Ecstatic Confessions: The Heart of Mysticism (Martin Buber Library) - Softcover

Buber, Martin

Softcover

ISBN 10: 081560422X ISBN 13: 9780815604228

Publisher: Syracuse University Press, 1996

Synopsis

Beginning with Buber's seminal essay on mysticism, this book offers texts down the centuries from oriental, pagan, Gnostic, Eastern Orthodox, Catholic, Jewish and Muslim sources. It aims to convey some quality of an experience that is essentially beyond the power of words to capture.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

Available for the first time in paperback, Ecstatic Confessions is Martin Buber's unique, personal gathering of the testimonies of mystics throughout the centuries expressing their encounters with the divine. It features the author's seminal introduction to mysticism, "Ecstasy and Confession", which probes the nature of what Buber terms the "most inward of all experiences.... God's highest gift". Buber sifted through texts from oriental, pagan, Gnostic, Eastern Orthodox, Catholic, Protestant, Jewish, and Muslim sources down the centuries to cull those moving records that manage to convey some quality of an experience that is essentially beyond the power of words to capture. Ecstatic Confessions orchestrates these reports from the edge of human experience into a revealing look at the nature of the ecstatic experience itself and the tension arising from the mystic's compelling need to give witness to an event that can never truly be verbalized.

About the Author:

Martin Buber (1878 1965), is among the foremost twentieth-century philosophers of human relations and Jewish thought. He is best known for his revival of popular interest in Hasidism and his philosophy of dialogue, a form of existentialism centered on the distinction between the I-Thou and I-It relationships. His work on Hasidic thought, Zionism and religious philosophy continues to influence both the academic study of Judaism and religious thinking more broadly. He also inspired the trend toward neo-Hasidism among modern Jews. His books include I and Thou, Tales of the Hasidim, On Judaism and many others.

Mendes-Flohr is professor of Jewish thought and an associate of the Franz Rosenzweig Center for German-Jewish Literature and Cultural History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

About this edition

• Publisher: Syracuse University Press
• Publication date: 1996
• ISBN 10: 081560422X
• ISBN 13: 9780815604228
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 200
• Editor: Mendes-Flohr Paul R