Customer Reviews

Religion after Religion

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This book analyzes three of the amazing group of Eranos scholars who gathered annually in Ascona, Switzerland to explore new horizons in overt revolt against the petrified academic stance in view of everything that doesn't carry the benediction of natural sciences. These three scholars are Gerschom Scholem, the foremost scholar of Jewish mysticism and Kabalah, Henry Corbin, a leading specialist in Iranian Sufism and Shiism/Ismailism and Mircea Eliade, a generalist researcher of world religions and mythologies. What distinguishes all these men from the typical academic stance is the way they all inverted the assumptions of cold and disinterested schoarship, into whose purview mysticism does not enter but as a phenomenon peripheral to orthodox religions, by placing mysticism in the very core of their scholarship. This inversion also demarcates their anti-academic stance. These three men were especially remarkable in that their scholarship, especially in the case of Corbin and Scholem as exemplified in their translation or recuperation of inaccessible or difficult texts, towered by the standards of traditional academia, as such flying on its face downtreading its pride. The book is not long enough to treat every aspect of the lives of these men, which task has been done individually for each. The primary objective here is to thematize the common denominators that molded the perspectives of these men, who also were close friends that saw themselves as brothers in arms against materialism, social sciences, almost all the ingrained presumptions of modern mentality, modernism, the myth of eternal progress, and the modern academia as presiding over the theology ensouling this essentially soulless fallen state. Some common denominators are Heidegger's existential phenomenology, various Western esoteric currents, especially German romanticism as in Hamann, and Martinism, Rene Guenon's traditionalism, and his Italian disciple Julius Evola, coincidentia oppositorum as shaping their worldview, antinomianism of an almost Kierkegaardian type, the rise of Schelling against Kant in Jewish Weimar thought as giving the impetus to the intellectual currents of the time, and maybe most importantly an accurate understanding of "symbol", which should by no means be confused with allegory, and which denotes a revelation of an irreducible Ur-phenomenon in a form particular to a subject. The experience of the symbol is inextricably entwined with reintegration and totalization of being, which marks the essence of their esotericism. The book can be regarded as a good introduction to how to understand the interrelationships and influences between these great men and their time, since one should not forget that Eranos is a product of the aura surrounding the world war, even though these men were blatantly opposed to a notion of rectilinear temporality. The indices and bibliographies provide invaluable information for further study.

I found this book to be concise and well-articulated. Interesting discussion of the Eranos group and how the three scholars had a fairly distinct view of religion rooted a broad array of German philosophers and writers, including Shelling, Cusa, Hamann, Jung, and Heidegger, all of whom influenced their romantic conception of mythology. The three scholars discussed emphasized mythology over religous law and placed the symbolism and mystical experience in a central role of religious experience, minimizing historicism. Wasserstrom also calls attention to the Eranos scholar's (excluding Scholem) personal esoteric beliefs and experiences with esoteric groups. Fascinating scholarship.

Steven Wasserstrom's brilliant and fascinating book is a marvellous study of three of the most brilliant and fascinating twentieth-century scholars of religion. All too often, readers are unaware of the human, idiosyncratic elements that inevitably shape the perspective of writers in various fields of the humanities. Dr. Wasserstrom gives us an objective view of these elements, and brings a new sense of depth to the background that contributed to the interests and, ultimately, to the published work of Corbin, Eliade, and Scholem.

The subject is extremely interesting: three of the most prestigious scholars -- Scholem, Eliade and Corbin -- three friends belonging to the Eranos group, dedicated to the study of esoterism: the inner contents of religious experience, that which is not usually visible. The book, however, is poorly written and very poorly organized; that, added to the total lack of editing (surprising in an academic press like Princeton), make reading it a frequently frustrating experience.

Eranos was characterised by thinkers who got to the point and made one. If the author of this work was similarly inclined, this book might be worth a read.

Instead, what we find is a distinctly un-Eranos-like fog of unrelated tid bits, cobbled together with a claim that it's some kind intellectual history. Despite considerably familiarity with the three Eranos thinkers in question, I wasn't able to see the point and suspect the author doesn't really have one, except perhaps Eranos was interesting, these thinkers were amazing, but he doesn't really "get" their theses.

The experience is made worse by a startlingly low standard of editing. The mouthy style constantly distracts, large quotations in French go untranslated, and, despite an excess of footnotes (half a page per page of text), hundreds of quotes cite no source.

If there is a religion after religion, it may be best practiced by engaging with the Eranos scholars in a less encumbered environment, such as that once found beside a lake in Swizterland.