To know by loving love while knowing the true reality

Abstract

Krzysztof Stachewicz, Doświadczyć prawdziwej rzeczywistości. Prolegomena do filozofii mistyki: T. 1. Filozofia doświadczenia mistycznego (ss. 396) i T. 2. Człowiek wobec doświadczenia mistycznego (ss. 245), Wyd. Uniwersytetu im. Adama Mickiewicza w Poznaniu, Wydział Teologiczny, Poznań 2019.

An article on Krzysztof Stachewicz’s book Experiencing True Reality. Prolegomena to the philosophy of mysticism: T. 1. Philosophy of mystical experience and T. 2. Man to the Mystical Experience, thoroughly discusses the long-standing research of the Poznań professor, who is one of the few Polish scholars studying mysticism from the point of view of philosophy. These two terms – mysticism and philosophy – may seem difficult to reconcile, but nevertheless they have gone hand in hand since the dawn of time, as evidenced for example by the thought of Pythagoras and his disciples. Stachewicz describes exhaustively and accessibly the course of the history of philosophy, mainly but not exclusively in the West, focusing on how the mystical declarations experienced by thinkers influenced their view of the world. Reading this work, a picture emerges of an empirical experience of transcendence, not always with a confessional tinge, sometimes – surprisingly – a secular one, which modifi es the philosophical perception of reality. Stachewicz first states exactly what he means by the terms in question: experience, mysticism and philosophy, in order to avoid the vagueness with which the first two terms in particular are clothed. Understanding experience as a path to knowledge of true reality, and mysticism as a loving attitude, and philosophy as a love of truth manifested in reality, the author traces this compilation in the refl ections of philosophers as diverse as the ancient Plato and the 20th century Bernard Russell. Regarding philosophy in a broader sense, and thus including the writers, he also charts the course of thought or experience of St. John of the Cross and Georges Bataille, among others. Not limiting himself to the  culture closest to us, the researcher sets out to explore this reality in other circles, from Hinduism – focusing on Ramakrishna; to Buddhism and Buddha; Judaism as revealed by Philo of Alexandria; and Islam with the figure of Abu Hamid al-Ghazali. The author’s work as a whole is a profound study of the history of the philosophy of mysticism, pioneered in Poland by Krzysztof Stachewicz, while the book under review is one of the fi rst of its kind in the world.