An excerpt:
Athanasius Kircher's work on magnetism is of particular interest to historians of religion. It shows that, despite his formal adherence to a dogmatically correct concept of God, as he came under the influence of the idea of linking the image of the magnet and its associated phenomena with God, the personal elements in Athanasius Kircher's work and in his conception of God became less and less prominent. In their stead, the impersonal elements in his idea of God began to gain prominence, [as he came to see] God as an all-pervading power and radiance that gives life to, forms, and sustains everything. "God, the Magnet" [is referred to less often, and there are more and more allusions to] the magnetic force of nature. This depersonalization in the concept of God does not urge a theoretical, but rather a practical, equation of the divine spirit as vis magnetica dei with the all-animating power of nature. Already in Athanasius Kircher we frequently find a shift in perspective---a shift of which he himself was probably not aware---from the idea of the divine magnet to that of a magnetic, all-pervasive power, which essentially creates and guides not only order and life but also the preservation and continuation of the universe. There can be no doubt that it was especially this shift in emphasis that contributed to the development that became manifest in the pansophical theology of nature and that forms the transition to Mesmer's evangelium naturae [gospel of nature] and to the philosophy of nature in Romanticism. (Pg. 10).
Abstract:
Hans Christian Ørsted (1777–1851), the discoverer of electromagnetism, came to be of great importance as a scientist and philosopher far beyond the borders of Denmark and his own time. The centre of an international network of scholars, he was instrumental in establishing the world picture of modern physics. Ørsted was the physicist who brought Kant’s metaphysics to fruition. His discovery of electromagnetism in 1820, a phenomenon that could not possibly exist according to his adversaries, changed the course of research in physics; it inspired M. Faraday’s experiments and discovery of the adverse effect, magneto‐electric induction; the two physical phenomena were later described in mathematical equations by J.C. Maxwell. Together these discoveries constitute the prerequisites for the overwhelming development of modern technology. But Ørsted was also one of the cultural leaders and organizers of the Danish Golden Age (together with Grundtvig, Kierkegaard, and Hans Christian Andersen, his protégé) making significant contributions to aesthetics, philosophy, pedagogy, politics, and religion. Ørsted epitomizes the synthesis of two cultures, remarkably bridging the gap between science, the humanities, and the arts. The concordance between his philosophy of ‘the true, the good, and the beautiful’ and his personal conduct of life makes him a model scholar.
Description:
Argues that the discourse of Jacob Boehme represents the return of Gnostic thought in modernity after a thousand year hiatus.
Jacob Boehme, the seventeenth-century German speculative mystic, influenced the philosophers Hegel and Schelling and both English and German Romantics alike with his visionary thought. Gnostic Apocalypse focuses on the way Boehme's thought repeats and surpasses post-reformation Lutheran thinking, deploys and subverts the commitments of medieval mysticism, realizes the speculative thrust of Renaissance alchemy, is open to esoteric discourses such as the Kabbalah, and articulates a dynamic metaphysics. This book critically assesses the striking claim made in the nineteenth century that Boehme's visionary discourse represents within the confines of specifically Protestant thought nothing less than the return of ancient Gnosis. Although the grounds adduced on behalf of the "Gnostic return" claim in the nineteenth century are dismissed as questionable, O'Regan shows that the fundamental intuition is correct. Boehme's visionary discourse does represent a return of Gnosticism in the modern period, and in this lies its fundamental claim to our contemporary philosophical, theological, and literary attention.
Description:
By the end of World War II, religion appeared to be on the decline throughout the United States and Europe. Recent world events had cast doubt on the relevance of religious belief, and modernizing trends made religious rituals look out of place. It was in this atmosphere that the careers of Scholem, Eliade, and Corbin—the twentieth century’s legendary scholars in the respective fields of Judaism, History of Religions, and Islam—converged and ultimately revolutionized how people thought about religion. Between 1949 and 1978, all three lectured to Carl Jung’s famous Eranos circle in Ascona, Switzerland, where each in his own way came to identify the symbolism of mystical experience as a central element of his monotheistic tradition. In this, the first book ever to compare the paths taken by these thinkers, Steven Wasserstrom explores how they overturned traditional approaches to studying religion by de-emphasizing law, ritual, and social history and by extolling the role of myth and mysticism. The most controversial aspect of their theory of religion, Wasserstrom argues, is that it minimized the binding character of moral law associated with monotheism.
The author focuses on the lectures delivered by Scholem, Eliade, and Corbin to the Eranos participants, but also shows how these scholars generated broader interest in their ideas through radio talks, poetry, novels, short stories, autobiographies, and interviews. He analyzes their conception of religion from a broadly integrated, comparative perspective, sets their distinctive thinking into historical and intellectual context, and interprets the striking success of their approaches.
