Mysticism and Materialism in the Wake of German Idealism

Rezensionen / Stimmen

"This highly original study of the reception of Platonistic, Eckhartian, and Cusan mysticism in German Idealism, Romanticism, and modern materialism, is a most welcome development and long overdue in the scholarship. Goggin and Hannan do an excellent job of presenting the genuine rationality and critical rejection of Schwaermerei in diverse thinkers such as J.G. Fichte, Novalis, Baader, Hegel, and Walter Benjamin, while still highlighting the undeniable but often overlooked philosophia perennis undercurrent in their philosophies, especially their engagement with imaginative, non-discursive, and intuitive forms of cognition. Mysticism and Materialism in the Wake of German Idealism is a wonderfully passionate and eloquent defense of the power, possibility, and continuing relevance of Neoplatonic mystical thought." - David W. Wood, associate editor of SYMPHILOSOPHIE and editor of The Enigma of Fichte's First Principles

"This is a wonderfully thoughtful and deeply erudite book. Goggin and Hannan show how the question of mysticism in German romanticism is rooted in medieval sources. They argue that the roots of German idealism and romanticism go back beyond Neoplatonism and its philosophical grounding. The book wants to bring the mystical tradition in relation with the material aspects of labor and experience. The question of subjectivity, and the self-emptying of the subject to which the medieval mystics aspired, become issues of immediate importance for the perspectives of modernity. This is a fascinating and superbly informative study that considers a broad but focused range of mystical figures and their singular - even if often unacknowledged - importance in modernist political and philosophical assumptions." - Francoise Meltzer, University of Chicago

"W. Ezekiel Goggin and Sean Hannan's study is a welcome entry into a debate currently taking place in the philosophy of religion about how best to theoretically and practically reappropriate Christian mysticism. [...] Mysticism and Materialism in the Wake of German Idealism ultimately represents a lucid and provocative attempt to develop a materialist vision of Christian mysticism and German philosophy that challenges the reactionary fantasies of nationalism and fascism. It will be of interest not only to theologians and philosophers but also to students of Christian mysticism and historians of Christianity intrigued by the antifascist potential of their chosen object of inquiry." - Samuel Baudinette, The Journal of Religion