Phenomenology and Mysticism The Verticality of Religious Experience [Hardcover]

Exploring the first-person narratives of three figures from the Christian, Jewish, and Islamic mystical traditionsSt. Teresa of Avila, Rabbi Dov Baer, and Rzbihn BaqlAnthony J. Steinbock provides a complete phenomenology of mysticism based in the Abrahamic religious traditions. He relates a broad range of religious experiences, or verticality, to philosophical problems of evidence, selfhood, and otherness. From this philosophical description of vertical experience, Steinbock develops a social and cultural critique in terms of idolatryas pride, secularism, and fundamentalismand suggests that contemporary understandings of human experience must come from a fuller, more open view of religious experience.

Acknowledgments

Introduction: Vertical Givenness in Human Experience
1. The Religious and Mystical Shape of Experience
2. St. Teresa of Avila and Mysticism of Prayer
3. Rabbi Dov Baer and Mysticism of Ecstasy
4. Rzbihn Baql and Mysticism of Unveiling
5. Matters of Evidence in Religious Experience
6. Epiphany and Withdrawal
7. On Individuation
8. Idolatry
Epilogue: On the De-Limitation of the Religious and the Moral

Glossary of Main Hebrew and Arabic Terms
Notes
Bibliography
Index

. . . an incredibly rich book about the phenomenology of mystical experience in the Abrahamic traditions, a book that will certainly be required reading for anyone working in the areas of religious experience and the intersection between theology and philosophy, especially in the continental tradition.Vol. 31 2009A single short review of this treatise suggests a light approach which does not [do] justice to this profound work. The thoughts and insights gathered and proposed by Steinbock provoke an equally concerted response and offer topics for discussion on many different disciplinary levels.

Anthony J. Steinbock is Professor of Philosophy at Southern Illinois University, Carbondale. He is author of Home and Beyond: Generativel3½