The Mystery of Being: Reconsidering the Mystical Element in Heidegger's Thought

(Hardback)

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This book showcases the contributions of esteemed scholars in Heideggerian studies, delving into the inquiry of the mystical essence inherent in Heidegger's thought.
Rather than confining "mystery" to the conventional realm of mysticism, separate from philosophy, this volumes original research investigates how the mystery of being is integral to philosophy itself, shaping its performative and transformative nature. The books central inquiry asks whether this mystical element is essential to Heideggers thought and how it relates to traditional notions of mysticism. At its core, however, it questions the very essence of philosophyits transformative potentialengaging with numerous themes in Heideggers work while remaining attuned to the centrality and significance of the mystery of being.

Reviews

The Mystery of Being: Reconsidering the Mystical Element in Heidegger's Thought is a collection of thoughtful and provocative essays that tackle an important dimension of Heidegger's path. Many scholars have previously addressed the mystical dimension in Heidegger's thought but the topic is discussed from new perspectives in this volume and a convincing case is made to reexamine Heidegger under the taxonomy of philosophical mysticism. At the heart of Heidegger's meditationalas opposed to computationalthinking, or what he called "inceptual thinking," is the notion of mystery understood as the revealing concealment by which the concealed is simultaneously hidden and manifest. The mystical element of Heidegger's poiesis undergirds his claim that the essential being of language, which originates in the silence of speaking the unspeakable, safeguarded especially by the poet, may be elicited from the assertion that saying is showing, but what is shown in that showing is the unshowable, for every unconcealment of truth is inescapably a concealment of untruth. The truth of beyng is beyond language but it is not possible for linguistic beings to leap over language to lay bare beyng divested of linguistic attire. The chapters of this book adeptly elucidate Heidegger's indebtedness to the mystical tradition in shaping his idea of thinking as a transformative event. Particularly relevant is his commitment to the hermeneutical principle of letting the veil appear as what veils. In consonance with mystics in various traditions, Heidegger grasped that lifting the veil, ostensibly to see the face laid bare, amounts to discerning that there is no way to see the face but through the veil of the face. The Mystery of Being is a welcome contribution that will benefit students of Heidegger, mysticism, and the interface of philosophy and religion. -- Elliot R. Wolfson, Professor Emeritus, University of California, Santa Barbara, USA

Author Bio

Erik Kuravsky is a researcher in the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Vienna, Austria. He is the author of Transcendence in Heideggers Early Thought: Toward Being as Event (2023). His research explores the potential for self-fulfillment in human life, examining the ethical, epistemic, and existential dimensions of an individual's ontological transformation. Due to its interdisciplinary nature, his work has been published in Research in Phenomenology, Religions, Sophia, Open Theology, Journal of Humanistic Psychology, Gatherings, and Circolo Rivista di Filosofia e Culture, as well as in various books on phenomenology and the intersections of philosophy and mysticism.