Produktdetaljer
Biographical note
Simon Critchley has written over twenty books, including studies of Greek tragedy, David Bowie, football, suicide, Shakespeare, how philosophers die, and a novella. He is the Hans Jonas Professor of Philosophy at the New School for Social Research in New York and a Director of the Onassis Foundation. As co-editor of The Stone at The New York Times, Critchley showed that philosophy plays a vital role in the public realm.Interesting and intelligent ... Witty and fresh ... A significant and courageous invitation to think again about the kinds of thinking that matter; the kinds of thinking that keep us awake
- Rowan Williams, New Statesman
Critchley displays strong scholarship ... the book's power is that it treats the topic with rigour and rationality'
Economist
On Mysticism is a meandering delight, as quietly soul-nourishing as it is brain-stretching... Critchley is a generous enthusiast, as unpretentious as he is distinguished....For all his readability, he is a serious academic. You have to pay careful attention. But it pays off: this book is a real intellectual adventure.
Financial Times
Insightful and imaginative ... remarkable ... [Critchley] hopes to instil a healthy dose of mystical weirdness in mainstream philosophy
Times Literary Supplement
Philosopher Simon Critchley's painstaking attempt to explore transcendent experience provides a fascinating overview of Christianity's great outliers
- 'Book of the Day', Guardian
A joyous book ... [an] engaging study of mysticism [that's] well worth reading
Scotsman
Ambitious
Washington Post
[A] playful and profound new study of mysticism ... A lucid, genial guide
- Brian Dillon, 4Columns
Highly original and enjoyable ... Critchley is determined to strip himself of both scepticism and irony in order to plainly ask how we can all increase our daily "capacity for belief and for joy."
BookForum
Critchley, who respects mystics not just as visionaries but as excellent writers, argues that they can show us sad moderns how to pass out of yourself and into some wider unity
UnHerd
What [On Mysticism] does more than anything is to turn us back to the original writing and images and our own thinking. Simon Critchley should be thanked for that. He is a writer but the best kind of teacher too
Bookmunch
Exceptional and riveting to read ... On Mysticism takes seriously a subject most secular philosophers have dismissed out of hand
Buzz Magazine
Critchley's inquiry spans centuries and sensibilities; it is ancient and fiercely contemporary; it is practical and existential; it is high and low ... He questions and reiterates, plumbing deeper into the great beating heart of the world ... Critchley's offer to the reader is simple: Wouldn't you like to feel the transfigurative power of self-annihilation? The rapturous ecstasy of love? Wouldn't you like to glimpse the ravishing far-near
Chicago Review of Books