Glenn Alexander Magee's controversial book argues that Hegel was decisively influenced by the Hermetic tradition, a body of thought with roots in Greco-Roman ...

Mysticism and esotericism are two intimately related strands of the Western tradition. Despite their close connections, however, scholars tend to treat them separately. Whereas the study of Western mysticism enjoys a long and established history, Western esotericism is a young field. The Cambridge Handbook of Western Mysticism and Esotericism examines both of these traditions together. The volume demonstrates that the roots of esotericism almost always lead back to mystical traditions, while the work of mystics was bound up with esoteric or (...) occult preoccupations. It also shows why mysticism and esotericism must be examined together if either is to be understood fully. Including contributions by leading scholars, this volume features essays on such topics as alchemy, astrology, magic, Neoplatonism, Kabbalism, Renaissance Hermetism, Freemasonry, Rosicrucianism, numerology, Christian theosophy, spiritualism, and much more. This handbook serves as both a capstone of contemporary scholarship and a cornerstone of future research. (shrink)

Introducing the sixth and final installment of the Common Knowledge symposium “Apology for Quietism,” Allen looks at the symposium retrospectively and concludes that it has mainly concerned “sage knowledge,” defined as foresight into the development of situations. The sagacious knower sees the disposition of things in an early, incipient form and knows how to intervene with nearly effortless and undetectable (quiet) effectiveness. Whatever the circumstance, the sage handles it with finesse, never doing too much but also never leaving anything undone (...) that must be accomplished. Quiet, when it is knowingly and effectively quiet (not pusillanimous or poor in spirit), is about what not to do, how not to approach a problem, what not to decide, what is not known, what will not work. Allen explains these principles in terms of traditional Chinese thought, Daoist and Confucian: wei we wei, or “doing-not-doing,” means effective inaction. What makes such wisdom possible is not mystical insight, he argues, but discipline in a certain kind of art. The sage has no need of reasons (let alone doctrines), only effectiveness; and he does not need truth or justice, only subtlety. The detachment of a quietist has little, if anything, to do with transcending perspectives. Detachment is good as a means to flexibility, and instead of transcending perspectives, a sage is skilled in the quiet art of never getting stuck in one. To be effectively quiet is not so much to be silent as to be inaudible, invisible; the sage “vanishes into things.”. (shrink)

_Dreams of a Spirit-Seer_, Immanuel Kant's book on Emanuel Swedenborg, has mystified readers since its publication in 1766 during Swedenborg's lifetime. The unusual style and content of _Dreams_ have given rise to two opposing interpretations. Most Kant scholars regard the work as a skeptical attack on Swedenborg's mysticism. Other critics, however, believe that Kant regarded Swedenborg as a serious philosopher and visionary, and that _Dreams_ both reveals Kant's profound debt to Swedenborg and coneals that debt behind the mask of irony. (...) In addition, Dr. Gregory R. Johnson provides selections from other Kantian writings that mention Swedenborg and also contemporary reviews of _Dreams_, showing that Kant himself was ambivalent about Swedenborg's claims and that readers of his day questioned his position. With its extensive notes, this work is an invaluable resource for students of Kant and of Swedenborg. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Architectonic, Truth, and RhetoricGlenn Alexander MageeScientists, we are often told, employ "aesthetic criteria" in their work: a scientific theory must be "simple" and "elegant" if it is to be a good candidate for truth.1 Is this also true of philosophers? Do philosophers rely (implicitly or explicitly) on aesthetic criteria in the development of their ideas, not simply in order to make their ideas accessible or palatable but also as (...) a guide to truth? This question bears on the relationship between art and philosophy, between art and truth, and between beauty and truth. If the answer is yes, then is there a point at which the line between art and philosophy becomes blurred? This is often claimed, though almost always in reference to the way in which philosophers use metaphor and rhetoric to express their ideas. However, I am suggesting in addition that the line may be blurred not just in the expression of their ideas but in the very form or structure they give to their philosophies. This aesthetic moment is not dispensable. On the contrary, philosophers make their thought into an aesthetic object because of a tacit, pre-reflective intuition that the beautiful is the true. In what follows, I will argue for this thesis and explore its implications.I.First of all, the philosophers I have in mind are philosophers in the classic sense: creators of systematic worldviews, those who aim at knowledge of the whole. I have in mind, therefore, thinkers like Plato, Aristotle, Plotinus, [End Page 59] Aquinas, Spinoza, Leibniz, Kant, Schelling, and Hegel, among others. All these thinkers are alike in that they do not approach philosophy piecemeal, as a set of disconnected "problems." Instead, they take the aim of philosophy to be to give a complete account of what is real. In the introduction to The Phenomenology of Spirit, for instance, Hegel writes that philosophy is "actual cognition of what truly is" (1977, 46). This is a definition one can imagine Plato and Aristotle—indeed almost all of the great philosophers—agreeing with. Philosophical knowledge, in this classical understanding, becomes a whole of ideas in which each element depends on every other and nothing of significance is left out. (Perhaps the best example of such a philosophy is, again, Hegel's.) It is only to "systems" of philosophy that our question about aesthetic criteria in philosophy is applicable,2 for it is only when a number of ideas are taken together into an overall structure and given a fundamental unity that a philosophy can become "beautiful" or "ugly."The Greek word sustema literally means "things which stand together or are made to stand together so as to form a whole" or "a whole compounded of several parts" (Klein 1985, 201). The Greeks applied the word to many things but never, it seems, to thought. Then, as Jacob Klein writes, "from about the year 1600 on there is a sudden and most remarkable shift: book after book appears under titles like 'System of Logic,' 'System of Rhetoric,' 'System of Grammar,' 'System of Theology,' 'System of Ethics and Politics,' 'System of Physics,' 'System of Jurisprudence,' 'System of Astronomy,' of Arithmetic, of Geography, of Medicine and even 'System of Systems' " (1985, 201). According to Klein, systematic philosophy is a response to the peculiar anxiety of modernity expressed so well by Yeats: "Things fall apart"—and we need a philosophical system to put them back together again.The idea of a system of philosophy cannot, however, be dismissed merely as a "modern invention," for it is a legitimate extension of the Greek concept of sustema. The Greek philosophers would not have reflected on their activity as "systematic" because they regarded themselves as describing a reality that was itself a sustema. Pressed to explain what philosophers are, Pythagoras, according to legend, compared them to the theoroi or onlookers at the Olympic Games. As Werner Jaeger writes of the legend, "The comparison depends on the ambiguity of the word theorein, which means both watching a spectacle and contemplation and research in the ' theoretical' sense" (1962, 432). Reality is a sustema; the philosopher's account of reality is a reflection of it and thus is itself a sustema... (shrink)

“Esotericism” refers, more or less, to what used to be called “the occult.” It comprises such matters as astrology, alchemy, kabbalism, magic, and theosophy—to name just a few. In other words, it refers to just about everything that came to be marginalized in the modern period as “superstition” and “pseudo-science,” and anathematized by scientists and philosophers. In recent decades, there has been an explosion of scholarly interest in esotericism, partly because of research revealing that many “canonical” scientists and philosophers of (...) the past were strongly interested in these “irrational” currents. The philosophers include Leibniz, Kant, Hegel, Schelling, and Schopenhauer; the scientists include Newton. Such .. (shrink)

"Hegel's debts to ancient philosophy are widely acknowledged by scholars, and by the philosopher himself. Roughly half of his Lectures on the History of Philosophy is devoted to ancient philosophy, and throughout his work Hegel frequently frames his positions in relation to the thinkers and movements of antiquity. This volume presents original essays from leading scholars dealing with Hegel's debts to ancient thinkers, as well as his own, often problematic readings of ancient philosophy. While around half of the chapters discuss (...) Hegel's treatment of Aristotle--a topic that has long been at the forefront of scholarship--the other half explore his relationship to such ancient figures as Xenophanes, Anaxagoras, Socrates, Plato, Sextus Empiricus, and the Stoics. The essays challenge a number of longstanding scholarly assumptions regarding, for example, Hegel's denigration of the "mythical," his developmentalist approach to ancient thought, his conception of the state in relation to the Greek polis, his "hermeneutic" of the Platonic dialogues, and his use of Aristotelian concepts in arguments concerning the psyche, the body, and their unity and distinction.?"--Provided by publisher. (shrink)

On Thursday and Friday, April 8-9, 1993, the University of Georgia in Athens served as the host for a conference on the topic, “Hegel and Modernity.” The conference was organized by Glenn A. Magee with the help of Richard Dien Winfield and Gregory R. Johnson, and was sponsored by the University of Georgia chapter of Phi Sigma Tau, the Department of Philosophy, and the College of Arts and Sciences.

A contribution to the sixth installment of the Common Knowledge symposium “Apology for Quietism,” this article argues that a strong strain of quietism runs through German intellectual history, from medieval mystics such as Eckhart to the main line of modern philosophers, including Kant, Fichte, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, and Heidegger. Magee treats each of these in turn, establishing case by case that the relation of the individual to the universal is the central issue of German thought, as it is of (...) quietist thinking generally. The identity of the universal varies; sometimes it is said to be God, sometimes the moral law, and sometimes reason (whether human reason or an objective reason inherent in the nature of the world). The process of grappling with how human beings must orient themselves toward the universal very often issues in conclusions that are quietistic: we are enjoined to acquiesce to the universal, and to accept the world as its manifestation. And such, Magee argues, is the case throughout the mainstream German intellectual tradition. (shrink)