Émile Boutroux and Jakob Boehme: A philosopher in the school of mysticism
A voice from the past: Jakob Boehme
Life of Jacob Boehme is certainly singular, and if it were not for the specific historical evidence that we could seem like the story of a narrator of the past. Boehme was born in 1575 in the village of Alt Seidenberg, near the town of Goerlitz, in Silesia, a farmer, probably Bohemian. After learning the rudiments of reading and writing in the local school of Seidenberg, he was hired as an apprentice at a shoemaker's shop, an activity that will take him to work as a laborer in 1594 in Goerlitz, which will be promoted in the master shoemaker 1599. He marries the daughter of a butcher who has four sons and two daughters.
As a boy makes a significant encounter, a mysterious character enters the store for which he works and purchase of the shoes by paying a high price, man, after his release, he calls on the street, tells him that as an adult would become very important, and it urges further study of the Bible. This event must have had a significant influence on the boy, who will have real lights, a consequence of its commitment to the practice of mystical philosophy. Two events, in particular, mark these years: the first great enlightenment, which took place in 1600, which gives it greater capacity for spiritual understanding of reality, and a second illumination, which took place in 1610, which led him to understand the 'divine order of creation. According to tradition, the great lights were a total of four.
The years between 1612 and 1624 are characterized by intense literary activity: the mystic wrote over thirty books on spiritual and theological, which are evidence of a direct understanding, intuitive, and inspired by the celestial world and the human. The spiritual vision of Boehme, but not slow to arouse strong opposition has not yet completed the first of these works, Aurora, which is attacked by Gregorius Richter, pastor of Goerlitz. Richter tries to expel it from Goerlitz and convict him as a heretic, but Boehme, after a period of exile, is readmitted to the city, even if provided to deliver the work he was completing the authorities and to refrain from writing other. His silence lasts But only a few years, after which it starts to write. In 1623 work The Way to Christ again raises the ire of the shepherd and Boehme was expelled from Goerlitz. The following year, is located in Dresden, where he died November 20, 1624, following a serious illness, after finishing the work on the boards divine manifestation.
works
Boehme's works have exerted a lasting influence on many prominent personalities, especially in the religious, philosophical and esoteric: the most famous one could cite Blake and Yeats. One of the works of the mystic that best summarize his overall vision is Sex puncta theosofica, written in 1620. Boehme in the text is what you should know to have an understanding of the spiritual world, on the assumption that man has by nature the tools for such an understanding, because "the true essence of man is not mortal, not belongs to the dark world, was founded only in the world of light and has no communication with the world and the outer dark: there is among them a major limitation: the death "(Chapter VIII, section V).
operetta The Dialogue of an enlightened soul and a soul without light, written in 1624, presents a dispute between a soul fallen from heaven and the devil, who tries to convince her to embrace the path of matter. The soul succumbs but the encounter with Christ and then with a chosen soul, will give you the strength to recover and patience to fight the temptations of the world.
Some works of Boehme are not easy to read, because both the language, both in content, always forcing the expressive capacities of human language, as almost always happens to those who, after a powerful mystical experience, trying in vain to make understandable to those who have not lived this experience. Contrary to popular thought, the writings of Boehme are not the work of an illiterate: as its culture was not huge, he had read and studied in depth some writers of great importance, as Caspar von Schwenckfeld oxygen, or Paracelsus, Valentin Weigel, was a deep knowledge of Scripture and was fascinated by nature.
For an interpretation of Boehme (1)
In its apparent simplicity Jakob Boehme reaches the top almost unimaginable in the knowledge of the spiritual world: the man who has chosen the path of God, everything becomes clear, and there is no longer any mystery.
But how is it possible? In that way you can implement this great inner revolution that leads to change the way in which man sees and interprets the world? The answer is quite simple: making the temple of the Spirit. When a man denies the individuality and tries to imitate the Savior, Jesus Christ, who has denied himself to do the will of the father alone, he takes the side of God's existence is no longer a mystery and becomes a mirror of the divine purposes: the chains of cause and effect, the meaning of life, the material itself, everything becomes clear and immediate accessibility. Boehme break the deadlock and push the path of truth, against all forms of hypocrisy is not the outward observance and empty of spirituality that saves, but the ability to project the figure of Christ in the heart of man. The Pharisee who prays standing, smug in its apparent glory before God, must give way to the public that, in his humility, it is challenging and is aware of the paucity of person. Mindful of this world view, the public penance Jakob Boehme does not resist the attacks of the terrible Pharisee, the parish priest to find ways to attack him and send him to ruin, and the pressures of city council, fearful of repercussions of political and religious in the case of excessive tolerance of the mystic.
When man becomes spiritual energy channel, is appropriate for the substance that passes through it, it becomes ductile material, sharing the subtle force that passes on its surface, and turns. The spiritual alchemy is powerful: only experiencing the changes man is able to understand what happens to his psycho-physical structure. For this reason it is impossible to adequately describe these experiences. It is shocking that an earthquake transhumanize being corrupt and fallen back to and enjoy the original divine light, reconciliation, through the action of the Redeemer, with the Father. Then ceases all pride, all desire for greatness or power: all find their own balance. The man, humbly, take the road exile. Not fighting back, defends himself with the theological virtue of faith and intuition. Continue the daily life and does not claim to be the ruler of the world.
But this is an attitude that requires a choice of heroic self-sacrifice. The man is so tense spasmodic to the will of God, accepting and adapting to what is, imposing strong discipline: the first fight, the most difficult and arduous, it is with ourselves. Boehme's vision gives the man no doubt a key role when he joins the revealed will of God But be careful: adapt to the dimension of the Spirit does not mean that man becomes God He becomes, instead, as the moon, which does not emit their own light, but reflected light, the Sun is located close to the theological vision of the Orthodox Christian Church: when we say that "God became man so that man might become God", we mean that the man is deified and takes part of the divine energies that rise to the divinity, not that he becomes God, which is impossible for a creature . Thus man becomes the receptacle and the channel power of the Spirit that animates and elevates it to higher spiritual levels. From this point of view, we understand the strong interest shown by Boehme in Emile Boutroux, whose work takes place in a crucial time of the battle between scientism and spirituality.
The life and works of Émile Boutroux
Boutroux Emile was born in Montrouge, July 28, 1845. After attending high school Napoléon (Henri IV), entered in 1865 at the Scuola Normale Superiore, to pursue his studies in philosophy at the University of Heidelberg. During the years of teaching high school in Caen, further deepens the study of philosophy, to discuss his doctorate in 1874, which is entitled the contingency of laws of nature. The following years saw the Professor, University of Montpellier and to Nancy, then at the Scuola Normale Superiore. In this period he worked for works of great philosophical interest, such as Greece won the Stoics (1875) Socrates and founder of the Moral Science (1883). In 1888 he obtained the chair of the history of modern philosophy at the Sorbonne. Especially significant is its outreach activities to organizations and relevant institutions such as the Academy of Moral and Political Sciences, and became a member in 1898, and the foundation of Thiers, who heads since 1902. Its activity is crowned in 1912 with the election to the Académie Française. He died November 22, 1921.
The philosophical system of Boutroux
Emile Boutroux plays a major role in the history of French philosophy of the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. The themes he addressed will be discussed by a large group of French philosophers and foreigners for decades: just remember, the most famous, Henri Bergson, Maurice Blondel, and Brunschvieg Léon Gaston Milhaud, not to mention other scholars which were, however, influenced by the thought of Boutroux, as Henri Poincare and Emile Durkheim. One could also argue that it is precisely because of the work Boutroux that of France, even today, continues to be the center of that basic discipline, the union of philosophy of science, philosophy of nature and history of science, which is called epistemology.
The focal point of the thought of Boutroux is his critique of the concept, current time, determinism, as it was interpreted by many proponents of a completely mechanistic view of the cosmos, and the discipline that studies, science of nature. A fight that he was convinced that I could win, as he said after his election to the Académie Française, "I tried to show that natural science is not in opposition to the representations of individuality, purpose, freedom etc.., they rely on our moral beliefs (...). To do this I had to prove that the science of nature encompasses not that hard determinism and dogmatism, which often refer to it. And I believe I succeeded. " (2) In practice, the work of Boutroux and, in particular his book, The Contingency of the Laws of Nature, points out that the laws of nature are not to be interpreted as necessary, and that there is room for what is contingent, spontaneous, perpetuity. The critique of determinism performed by Boutroux ahead of the times of the scientific revolution of the new physics and rejected the mechanistic world view widespread among scientists of the period, surpassing the more radical positions of both the eclectic (as Victor Cousin), both of positivists (such as Comte and Taine). Boutroux however, can not be called a true spiritualist, because this concept contains within itself a marked antimaterialistic value which is not typical of this philosopher is perhaps best define his philosophy of non-reductive materialism, as submitted by Michael Heidelberger, Faculty of Philosophy, University of Tubingen in his interesting essay. (3)
Boutroux and Boehme
The French philosopher, in his search for authors who can help him in his own philosophical battle, addresses, more than France, Germany. In fact, while the land of Voltaire had always emphasized the rational component of philosophical research, Germany had met another tradition, which had focussed research on faith and mysticism. "In Germany, the philosophy has not always played, so that the form rationalist. Along the line of Leibniz, of Kant, Fichte and of Hegel, which are like the school of modern Germany, there is a series of philosophers of faith, religion and sentiment: Hamann's, Herder's, the Jacobi, Schiller and the Theosophist ' prominent Christian philosopher, Franz von Baader. " Reviewing the work of Boehme, Boutroux realize that the search method of the mystic Bohemian is very different from the traditional one: it is true that the mystic seeks, as he says, "the salvation of my soul, the means to conquer and possess the kingdom of God ", the procedure used to achieve this goal, said Boutroux, Who is to "contemplate all these things with recollection, and in its immediate communication with nature and religious hopes that it will infuse the spirit and its will reveal the mysteries of being. Why is the eternal being, inner and alive that he tries in all and everywhere. " The dual tradition, the optimistic view of the great German mystics of the past (eg Tauler) and the deeply pessimistic view of Luther, would, according Boutroux, a meeting place just in the work of Boehme: "Keep the spiritual ideals mystics and optimistic, given the nature of the pessimistic views of Luther and, more generally, from a realistic point of view: this was the task he had imposed Boehme. "
Boutroux Boehme is of the opinion that, in his research, has sought to achieve their goals by addressing real problems of philosophy, striving to understand key aspects of existence: as God has created, because it created the world, how it has created, as we have done evil to break into it and so on. This insight, which rehabilitates the seeker of truth Boehme Universe in the balance between philosophy and mysticism, fascinated by the author of this work, which gives us significant pages whose reading is justified even today, after more than a century. (4)
Notes 1. Reproduced, with adaptations by R. Tress, Encyclopedia of esotericism, Milano 2002.
2.Citato in Michael Heidelberger, a Kontingenz Naturgesetze bei der Emile Boutroux (www.uni-tuebingen.de/philosophie/ Heidelberger / boutroux.pdf)
3. Michael Heidelberger, op. cit.
4. E. Boutroux, Jakob Boehme, or of German origin, Luni Editrice, Milano 2006. Over the
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