Winner of the 2009 Edward Goodwin Ballard Prize in Phenomenology
A phenomenological view of religious experience based on mysticism
Exploring the first-person narratives of three figures from the Christian, Jewish, and Islamic mystical traditions—St. Teresa of Avila, Rabbi Dov Baer, and Rūzbihān Baqlī—Anthony J. Steinbock provides a complete phenomenology of mysticism based in the Abrahamic religious traditions. He relates a broad range of religious experiences, or verticality, to philosophical problems of evidence, selfhood, and otherness. From this philosophical description of vertical experience, Steinbock develops a social and cultural critique in terms of idolatry—as pride, secularism, and fundamentalism—and suggests that contemporary understandings of human experience must come from a fuller, more open view of religious experience.
"
Steinbock embarks on a full explication of three central dimensions of human experience; in doing so, he takes up and embodies the phenomenological project envisioned by Edmund Husserl.
" - Choice
"
Phenomenology and Mysticism stands out as an original work in a genre too often reduced to commentaries on classical figures. Steinbock is an acute phenomenologist in his own right, and this work sets a new standard for the interaction between phenomenology and theology/religious studies.VOLUME 35.1 MARCH 2009
" - Lund University, Sweden
"
. . . an incredibly rich book about the phenomenology of mystical experience in the Abrahamic traditions, a book that will certainly be required reading for anyone working in the areas of religious experience and the intersection between theology and philosophy, especially in the continental tradition.Vol. 31 2009
" - Pneuma Jrnl Society for Pentecostal Studies
"
A single short review of this treatise suggests a light approach which does not [do] justice to this profound work. The thoughts and insights gathered and proposed by Steinbock provoke an equally concerted response and offer topics for discussion on many different disciplinary levels.
" - Philosophy in Review
"
Broader contributions from Phenomenology and Mysticism rest in careful engagement with philosophical phenomenology, not simply as a descriptive method, but as a coherent disciplinary field with potential theoretical resources to address ranges of phenomena beyond those that are typically evoked.Vol. 9 December 2008
" - University of Exeter
