Roots of Western Mysticism

Week 2

READING: NET: NET: Parmenides, On Nature, Plato, Phaedrus excerpt, Cave Allegory; Plotinus, Enneads: On Beauty (html, pdf), On The Good or the One (html, pdf)

Mystical Traditions (pdf)

Early Stirrings of Mystical Thought in the West

• Presocratics
  • Heraclitus, Fragments.
  • Parmenides, On Nature.
    
    
• Plato
  • Plato on the nature of persons
  • Plato, Phaedrus excerpt
  • Cave Allegory
  • Plato and mysticism
    
    
• Aristotle
  • Aristotle and mysticism
  • Aristotle on the nature of persons
  • Aristotle on causation
  • Aristotle's 4 elements
  • Aristotle's universe
  • Aristotle & Plato together: Robert Fludd, 1600

Jewish Roots of Mysticism

• Merkavah Mysticism
  • Ezekiel & the chariot
  • Enoch
  • Isaiah 6 and Daniel 2
• Philo of Alexandria
  • Philo of Alexandria Page; Introduction to Philo, with texts

Mysticism at the Birth of Christianity

• Paul

Neo-Platonism

• Plotinus
  • Plotinus, Enneads: On Beauty (html, pdf), On The Good or the One (html, pdf)
  • Plotinus (Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
• Porphyry
• Proclus
• Summary of Neo-Platonism, Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy