On Mystical and Other Phenomena

Abstract

The work of Heidegger has been the abiding influence on my work in phenomenology. But it was not my first interest. Rather, like Heidegger himself, my first beginnings were in the Aristotelian and scholastic tradition and the question of Being as it is posed in that tradition. My first serious philosophical work occured when I learned enough Latin to begin a close study of the first part of Thomas’s Summa Theologica. This project was guided not only by Maritain and Gilson but above all by Pierre Rousselot’s brilliant study of the mystical dimension in Thomism which bore the misleading title The Intellectualism of St. Thomas. Along with Maritain, Rousselot posed the question of the delimitation of the metaphysical experience of Being vis-à-vis artistic, religious and especially mystical experience. This was the first form which the Heideggerian problematic of “overcoming” metaphysics took for me. And although I knew nothing of Heidegger’s project at the time it has always been my one abiding interest.

Date of birth: October 26, 1940.

Place of birth: Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.

Date and institution of highest degree: Ph.D., Bryn Mawr College, 1968.

Academic appointments: Fordham University, St. Joseph’s University, and Villanova University.