This book investigates Hegel’s interpretation of the mystical philosophy of Jakob Böhme, considered in the context of the reception of Böhme in the 18th and 19th centuries, and of Hegel’s own understanding of mysticism as a philosophical approach. The three sections of this book present: the historical background of Hegel’s encounter with Böhme’s writings; the development of two different conceptions of mysticism in Hegel’s work; and finally Hegel’s approach to Böhme’s philosophy, discussing in detail the references to Böhme both (...) in published writings and manuscripts. According to Hegel, Böhme is “the first German philosopher”. The reason for placing Böhme at the very beginning of German philosophy is that Hegel considers him to be a profound thinker, despite his rudimentary education. Hegel’s fascination with Böhme mainly concerns the mystic’s understanding of the symbiotic relation between God and his opposite, the Devil: he considers this to be the true speculative core of Böhme’s thought. By interpreting Böhme, Hegel intends to free the speculative content of his thought from the limitations of the inadequate, barbarous form in which the mystic expressed it, and also to liberate Böhme from the prejudices surrounding his writings, placing him firmly in the territory of philosophy and detaching him from the obscurity of esotericism. Combining historical reconstructions and philosophical argumentation, this book guides the reader through an important phase in German philosophy, and ultimately into an inquiry about the relationship between mysticism and philosophy itself. (shrink)

Cecilia Muratori’s book is a major contribution to scholarship on the Romantic Age and idealistic philosophy. Jakob Böhme is a thinker of great importance within the German tradition, but is so dense and difficult that he is very hard to study without proper and expert guidance. Muratori has exceeded expectations in her lucid, imaginative, and brilliant exposition of Böhme’s thought in relation to Hegel and, indeed, the modern age. Hegel not only regarded Böhme as a writer of philosophical genius, (...) but also as the beginning of German philosophy. This book explains why. The priority here is no temporal accident. The designation is also a tribute to the proleptic power of the Silesian cobbler. Hegel’s attribution is... (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Journal of the History of Philosophy 39.2 (2001) 307-308 [Access article in PDF] Mayer, Paola. Jena Romanticism and Its Appropriation of Jakob Böhme: Theosophy, Hagiography, Literature. McGill-Queen's Studies in the History of Ideas, no. 25. Montreal and Kingston: McGill-Queen's University Press, 1999. Pp. x + 242. Cloth, $65.00. Paolo Mayer sets out to revise the accepted image of the influence of Jakob Böhme, the sixteenth-century mystic and (...) theosophist, on the romantic poets and philosophers who congregated at Jena in the years 1798-1803. She convincingly argues that, except for the philosophers and critics Friedrich Schlegel and F. W. J. Schelling, Böhme's direct influence was negligible, more a matter of the self-proclaimed new religion of romanticism making ideological use of a controversial, in some sense subversive, forerunner in German literary history. In the hands of Ludwig Tieck, for instance, or Novalis, Böhme becomes a symbol of the new religion of Poesie and the hostile reception afforded by the orthodox evangelical pastors of his time becomes an allegory for the hostility that the new, "let it all hang out" aesthetic of romanticism encountered in the more classical and form-loving members of the literary culture. In Mayer's terms, Böhme's reception among the poets was hagiographic; he was the romantics' poster child.Böhme lived from 1575 to 1624. The son of peasants, but by no means unlettered, the "mystic shoemaker of Görlitz" claimed the source of his teachings was direct divine revelation. He claimed to have visions in 1600 and 1610, whose content he translated into his unusually graphic writings, interspersed with Pietist attacks on reason and on outward religious observances. This unusual 'theology' blended themes that F. Schlegel and Schelling, at least, found attractive: (a) the idea of a self-generating or developmental God, (b) an approach to the problem of evil that logically seems to place responsibility on God, and (c) a large systematic role for desire and will, rather than reason, in the origin of the world and in human salvation. Notable also is the physicalism of Böhme's theology, and the assignment of a wrathful nature to God the Father. Böhme's reception in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, determined largely by a first biography written in 1652 by a disciple named von Furstenburg, was generally warm in pietist circles, cool in rationalist quarters, e.g., in that of Lessing and Leibniz.The established story is that all the major romantic writers, poets as well as philosophers, were influenced through a direct study of Böhme's texts. Mayer takes issue with that, especially in the case of the poets Tieck and Novalis and the scientists J. W. Ritter. Though each of them writes glowingly of Böhme as a poet—in fact a persecuted poet, a near-martyr for the religion of Poesie—Mayer finds no sound evidence for a direct transmission, either of ideas or of terminology, from Böhme to these figures. What other literary critics have advanced as evidence is, she argues, a body of ideas and vocabulary common to the Neoplatonic, mystic tradition and to Christian thinking in general. If a stricter standard of proving "reception" than mere similarity of language is adopted, it seems that Tieck, Novalis, and Ritter had a slim acquaintance with Böhme's writings, but nonetheless advanced a hagiographic view of the "folk poet." Others among the Jena circle—Schleiermacher, A. W. Schlegel, Dorothea and Caroline Schlegel—took a skeptical view of this propagandistic ploy. Only the more philosophical minds, F. Schlegel and Schelling, read Böhme in any depth or ventured elaborate appropriations. Mayer argues that both these figures went [End Page 307] through an initial phase of enthusiasm for Böhme, to be later followed by personal reservations about him and, eventually, by public criticism from a philosophical or orthodox theological stance. Mayer obviously relishes the irony, in this case, of an initial idolization of Böhme as a representative of the 'new religion... (shrink)

The aim of this article is to investigate Hegel's reception of Jakob Böhme during the Jena period. In section 1, the Author analyses Fragment 46 and Fragment 49 of The Jena Wastebook, in which Hegel outlines a God's life-course inspired by Böhmian motives. For Hegel, the Böhmian theory of the wrath of God and fall of Lucifer expresses the opposition and reconciliation between nature and spirit. The relational model here developed is that of an external negativity, which annihilates nature's (...) being-for-itself. In section 2, the Author shows Hegel's use of the same relational model in The Jena Logic and Metaphysics, assuming a Kantian and Böhmian terminology. The part on the Highest Essence explains the opposition between the good and evil principles and their necessary unity. The introjection of the evil principle into the good principle is exactly what leads Hegel to investigate philosophically the myth of the fall. In sections 3 and 4, the emphasis is on the connection of this myth with the ideas of the wrath of God and fall of Lucifer: The Jena Logic and Metaphysics and The Phenomenology of Spirit consider Böhme's thought as a prefiguration of that self-relational negativity which discloses the development of the thing itself. (shrink)

The paper re-examines the work of Jakob Böhme (1575–1624) through the lens of environmental ethics. Specifically, it delves into the concept of dwelling (wohnen) as articulated in Six Theosophic Points (1620), The Six Mystical Points (1620), and On the Early and Heavenly Mystery (1620). To illuminate the significance of this concept for environmental ethics, the paper will juxtapose it with Martin Heidegger’s idea of dwelling. This comparative approach not only sheds light on the environmental-ethical implications, but also allows for (...) a broader exploration of methodological considerations inherent in such a scholarly endeavor. The paper raises questions about the potential constraints in reinterpreting the intellectual legacy of past thinkers, that is, their identity over the course of the history of philosophy. (shrink)

Interest in German Romanticism has been revitalized in recent years by new post-structural, interdisciplinary, and intertextual perspectives. However until now this renewed interest has not led to a re-examination of Jakob Böhme's formative influence on.

Jacob Böhme (1576-1624), the noted theosophist and mystic of the German Baroque, was possessed of a strong sense of the spiritual which pervades the many profound and lofty ideas of his thought. His philosophy is rooted in the belief that everything exists and becomes intelligible only through its opposite. This is sometimes considered the basis of philosophical systems akin to those of Hegel, Spinoza, and Schelling; and the sectarian Philadelphians were formed for the explication of his works. Here the hidden (...) meanings behind Böhme's mystical language are examined through his theory of theosophic-semantic elevation of the "phoneme" to codified "lexeme." This is the first organized and highly idiosyncratic linguistic grammar of the German Baroque, a grammar that emerges from behind the effect of words-in-context analysis. This is an invaluable study for both the literary historian and the student of linguistic history.--front jacket flat. (shrink)

This is a review of Alexandre Kojève, The Religious Metaphysics of Vladimir Solovyov, translated by Ilya Merlin and Mikhail Pozdniakov, Cham: Springer International Publishing, 2018. This slim book is a translation of Kojève’s essay “La métaphysique religieuse de Vladimir Soloviev,” which was first published in two installments in the Revue d’histoire et de philosophie religieuses in 1934. The French text was itself based on Kojève’s doctoral dissertation, Die religiöse Philosophie Wladimir Solowjews, defended in Heidelberg under the direction of Karl Jaspers (...) in 1926. The translation is accompanied by an introduction from the translators discussing translation issues. In this review, I summarize Kojève’s essay and editorialize on the issue of the principal influences on Solovyov’s metaphysics. Kojève claims that most of Solovyov’s metaphysics was in fact borrowed from Schelling and perhaps also to some extent from Jakob Böhme. If that is the case, then what is usually considered the prototypical Russian metaphysics is... not Russian. (shrink)

Die neu gegründete Reihe Paracelsus Studien bietet ein wissenschaftliches Forum für interdisziplinäre Forschungen, die sich kultur- und wissenschaftshistorisch Modellen eines ganzheitlichen Weltbildes widmen und den Dialog zwischen den Disziplinen anregen. Der frühneuzeitliche Alchemist, Mystiker, Theologe und Philosoph Paracelsus (1493-1541) dient hierfür als Leitfigur und Vorbild. Als eröffnender Sammelband fokussiert Mystik und Natur Epochen und Persönlichkeiten der Geistesgeschichte von der Spätantike bis in die Gegenwart, die sich der Integration von Spiritualität und Wissenschaft widmeten: Hildegard von Bingen, Jakob Böhme, Emanuel Swedenborg, (...) Josef Goerres und Johann Wolfgang von Goethe stehen ebenso im Mittelpunkt der Untersuchungen wie gegenwärtige ganzheitliche Ansätze und ihre historischen Bezüge. (shrink)

‘PHILOSOPHY, or the doctrine and discipline of ideas’, as S. T. Coleridge understood it, is the theme of this book. It considers the most vital and mature vein of Coleridge’s thought to be ‘the contemplation of ideas objectively, as existing powers’. A theory of ideas emerges in critical engagement with thinkers including Plato, Plotinus, Böhme, Kant, and Schelling. A commitment to the transcendence of reason, central to what he calls ‘the spiritual platonic old England’, distinguishes him from his German contemporaries. (...) The book also engages with Coleridge’s poetry, especially in a culminating chapter dedicated to the ‘Limbo’ sequence. This book pursues a theory of contemplation that draws from discussions of imagination and the ‘Ideas of Reason’ in Coleridge’s published texts and extensively from his unpublished works, fragments, letters, and notebooks. He posited a hierarchy of cognition from basic sense intuition to the apprehension of scientific, ethical, and theological ideas. The structure of the book follows this thesis, beginning with sense data, moving upwards into aesthetic experience, imagination, and reason, with final chapters on formal logic and poetry that constellate the contemplation of ideas. Coleridge’s Contemplative Philosophy is not just a work of intellectual history, it addresses a figure whose thinking is of continuing interest, arguing that contemplation of ideas and values has consequences for everyday morality and aesthetics, as well as metaphysics. The volume will be of interest to philosophers, intellectual historians, scholars of religion, and of literature. (shrink)

Meri Genetz was a Finnish painter, esotericist, and a spiritual seeker. Around 1925, she began truly dedicating herself to spiritual seeking and started to make notes of her studies in black notebooks. This article will go through four of those notebooks which today offer a vivid picture of Genetz’s seeking between the years 1925 and 1943. In the beginning, Genetz acquainted herself with Gnosticism, Theosophy, and Kabbalah, as well as the works of Christian mystics, such as Emanuel Swedenborg and (...) class='Hi'>Jakob Böhme, the writings of, for example, Paracelsus, and texts attributed to the mythic figure Hermes Trismegistus. Gradually Genetz started to outline her own views, ideas, and theories regarding higher truth and spiritual wisdom. In the beginning of the 1930s her main quest came to be to find her ‘other half’ and become whole. She started attending Spiritualist séances, where she would ask about her other half and discuss the state of her soul, the souls of others, her art and marriage, and the books she had read. In time, Genetz’s quest for true wisdom and self-fulfilment became more and more restless and impatient. When she died in 1943, she was still seeking. (shrink)

The Russian poet and anthroposophist Andrei Belyi has four poems from 1918 with the same title, Anthroposophy [Antroposofiia]. These are love poems and anthroposophy is represented in them as a living spiritual being of female gender. The principal attribute of this being is a "clear gaze," "flashing eyes," which regard the poet from the precincts of light, of blueness, from waves of aromas and musical harmonies. These verses are clearly oriented to the poem "Three Encounters" [Tri vstrechi] by Vladimir Solov'ev, (...) the theme of which is the thrice-repeated vision of what Solov'ev recognized as the Sophia of the ancient Gnostics and of Jakob Böhme. How are we to understand Belyi's enigmatic poetic intent? How does anthroposophy—a "science of the spirit," an occult system created by Rudolf Steiner—become in Belyi's imagination now a "sister," now a beloved—"tender, gentle, and kind"—linked to the poet by a mysterious and fateful meeting in eternity? Most importantly, what does this anthropomorphism of anthroposophy mean? The suggestion that these verses may have had real prototypes poems does not eliminate the question. But the question is resolved if we turn to a very well-known and in certain respects key lecture by Steiner entitled "The Essence of Anthroposophy," which he gave in Berlin in February 1913, and which Andrei Belyi attended. This lecture not only provides the key to those of Belyi's poems of interest to us here; it also brings us directly to the theme of our present study, inasmuch as its content creates a bridge between Russian religious culture of the late nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries, developing under the aegis of Sophia, and the latest German gnosis. It is therefore worth dwelling on it especially. (shrink)

Converse in the Spirit is a comparative study of the writings of William Blake and the German visionary philosopher Jacob Boehme. It argues that the relationship between Blake and Boehme was a meeting of like minds that transcended place and time, that each regarded himself as part of a community of vision, and aspiration, and believed that any predominant form ofthought and understanding was only partial.

David Bohm argues that our fragmented, mechanistic notion of order permeates not only modern science and technology today, but also has profound implications ...

David Bohm was one of the foremost scientific thinkers and philosophers of our time. Although deeply influenced by Einstein, he was also, more unusually for a scientist, inspired by mysticism. Indeed, in the 1970s and 1980s he made contact with both J. Krishnamurti and the Dalai Lama whose teachings helped shape his work. In both science and philosophy, Bohm's main concern was with understanding the nature of reality in general and of consciousness in particular. In this classic work he develops (...) a theory of quantum physics which treats the totality of existence as an unbroken whole. Writing clearly and without technical jargon, he makes complex ideas accessible to anyone interested in the nature of reality. (shrink)

There is fast-growing awareness of the role atmospheres play in architecture. Of equal interest to contemporary architectural practice as it is to aesthetic theory, this 'atmospheric turn' owes much to the work of the German philosopher Gernot Böhme. Atmospheric Architectures: The Aesthetics of Felt Spaces brings together Böhme's most seminal writings on the subject, through chapters selected from his classic books and articles, many of which have hitherto only been available in German. This is the only translated version authorised by (...) Böhme himself, and is the first coherent collection deploying a consistent terminology. It is a work which will provide rich references and a theoretical framework for ongoing discussions about atmospheres and their relations to architectural and urban spaces. Combining philosophy with architecture, design, landscape design, scenography, music, art criticism, and visual arts, the essays together provide a key to the concepts that motivate the work of some of the best contemporary architects, artists, and theorists: from Peter Zumthor, Herzog & de Meuron and Juhani Pallasmaa to Olafur Eliasson and James Turrell. With a foreword by Professor Mark Dorrian and an afterword by Professor David Leatherbarrow,, the volume also includes a general introduction to the topic, including coverage of it history, development, areas of application and conceptual apparatus. (shrink)