Kierkegaard and Mysticism brings together scholars who show that reading Sųren Kierkegaard from the perspective of mysticism not only sheds new light on the Danes thought but also offers a fresh approach to mysticism as such, considering its relevance for existential questions, ethics, inter-faith dialogues, and socio-political criticism.
The three sections focus on:
reception history, considering the mystical writers who, even when mediated through secondary sources, were most formative for Kierkegaards thought. mystical concepts such as silence, unio mystica and the relation of the contemplative and active life in various religious traditions. Kierkegaards relevance for twentieth-century mystical writers and contemporary spirituality.
Whereas previous scholarship has approached Kierkegaards relation to mysticism mainly under a negative paradigm, this volume contributes to a greater understanding of the mystical dimensions of his thought. It will be of interest not only to Kierkegaard scholars but also to theologians and philosophers working on mysticism and intellectual history.
Foreword: The Master of Irony and the Mystical Canon Kierkegaard and
Mysticism? Introduction Part 1: Kierkegaard and the Mystical Tradition
1.
Augustine, Kierkegaard, and Kenotic Existence
2. Agency and Contemplation:
Neptic Themes in Kierkegaard
3. Unio Mystica and the Infinite Difference
Between God and Human Being: Kierkegaard and Tauler
4. Justification and
Sanctification: Luther, Arndt, and Kierkegaards Inheritance of Theologia
Deutsch
5. Purity of Heart and the Pure Love of God: Kierkegaard and Fénelon
6. Modern Devotion: Thomas ą Kempis, Sųren Kierkegaard, and the Question of
the Unio Mystica
7. Upbuilding Religious Popular-Philosophy: Martensens
Eckhart and Kierkegaards Defense of Mysticism Part 2: Approaching Mysticism
With Kierkegaard
8. The Mystical Horizon: The Temptation of Mysticism and the
Transfiguration of Unio Mystica
9. Re-thinking Spirituality with Kierkegaard:
the First Schleswig War and the Turn to Imitatio Christi
10. Contemplative
Withdrawal and Ethical Life: A Kierkegaardian Critique
11. Muslim Sufism and
Kierkegaards Mysticism: Returning to the Finite World
12. Kierkegaard and
the Three Characteristics of Existence in Buddhism Part 3: Mysticism After
Kierkegaard
13. Contemporaneity with Christ: Cornelio Fabros Kierkegaardian
Approach to the Mystical Writings of St. Gemma Galgani
14. Antigone Again?
Reading Kierkegaard and Simone Weil
15. Against the Hierarchization of
Religion and Ethics: The Opposition of Hasidism and Kierkegaard in Martin
Buber
16. The Stranger Within: Kierkegaard, Mysticism, and the Unconscious.
Hjördis Becker-Lindenthal is an Affiliated Lecturer in the Faculty of Divinity at the University of Cambridge, UK.
