This research seeks to establish a connection between the Hermetic tradition and the paranormal phenomena found in the works of Alejandro Tapia y Rivera --- “Un alma en pena” (1862), Póstumo el transmigrado (1872) and Póstumo el envirginado (1882) --- and Benito Pérez Galdós´s La sombra (1870) and “Celín” (1871). By establishing a Hegelian influence in their works, we uncover the possible origin of these paranormal events. German Idealism, so widespread during the first half of the 19th century, seems to (...) have given both authors access to new currents of thought, allowing them to explore the union of art with the metaphysical. Thought is given precedence over sensation and Idealism prevails over Empiricism. Nature is now seen to be spiritual, as well as spatial, and among the major exponents of this movement is Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831), whose philosophy states that human knowledge is based on the “Idea,” a concept in which nature and spirit fuse. Hegel holds the traditional hermetic conception of philosophia perennis that supposes a universal truth common to every culture, religious tradition, and belief upheld by humankind. By examining the Hegelian influence in the works of Alejandro Tapia y Rivera and Benito Pérez Galdós, and relating major passages of their works to the precepts contained in the Corpus Hermeticum, the Emerald Tablet, and the Kybalion (1908), we uncover a subtle, sometimes explicit, presence of this esoteric doctrine, which allows the authors to explore the metaphysical side of life. (shrink)

An argument is made for the relevance of phenomenological hermeneutics to economics, with special attention to recent debates on hermeneutics among economists of the Austrian school of Ludwig von Mises and F. A. Hayek. Hermeneutics is explicated in the context of Husserlian phenomenology, with special attention to phenomenology's Aristotelian roots. Naive and methodological forms of ?objectivism?; are contrasted with hermeneutics, which recovers the horizons of scientific knowledge: the whole, and the activities of the human knower. Finally, the charges that hermeneutics (...) entails pernicious forms of relativism and historicism are confronted. (shrink)