Passion for Nothing offers a reading of Kierkegaard as an apophatic author. As it functions in this book, “apophasis” is a flexible term inclusive of both “negative theology” and “deconstruction.” One of the main points of this volume is that Kierkegaard’s authorship opens pathways between these two resonate but often contentiously related terrains. The main contention of this book is that Kierkegaard’s apophaticism is an ethical-religious difficulty, one that concerns itself with the “whylessness” of existence. This is a theme that Kierkegaard inherits from the philosophical and theological traditions stemming from Meister Eckhart. Additionally, the forms of Kierkegaard’s writing are irreducibly apophatic—animated by a passion to communicate what cannot be said. The book examines Kierkegaard’s apophaticism with reference to five themes: indirect communication, God, faith, hope, and love. Across each of these themes, the aim is to lend voice to “the unruly energy of the unsayable” and, in doing so, let Kierkegaard’s theological, spiritual, and philosophical provocation remain a living one for us today.

Vladimir Lossky’s posthumously published masterwork is now made available in English for the first time. Eckhart’s Negative Theology is the culmination of a long process, whereby the renowned Orthodox philosopher and theologian embraced the ways of thinking of a thirteenth-century German monk and mystic. While refusing to simplify Eckhart’s theology to a system or single motif, Lossky explores in detail the various ramifications of Eckhart’s insistence on the ineffability of God. Is God to be regarded as ‘being’, or the ‘One’, or ‘Intellect’? Does God’s pure expression of each of these preclude the others? Framed by six key statements about God’s essence, Lossky lays out Eckhart’s approach to this dilemma. His understanding of the problem, guided by careful engagement with a multitude of sources, is exhaustive. Scholars will welcome this eagerly-anticipated translation.

Vladimir Lossky’s posthumously published masterwork is now made available in English for the first time. Eckhart’s Negative Theology is the culmination of a long process, whereby the renowned Orthodox philosopher and theologian embraced the ways of thinking of a thirteenth-century German monk and mystic. While refusing to simplify Eckhart’s theology to a system or single motif, Lossky explores in detail the various ramifications of Eckhart’s insistence on the ineffability of God. Is God to be regarded as ‘being’, or the ‘One’, or ‘Intellect’? Does God’s pure expression of each of these preclude the others? Framed by six key statements about God’s essence, Lossky lays out Eckhart’s approach to this dilemma. His understanding of the problem, guided by careful engagement with a multitude of sources, is exhaustive. Scholars will welcome this eagerly-anticipated translation.

Apophatic theology, or negative theology, attempts to describe God, the Divine Good, by negation, to speak only in terms of what may not be said about the perfect goodness that is God. It is a way of coming to an understanding of who God is, which has played a significant role across centuries of Christian tradition but is very often treated with suspicion by those engaging in theological study today. This book seeks to introduce students to this oft-misunderstood form of spirituality. Beginning by placing apophatic spirituality within its biblical roots, the book later considers the key pioneers of apophatic faith and a diverse range of thinkers, including C. S. Lewis and Keats, to inform us in our negative theological journey. A final section explores what difference a negative theological approach might make to our practice and our liturgy.

From the world's foremost authority on Christian mysticism, the definitive story of Christianity's greatest mystic, Meister Eckhart, his insights into God, his relation to the tradition, and how he learned from the women religious of his day.

Vladimir Lossky's posthumously published masterwork is now made available in English for the first time. Eckhart's Apophatic Theology is the culmination of a long process, whereby the renowned Orthodox philosopher and theologian embraced the ways of thinking of a thirteenth-century German mendicant and mystic. While refusing to simplify Eckhart's theology to a system or single motif, Lossky explores in detail the various ramifications of Eckhart's insistence on the ineffability of God. Is God to be regarded as 'being', or the 'One', or 'Intellect'? Does God's pure expression of each of these preclude the others? Framed by six key statements about God's essence, Lossky lays out Eckhart's approach to this dilemma. His understanding of the problem, guided by careful engagement with a multitude of sources, is exhaustive. Scholars will welcome this eagerly-anticipated translation.

This book explores the thought of Jacques Derrida as it relates to the tradition of apophatic thought--negative theology and philosophy--in both Western and Eastern traditions. Following the Introduction by Toby Foshay, two of Derrida's essays on negative theology, Of an Apocalyptic Tone Newly Adopted in Philosophy and How to Avoid Speaking: Denials, are reprinted here. These are followed by essays from a Western perspective by Mark C. Taylor and Michel Despland, and essays from an Eastern perspective by David Loy, a Buddhist, and Harold Coward, a Hindu. In the Conclusion, Jacques Derrida responds to these discussions.

The subject of Mystical Languages of Unsaying is an important but neglected mode of mystical discourse, apophasis. which literally means "speaking away." Sometimes translated as "negative theology," apophatic discourse embraces the impossibility of naming something that is ineffable by continually turning back upon its own propositions and names. In this close study of apophasis in Greek, Christian, and Islamic texts, Michael Sells offers a sustained, critical account of how apophatic language works, the conventions, logic, and paradoxes it employs, and the dilemmas encountered in any attempt to analyze it. This book includes readings of the most rigorously apophatic texts of Plotinus, John the Scot Eriugena, Ibn Arabi, Marguerite Porete, and Meister Eckhart, with comparative reference to important apophatic writers in the Jewish tradition, such as Abraham Abulafia and Moses de Leon. Sells reveals essential common features in the writings of these authors, despite their wide-ranging differences in era, tradition, and theology. By showing how apophasis works as a mode of discourse rather than as a negative theology, this work opens a rich heritage to reevaluation. Sells demonstrates that the more radical claims of apophatic writers—claims that critics have often dismissed as hyperbolic or condemned as pantheistic or nihilistic—are vital to an adequate account of the mystical languages of unsaying. This work also has important implications for the relationship of classical apophasis to contemporary languages of the unsayable. Sells challenges many widely circulated characterizations of apophasis among deconstructionists as well as a number of common notions about medieval thought and gender relations in medieval mysticism.

A closely argued book about what the negative tradition in Western theology involves.

Meister Eckhart (c. 1260-1327) was a Dominican philosopher and spiritual master whose thought is among the most daring and difficult in the history of western mysticism. This volume contains his technical Latin writings and more popular German sermons.