Summary

Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772) occupies a unique place in the history of thought. Raised during the Enlightenment and trained as a scholar and a scientist, he approached his religious visions in a systematic way that at the same time resonates with artists and philosophers up to our modern age.

Author Biography

Jos Antonio Antn-Pacheco is a professor of the history of philosophy at the University of Seville in Spain. His particular area of interest is hermeneutics and traditional thought. He founded the Swedenborg Society of Spain, as well as the Center for Comparative Spiritual Studies and the Seminary for Comparative Hermeneutics. He has written a number of books and articles on philosophy and metaphysics, including, most recently, La sabidura maz-dea: Dos textos del Irn antiguo (The Wisdom of Ahura Mazda: Two Texts from Ancient Iran).

Preface	p. ix
Introduction	p. 3
Unity and Determination in Swedenborg	p. 6
The Role of the Subject in Swedenborg	p. 22
Hermeneutics and Inner Experience	p. 33
Internal Time and Space	p. 42
Some Clarifications Regarding the Concept of Ecclesia in Swedenborg	p. 50
The Two Forms of Religiosity in the Journal of Dreams	p. 56
Representation and Concept in Swedenborg	p. 68
Swedenborg in Hispanic Literature	p. 78
Swedenborg and Miguel de Unamuno	p. 78
The Presence of Swedenborg in Eugeni d'Ors	p. 83
Swedenborg and the Religiosity of Jorge Luis Borges	p. 88
Primordial Language and Pure Poetry (Aspects Common to Swedenborg and Juan Ramón Jiménez)	p. 93
Swedenborg in Maria Zambrano	p. 102
History of the Swedenborg Society in Spain	p. 106
Relationships and Influences	p. 115
Swedenborg and Kierkegaard	p. 115
Swedenborg and Henry Corbin	p. 122
Ibn 'Arabi and Swedenborg: Proposals for a Figurative Philosophy	p. 126
Philosophy and Homeopathy: The Influence of Swedenborg	p. 136
Swedenborg and Romantic Religiosity	p. 142
Some Reflections (Ex Auditis et Visis)	p. 157
Notes	p. 160
Index	p. 183
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Excerpts

Swedenborg will serve as a reference point to begin a study of religious philosophy and comparative spiritual hermeneutics, fields where, we reiterate, Swedenborg is a privileged paradigm. And together with all these elements mentioned, one must keep in mind Swedenborg’s formative components: his illustrious training as a scientist and his Christian reformative thrust. All these factors have to be considered if we want a true idea of Swedenborg’s thought.

We are proposing a continuity and a harmonization among the spiritual currents that have appeared in the history of religious consciousness. But such continuity and harmonization are not necessarily due to genetics or historical succession; first one must view them as an emergence of common archetypes and symbols together with common perceptions and experiences. This will be our line of study in this examination of Swedenborg’s works: we will analyze some categories that appear in religious and exegetical philosophies and we will compare them with those of Swedenborg.

One methodological issue is essential from the beginning: we will approach Swedenborg according to the standards of a type of thought that frequently utilizes mythical vehicles of expression. Therefore, Swedenborg will have to be treated with the same methodological criteria that are applied to other systems with mythical traits. Otherwise, the result will be the usual misunderstanding of Swedenborg. This means it will be necessary to demythologize the Scandinavian visionary, which does not imply a demystification or the reductionism of a rationalist “criticism”; it means, rather, the translation of mythic forms to the more comprehensive schema provided by the phenomenology of religion and by a comparative analysis of the diverse modalities of religious consciousness. The lack of sensibility regarding Swedenborg to which we alluded before has been caused precisely by a lack of perspective when analyzing his work. If we keep in mind that we need to place Swedenborg’s vision alongside visions that are, for example, prophetic, apocalyptic, and gnostic, we therefore need to employ the same method of investigation toward him as toward those visions. Only if we add to these factors those equally important factors of scientific training and the critical impulse of a Christian reformer can we penetrate into Swedenborg’s spiritual world.