Process Mysticism

Daniel A. Dombrowski

Jan 2023 · State University of New York Press

About this ebook

Process Mysticism uses the process philosophies of Charles Hartshorne, Alfred North Whitehead, and Henri Bergson to explore mystical religious experiences. The aim is not so much to demonstrate that such experiences are true or veridical as it is to understand, in a William Jamesian fashion, how they could be possible and not contradict the concept of God held by philosophers and theologians. Divine world-inclusiveness, ideal power and tragedy, the ontological argument, asceticism and the via negativa, divine visions and voices, and the aesthetics and ethics of mysticism are all treated in detail. The book is ecumenical in that it is meant to illuminate mystical experiences as they occur around the world in different religious traditions, but the author is especially familiar with those in the Abrahamic religions. "Mysticism" can refer to either direct experience of God or the claim that such experience is ineffable, and both senses of the term are carefully analyzed in the book.

About the author

Daniel A. Dombrowski is Professor of Philosophy at Seattle University. His previous books include A History of the Concept of God: A Process Approach and Whitehead's Religious Thought: From Mechanism to Organism, From Force to Persuasion, both published by SUNY Press.