Overview

In Egocentricity and Mysticism, Ernst Tugendhat casts mysticism as an innate facet of what it means to be human-a response to an existential need for peace of mind. This need is created by our discursive practices, which serve to differentiate us from one another and privilege our respective first-person standpoints. Emphasizing the first person fuels a desire for mysticism, which builds knowledge of what binds us together and connects us to the world. Any intellectual pursuit that prompts us to ""step back"" from our egocentric concerns harbors a mystic kernel that manifests as a sense of awe, wonder, and gratitude. Philosophy, the natural sciences, and mathematics all engender forms of mystical experience as profound as any produced by meditation and asceticism. One of the most widely discussed books by a German philosopher in decades, Egocentricity and Mysticism is a philosophical milestone that clarifies in groundbreaking ways our relationship to language, social interaction, and mortality.

Full Product Details

9780231169127

Table of Contents

Reviews

Egocentricity and Mysticism is a wide-ranging, interdisciplinary work. In addition to straddling the so-called continental/analytic divide in contemporary philosophy, it also makes significant and original contributions to the fields of philosophical anthropology, existential phenomenology, and theology--not to mention semantics and even ethics as well. -- Martin Woessner, The City College of New York's Center for Worker Education Tugendhat demonstrates how a sense of mysticism, that is, the capacity of stepping back, is not only necessary for a more humane anthropology, but also for philosophy's own theoretical practice. -- Santiago Zabala, ICREA Research Professor at the Pompeu Fabra University

Author Information

Ernst Tugendhat is professor emeritus at Freie Universitat Berlin and honorary professor at the University of Tubingen.

Tab Content 6

Customer Reviews

Recent Reviews

Countries Available