On Becoming God: Late Medieval Mysticism and the Modern Western Self (Hardcover) (ISBN-13: 9780823239924)

Do we have to conceive of ourselves as isolated individuals, inevitably distanced from other people and from whatever we might mean when we use the word "God"? On Becoming God offers an innovative approach to the history of the modern Western self by looking at human identity as something people do together rather than on their own, as a way of managing and keeping at bay the impulses and experiences associated with the word "God." The "self" is a way of doing things, or of not doing things, with "God."

The book draws on phenomenology (Heidegger), gender studies (Beauvoir, Butler), and contemporary neuroscience. It surveys existing approaches to modern selfhood (Foucault, Charles Taylor) and proposes an alternative account by investigating late medieval mysticism, in particular texts written in Germany by Meister Eckhart and others.

It concludes by exploring the parallel between late medieval confessors and their spiritual charges, and late-nineteenth-century psychoanalysts and their patients, in search of a vocabulary for acknowledging and nurturing our everyday commitments to others and to our spiritual longings.

Author: Ben Morgan
ISBN-10: 0823239926
ISBN-13: 9780823239924
Publisher: Fordham University Press
Language: English
Published: 11/01/2012
Pages: 320
Format: Hardcover
Weight: 1.25lbs
Size: 9.10h x 6.20w x 1.00d

Review Citation(s):
Choice 09/01/2013