Die geistigen Sinne in der ostsyrischen christlichen Mystik (Full Text) (original) (raw)
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Die Wirklichkeit der Esoterik und die christliche Theologie
Usually christian theology criticize esoteric approaches - here I criticize western christian theology from point of view of some serious esoteric traditions. Western christianity, theology and also secular history of ideas in consequence has no proper sight on esoteric approaches since the scism between western roman and east orthodox chritianity concerning the conflict about "filioque". Central dimensions of ghost (spirit and mind) went lost in western Tradition. Western theology today is challanged to overcome this deficits … and learn from orthodox theologiy as well as from some old and actual esoteric approaches in this case.
This book builds upon foregoing research on the hermeneutic of Foucault, Derrida, and Certeau, by applying its outcome to a representative of pre-modern philosophy which is of particular importance for the critique of scientific rationality: Nicholas of Cusa. Beneath the surface of Cusa’s philosophy of mathematics (and especially his considerations about the squaring of the circle) it uncovers the rules of a mystagogical symbol practice which allows the overcoming of the post-Cartesian dualism between science and spiritual practice based on concept of rationality which culminates in the contemplative practice of prayer. The decision to focus on Nicholas of Cusa is based on two observations: first, the discovery that Cusa developed the presumably last synthesis of the Christian transformation of pagan learning before the post-Reformation confessionalisation of religion and the “epistemological break” (Foucault) of post-Cartesian modernity; second, the observation that Cusa already developed a rudimentary reply to the challenges of modern “globalisation” which avoids the pitfalls of the modern “age of the world-picture” (Heidegger). Against this background it is shown how Cusa’s “synthesis” gives access to a comprehensive “translation project” between pre- and post-modernity which leaves behind “the romantic-idealist experiments of modernity to save Christianity through a mixture of myth and metaphysics of subjectivity”. Following the basic grammar of Cusa’s symbol practice, the grammar of modern scientific realism and subjective individuality is reintegrated step by step in an allegorical ontology which is consummated in Cusa’s “science of praise”. The outcome of this research-project may be compared with the analogical turn of Anglo-Saxon Radical-Orthodoxy, but it avoids the anti-modern polemics of John Milbank or Catherine Pickstock, and allows for the development of a more “continental” (i.e. “critical”, in the Kantian sense, and self-critical) version of “radical Orthodoxy”.
Meister Eckharts Mystik im Spannungsfeld von Rhetorik, Philosophie und Spiritualität
Mystik als Kern der Weltreligionen? Eine protestantische Perspektive, ed. by Wolfgang Achtner, Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2017
This article deals with the much disputed question if and in which sense Meister Eckhart can be called a mystic. In trying to answer this question I assess the correlation of mysticism and philsophy and give an outline of Eckhart's view on man's path to unity with God.
Schopenhauer-Jahrbuch, 2010
The paper tries to show that authors with 'mystical aspects', like Dionysius Areopagita, Gottfried Arnold and Arthur Schopenhauer, are not irrational or antirational: Dionysius used the rational method of abstraction to achieve an a-rational point of knowledge. With Arnold began a descriptive study of mysticism in German pietism. The rational intention of Schopenhauer's main work, to write a 'book of nature' which gives a complete knowledge of the world in the abstract terms, must include mystical phenomena, because they are components of the world. So the essay is also a (conceptual-)historical sketch from normative to descriptive mysticism.