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Phenomenology and Mysticism: The Verticality of Religious Experience (Indiana Series in the Philosophy of Religion)

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Steinbock is author of _Home and Beyond: Generative Phenomenology after Husserl_ (Northwestern University Press, 1995), translator of Edmund Husserl's _Analyses Concerning Passive and Active Synthesis_ (Kluwer Academic Publishers, 2001) and professor of philosophy at Southern Illinois University at Carbondale. Here he concerns himself with carefully describing one mode of "givenness" that is different from the ways in which objects are "presented" in human experience: epiphany. He successfully traces the "verticality" of experience that gives or yields an experience as "religious." Additionally, Steinbock critically analyzes the obverse of epiphany -- idolatry. Utilizing descriptions of three mystics from the Abrahamic religious traditions, Steinbock thoroughly investigates the problem of evidence. _Phenomenology and Mysticism_ represents the first of a planned trilogy of books, each devoted to a particular mode of vertical experience. The other two volumes are analyses of moral and ecological experience, respectively, investigating the modes of givenness of revelation/manifestation and disclosure/display. In this impressive project, Steinbock embarks on a full explication of three central dimensions of human experience, and in doing so, takes up and embodies the phenomenological project envisioned by Edmund Husserl. I highly recommend this text to professors, scholars, and advanced students in phenomenology, philosophy of religion, and religious studies.