Search Results (10)

This study examines how the Japanese writer Furui Yoshikichi engages with Western mystical experiences, particularly through his reading of Martin Buber’s Ecstatic Confessions and his broader engagement with Meister Eckhart and medieval German mysticism. Furui’s literary inquiry revolves around the inherent tension between the ineffability of mystical experiences and their articulation through language. He critically engages with the paradox of verbalization, recognizing that while mystical experiences transcend linguistic and temporal boundaries, they nevertheless achieve resonance through written and spoken expressions. His reflections converge with Buddhist notions of Sūnyatā, underscoring intersections between Eastern and Western spiritual traditions. Drawing upon his background as a translator of German literature, Furui mediates mystical experiences within a comparative framework, navigating cultural and linguistic boundaries. His approach elucidates the concept of the multiplicity of qualities in mystical experiences, demonstrating particularity and universality simultaneously. By analyzing Furui’s interpretation of mystical texts, this study contributes to broader discussions on the limitations of language in conveying transcendence and the role of literary imagination in rendering the ineffable. Full article

In popular discourse, it is not uncommon to highlight the distinctiveness of systems of “Eastern thought” (e.g., Daoism) in contrast to so-called “Western” systems. However, there is an interesting congruence between Daoism and Meister Eckhart’s mystical theology, particularly in regard to the concepts of the Dao and the Godhead. Like the Dao, the Godhead is the “ground” of all being, simultaneously radically transcendent and immanent, considered as distinct from all things and yet the enfolded totality of them. Both these concepts are also dynamic principles, continually manifesting in the flux of the ever-changing universe. In both systems, nature at its fundamental level is characterized by namelessness, emptiness, encompassment, and dynamism. Nature as “ground” is also a religio-ethical concept. Humans are called to align with this ground and enter into a state of wandering joy, called wuwei (non-action) in Daoism and the “wayless way” for Eckhart. Through reverting to their indeterminate source, the person is able to become detached from rigid teleological norms. Thus is laid the foundation for an ethics of non-attachment, wherein individuals dwell in an existential flow and are attuned to all yet anchored unquestionably to none. Full article

Much scholarly attention has been paid to The Visitation group housed at The Metropolitan Museum of Art. The sculpture, dated between 1310 and 1320 and attributed to Master Heinrich of Constance, comes from the Dominican convent of St. Katherinental, in present-day Switzerland, and is notable for its two rock crystal cabochons embedded in the wombs of the Virgin Mary and Elizabeth. In this paper, I support and substantiate the original inclusion of the two stones in the artwork, arguing that it was conceived in close connection with the mystical doctrine on inner vision and the Eternal Birth of God within the soul, as theorized by the Dominican theologian Meister Eckhart (1260–1328). Considering the role of vision in medieval spirituality, the rock crystals, as symbols of purity and divine illumination, functioned as pivotal tools in the mystical experience of Katherinental nuns, fostering their profound spiritual connection with the divine. This article provides a fresh and in-depth analysis of the iconological essence of The Visitation in the Met, incorporating notions established in the field of sensory studies together with methods developed in visual and material culture studies. Full article

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. Full article

Erich Przywara’s insightful and Christological interpretation of Aquinas’ maxim regarding grace and nature suggests that nature and reason ought to pass through a redemptive ‘death’ with respect to grace and faith. This highlights the inadmissibility of proportioning finality to nature and reason. But more can be said regarding this particular reclamation of a high scholastic view. The late medieval mystical tradition shows a relationship between grace and nature, faith and reason, which sheds further light on this project, and in particular offers a way of valorising a Christological understanding of the relationship within each pair. I propose that this occurs specifically within the mystical context when any and all finality ascribed to apophasis ‘dies’, resulting in an oscillation between both ontic and noetic expressions of transcendence and immanence. This includes the question of mystical claims to spiritually outgrow ecclesial contexts and specificities. I highlight this with particular reference to Meister Eckhart and Jan van Ruusbroec. Full article

The paper examines how the figure of the biblical Moses was philosophically interpreted in medieval Jewish and Christian writings. It highlights a turning point in a new concept of prophecy and scriptural authority and suggests that this transformation was made complicated for both Jewish and Christian intellectuals by the appearance of Moses Maimonides, who was most influential in promoting the Muslim model of philosophic interpretation of prophecy, and at the same time confusingly emerged as a living manifestation of semi-biblical authority. Against Jewish exclusivist interpretation of Mosaic law as the leading polemical argument to encounter competing revelations, the first part of my paper points out a mechanism of “Jewish successionism”, i.e., the re-interpretation of the biblical Moses as an instrument for rationalizing normative paradigmatic shift. The second, main part of the paper turns to the Latin translation of Maimonides’s Guide of the Perplexed, placing it in the midst of a crucial western Latin turn into a new phase of engagement with Old Testament concept of prophecy. A short comparison between some prominent twelfth century figures and later Scholastic thought demonstrates the central role of the new Arab Aristotelianism in general, and that of Maimonides in particular. Maimonides reception among the schoolman will culminate in the writings of Meister Eckhart, exposing the full potentiality of the double appearance of the Egyptian (Rabbi) Moses. Full article

Taking as its foundation a religious experience of my own, this paper explores the impact of the study of religion on the interpretation and significance of experience. My experience will be analyzed in relation to the work of William James, followed by a movement into neuroscientific research on null experiences, before turning to philosophic and theological treatments of experience in Nishida Kitaro and Meister Eckhart especially. These accounts of religious experience are then explored in terms of the potential connection they suggest with drug use in and out of religious settings. Finally, I will turn to a fundamental questioning of experience as seen in the work of Martin Heidegger and Jean-Luc Marion, all of which sets up a tentative conclusion regarding our approach to religious experience, whether as an object of study or our own. Full article

This article focuses on three examples of religious considerations of plants, with specific attention to the uselessness of plants. Drawing on Christian and Daoist sources, the examples include the following: (1) the lilies of the field described by Jesus in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke; (2) the useless tree of Zhuangzi; and (3) Martin Heidegger’s reading of a mystic poet influenced by Meister Eckhart, Angelus Silesius, for whom a rose blooms “without why,” which resonates with Heidegger’s deconstruction (Destruktion) of the history of metaphysics and his interpretation of uselessness in Zhuangzi. Each of those examples involves non-anthropocentric engagements with the uselessness of plants, which is not to say that they are completely free of the anthropocentrically scaled perspectives that assimilate uselessness into the logistics of agricultural societies. In contrast to ethical theories of the intrinsic value (biocentrism) or systemic value (ecocentrism) of plants, these Christian and Daoist perspectives converge with ecological deconstruction in suggesting that ethical encounters with plants emerge through attention to their uselessness. A viable response to planetary emergency can emerge with the radical passivity of effortless action, which is a careless care that finds solidarity with the carefree ways of plants. Full article

In this article, the authors investigate ontological strategies in Meister Eckhart’s metaphysics, which remounts Neoplatonism and the Corpus Areopagiticum, and in two schools of Indian philosophical tradition, the Advaita Vedanta and Early Buddhism. Along with differences in the anthropology, epistemology, and soteriology of these traditions, we can find similar strategies of ontological negativity and mystical experience in both traditions: detachment from the world of images and forms as the highest blessing; non-association of oneself with corporality, feelings, cognitive ability and reason; interiorizing the intentionality of consciousness, and termination of its representative function. Practically all systems of Indian philosophy were projects of liberation or personal transformation from subjugation and suffering into being free and blissful. The idea of spiritual release is also the cornerstone of Christian salvation as with the renouncement of sin and entering blissful unity with God. The apophatic doctrine of Christian neo-platonic mystics about the concealment, non-comprehensiveness, and inexpressibleness of God as the One and Nothingness, and also the idea of comprehension of God by means of detachment from the created world and one’s own ego, gives us the opportunity for such comparative analysis. Full article

Every generation faces the same challenge, to engage with the past and to cope with the present, while building its future. However, the questions and problems inherent in human life remain the same. It is a given that our society can only progress if we work toward handling ever newly rising demands in appropriate ways based on what we know and understand in practical and theoretical terms; but the drumming toward the future cannot be a one-way street. Instead, we have to operate with a Janus-faced strategy, with one eye kept toward tomorrow, and the other eye toward yesterday. Culture is, however we want to define it, always a composite of many different elements. Here I argue that if one takes out the past as the foundation of culture, one endangers the further development of culture at large and becomes victim of an overarching and controlling master narrative. This article does not insist on the past being the absolute conditio sine qua non in all our activities, but it suggests that the metaphorical ship of our cultural existence will not operate successfully without an anchor, the past. I will illustrate this claim with reference to some examples from medieval literature, philosophy, and religion as they potentially impact our present in multiple fashions. Full article