1. Introduction -- Part I: The point of departure -- 2. The point of departure: readdressing the mystical in Virginia Woolf -- 3. The point of departure: readdressing the mystical in Iris Murdoch -- Part 2: A mystical philosophy -- 4. Exploring the cataphatic dimension of Virginia Woolf's work: Virginia Woolf and Plotinus -- 5. Exploring the cataphatic dimension of Iris Murdoch's work -- 6. Exploring the apophatic dimension of Virginia Woolf's work: Virginia Woolf, Pseudo-Dionysius, and the aesthetics of excess -- 7. Exploring the apophatic dimension of Iris Murdoch's work: an iconoclastic pilgrimage -- Part 3: Contributions to a contemporary theological aesthetic -- 8. Conclusion: mystical contributions to a theological aesthetic: Virginia Woolf and Iris Murdoch -- Concluding summary -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index.
Summary:
"A Mystical Philosophy contributes to the contemporary resurgence of interest in Spirituality, but from a new direction. Revealing, in an original and provocative study, the mystical contents of the works of famous atheists Virginia Woolf and Iris Murdoch, Donna Lazenby shows how these thinkers' refusal to construe worldviews on available reductive models brought them to offer radically alternative pictures of life which maintain its mysteriousness, and promote a mystical way of knowing. This book makes a daring claim: that a return to 'pure' experience is sufficient to demonstrate, for the contemporary imagination, the irreducibly mystical contents of everyday life: and, therefore, the enduring appropriateness of theological conversations. Lazenby reveals how these atheist thinkers offer crucial spiritual-intellectual advice for our times: a warning against reductive scientific and philosophical models that impoverish our understanding of our selves and the world, and a powerful endorsement of ways of knowing that give art, and a restored concept of contemplation, their consummative place"-- Provided by publisher. "A provocative re-reading of famous atheists Irish Murdoch and Virginia Woolf as profoundly mystical thinkers"-- Provided by publisher.
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