Philosophical Mysticism in Plato, Hegel, and the Present

Few twenty-first century academics take seriously mysticism’s claim that we have direct knowledge of a higher or more “inner” reality or God. But Philosophical Mysticism argues that such leading philosophers of earlier epochs as Plato, G. W. F. Hegel, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Alfred North Whitehead were, in fact, all philosophical mystics. This book discusses major versions of philosophical mysticism beginning with Plato. It shows how the framework of mysticism’s higher or more inner reality allows nature, freedom, science, ethics, the arts, and a rational religion-in-the-making to work together rather than conflicting with one another. This is how philosophical mysticism understands the relationships of fact to value, rationality to ethics, and the rest. And this is why Plato’s notion of ascent or turning inward to a higher or more inner reality has strongly attracted such major figures in philosophy, religion, and literature as Aristotle, Plotinus, St Augustine, Dante Alighieri, Immanuel Kant, Hegel, William Wordsworth, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Emily Dickinson, Whitehead, and Wittgenstein. Wallace’s Philosophical Mysticism brings this central strand of western philosophy and culture into focus in a way unique in recent scholarship.

Table of Contents:
Preface Introduction 1. “A Worm! A God!” 2. “That Which Shows God in Me, Fortifies Me” 3. Freedom and Full Reality 4. Full Reality Is God 5. Plato’s Progress 6. Plato, Freedom, and Us 7. Plato on Reason, Love, and Inspiration 8. Plato on “Becoming Like God” 9. Ordinary and Extraordinary Experiences of God Appendix: Comparisons Between the Plato/Hegel Argument for a God Within Us, and Several Well-Known Arguments for God Bibliography Notes Index

About the Author :
Robert M. Wallace is a philosopher and translator who as translated Hans Blumenberg, Hans-Georg Gadamer and Odo Marquard. He is author of Hegel’s Philosophy of Reality, Freedom and God (2005).

Review :
[It] will be most beneficial for scholars and graduate students in theology and the philosophy of religion. Robert Wallace has written a wonderful book and explained some extremely difficult philosophical and theological concepts in straightforward language. This is a major contribution to philosophical discussions of mysticism. Wallace offers a compelling and accessible defence of Plato’s idea that we know a higher reality, explains how science can be part of this reality, and draws some important implications for an understanding of the fact/value distinction. He draws upon an impressive range of thinkers, writes with confidence and flair, and offers a decisive challenge to the reductive naturalist paradigm that drives so much contemporary philosophy. At a time when big picture Philosophy is “out”, Wallace boldly attempts to restore the perceived unity of scientific philosophical and religious endeavor. Primarily based on Plato’s and Hegel’s notions of “the God within” as also the Transcendent, he cuts “the Gordian knot” of Platonism through learned discussions of ancient & modern thought, including neglected mystical thinkers; e.g., J.N. Findlay. Wallace is indeed a contemporary American Transcendentalist!