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Mysticism and Morality

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 April 2010

Donald Evans
Affiliation:
Victoria College, University of Toronto

Extract

In The Moral Mystic James Home has written a sequel to his Beyond Mysticism, where he ably explored a variety of philosophical issues arising from mysticism. This time his study has a special focus, and he makes an important contribution to the ongoing philosophical discussion of relations between religion and morality. As Home notes, “There is a very wide consensus in the philosophic world that religion and morality are independent of each other and that we can produce reliable moral judgments independently, with no need for religious guidance” (95). Home agrees that a non-religious morality is a reasonable option, but he claims that a religious commitment and perspective can sometimes intelligibly and legitimately affect an agent's morality. He supports this claim, not by an abstract argument, but by a descriptive analysis of the reflective process which goes on in a particular kind of religious person whom he calls the “moral mystic”. Why appeal to mysticism to show that religion can be positively and rationally relevant to morality? Such an appeal is initially implausible, for philosophers and others have severely criticized mystics for being amoral and perhaps even immoral. Home begins his book with a summary of such criticisms, but he claims that they apply to “pure” mystics rather than to his moral mystics. This distinction between mystics is crucial for his thesis.

Type
Critical Notices/Etudes critiques
Copyright
Copyright © Canadian Philosophical Association 1985

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References

1 Horne, James R., The Moral Mystic (Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press for the Canadian Corporation for Studies in Religion, 1983), pp. x, 134, $7.95.Google Scholar

2 Home, James R., Beyond Mysticism (Waterloo, ON: Wilfrid Laurier University Press for the Canadian Corporation for Studies in Religion, 1978), pp. vi, 158, $7.95.Google Scholar

3 Emmet, Dorothy. The Moral Prism (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1979).CrossRefGoogle Scholar

4 Concerning “original blessing” in Western mysticism, see Fox, Matthew, Original Blessing (Santa Fe, NM: Bear Publishing, 1983)Google Scholar, and Breakthrough (New York: Doubleday, 1980). Fox stresses EckhartGoogle Scholar.

5 Buber, Martin, I and Thou, trans. Kaufmann, W. (New York: Scribners', 1970), 66.Google Scholar

6 Evelyn Underhill, Mysticism (12th ed.; London: Methuen, 1930), 172.

8 Home refers us here to Beyond Mysticism, 24, where there is a quotation expressing an introvertive mystic's focus on God, but nothing concerning God's will or God's commands.

9 For example. John, Da Free. Nirvanasara (Clearlake, CA: Dawn Horse Press, 1982).Google Scholar

10 For example, Trungpa, Chogyam, Cutting through Spiritual Materialism (Boulder, CO: Shambhala, 1973).Google Scholar

11 For example, Abhishiktananda, , Saccidanda, A Christian Approach to Advaitic Experience (Delhi: ISPCK, 1974).Google Scholar