the foundation of religious faith. According to Orthodox spirituality, faith is not reduced to a set of theoretical teachings and dogmas; they constitute only the first type (...) of faith, “simple faith”. At the same time, faith is also a form of experience, which has ascetical, ethical, and mystical dimensions; they characterize the second type of faith, faith as contemplative sight and knowledge. (shrink)

The purpose of this paper is to bring together two thinkers that are concerned with the limits of what can be said, Wittgenstein and Maimonides, and to explore the sense of the good life and of the mystical to which their therapeutic linguistic work gives rise. I argue that despite the similarities, two different senses of the "mystical" are brought to light and two different "forms of life" are explicated and recommended. The paper has three parts. In the (...) first part, I discuss certain key components in Wittgenstein’s early philosophy and the sense of the mystical to which they give rise. In the second part, I discuss Maimonides’ negative theology and its implications for his conception of the ’via mystica’. I end, with a discussion of the relation between the two ideals and its significance. (shrink)

Recent students of mysticism have sharply distinguished monistic from theistic mysticism. The former is more or less identified with the empty consciousness experience and the latter with the love mysticism of such figures as Bernard of Clairvaux. I argue that a sharp distinction between the two is unwarranted. Western medieval mystics, for example, combined the apophatic theology of Dionysius the Areopagite with the erotic imagery of the mystical marriage. Their experiences were clearly theistic but integrally incorporated ”monistic moments’. (...) I conclude by discussing Nelson Pike’s claim that these monistic moments were themselves phenomenologically theistic. (shrink)

hroughout medieval Christianity, religious works of art emerged to illustrate the teachings of the Bible for the largely illiterate population. What, then, is the significance of the psychoactive mushrooms hiding in plain sight in the artwork and icons of many European and Middle-Eastern churches? Does Christianity have a psychedelic history? -/- Providing stunning visual evidence from their anthropological journey throughout Europe and the Middle East, including visits to Roslyn Chapel and Chartres Cathedral, authors Julie and Jerry Brown document the role (...) of visionary plants in Christianity. They retrace the pioneering research of R. Gordon Wasson, the famous “sacred mushroom seeker,” on psychedelics in ancient Greece and India, and among the present-day reindeer herders of Siberia and the Mazatecs of Mexico. Challenging Wasson’s legacy, the authors reveal his secret relationship with the Vatican that led to Wasson’s refusal to pursue his hallucinogen theory into the hallowed halls of Christianity. -/- Examining the Bible and the Gnostic Gospels, the authors provide scriptural support to show that sacred mushrooms were the inspiration for Jesus’ revelation of the Kingdom of Heaven and that he was initiated into these mystical practices in Egypt during the Missing Years. They contend that the Trees of Knowledge and of Immortality in Eden were sacred mushrooms. -/- Uncovering the role played by visionary plants in the origins of Judeo-Christianity, the authors invite us to rethink what we know about the life of Jesus and to consider a controversial theory that challenges us to explore these sacred pathways to the divine. (shrink)

Schelling’s middle period works have always been a source of fascination: they mark a break with the idealism (in both senses of the word) of his early works and the Fichtean and then Hegelian tradition; while they are not weighed down by the reactionary burden of his late lectures on theology and mythology. But they have been equally a source of perplexity. The central work of this period, the Essay on Human Freedom (1809) takes as its topic the moral (...) problem of freedom, but spends much of its time telling a mystical-metaphysical story about the creation of the world that attempts to paint a picture of a kind of irreducible metaphysical contingency in nature. What is the relation between the moral and the metaphysical elements of the Freedom essay? It has never been obvious. But some recent Anglophone scholarship suggests an answer. In her Freedom and Reason in Kant, Schelling and Kierkegaard (2006) Michelle Kosch presents a strong case for the view that Schelling’s Freedom essay is motivated by a critique of Kant’s conception of autonomy in ethics. The idea is that Kant’s problems start not if he fails to show that it is rational to be moral, but if he succeeds. For if he does, then it is irrational to be immoral, and hence it is impossible for a rational agent to act immorally: an act not in conformity with duty is evidence of irrationality (perhaps one’s rational agency has been thwarted by pathological inclinations). This is broadly the Socratic position: evil, as a knowing immoral act, is not possible. Officially Kant rejects the classical view, most explicitly in his 1793 Religion with the Bounds of Mere Reason, for a Christian position in which freedom is understood as the freedom to choose between good and evil without thereby abandoning one’s agency. But he has no obvious means for doing so. Kosch attempts to show that Schelling comes, by 1809, to identify his early work with something like this Kantian dilemma: we are as badly off when it comes to our freedom if we are pushed around by reasons as if we are pushed around by causes: the Hegelian ruse of reason is as inimical to our agency as phenomenal determinism. The Freedom essay is the result of Schelling’s attempt to defend a muscular, Christian conception of the possibility of evil. Nevertheless, for Kosch, Schelling’s move to the metaphysical level is still problematic: just where one would expect an account of norms that does not infer them from our rational autonomy, we get, puzzlingly, a cosmology. I will argue that Kosch’s matrix for interpreting Schelling in fact does give us a way of understanding Schelling’s metaphysics of contingency. In broad outline, Schelling’s argument is that our choice of metaphysical schema is constrained by a correct understanding of agency: the world cannot be causally determined because that is inconsistent with our understanding of ourselves as agents; but equally the world cannot be rationally determined, and for the same reason. Schelling’s metaphysics of contingency is an unpacking of the consequences of this inference, and not a botched attempt to ground values outside of rational autonomy. (shrink)

The liberal enlightenment as well as the more radical left have both traditionally opposed religion as a reactionary force in politics, a view culminating in an identification of the politics of religion as fundamentalist theocracy. But recently a number of thinkers—Agamben, Badiou, Tabues and in particular Simon Critchley—have begun to explore a more productive engagement of the religious and the political in which religion features as a possible or even necessary form of human emancipation. The papers in this collection, deriving (...) from a workshop held on and with Simon Critchley at the University of Texas at San Antonio in February 2010, take up the ways in which religion’s encounter with politics transforms not only politics but also religion itself, molding it into various religions of politics, including not just heretical religious metaphysics, but also what Critchley describes as non-metaphysical religion, the faith of the faithless. Starting from Critchley’s own genealogy of Pauline faith, the articles in this collection explore and defend some of the religions of politics and their implications. Costica Bradatan teases out the implications of Critchley’s substitution of humor for tragedy as the vehicle for the minimal self-distancing required for any politics. Jill Stauffer compares Critchley’s non-metaphysical religiosity with Charles Taylor’s account of Christianity. Alistair Welchman unpacks the political theology of the border in terms of god’s timeless act of creation. Anne O’Byrne explores the subtle dialectic between mores and morality in Rousseau’s political ethics. Roland Champagne sees a kind non-metaphysical religion in Arendt’s category of the political pariah. Davide Panagia presents Critchley’s ethics of exposure as the basis for a non-metaphysical political bond. Philip Quadrio wonders about the political ramifications of Critchley’s own ‘mystical anarchism’ and Tina Chanter re-reads the primal site in the Western tradition at which the political and the religious intersect, the Antigone story, side-stepping philosophical interpretations of the story (dominated by Hegel’s reading) by means of a series of post-colonial re-imaginings of the play. The collection concludes with an interview with Simon Critchley taking up the themes of the workshop in the light of more recent political events: the Arab Spring and the rise and fall of the Occupy movement. (shrink)