Our
off-and-on-going intriguing conversation about the difficult relationship
between rational thinking and irrational experience continues with the utterly
bizarre case of the notable Swedish scientist, Christian mystic, and philosopher
Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772). Had he been an ordinary man eager to gain fame
by claiming extraordinary powers, our rational judgment of him would have
quickly dismissed him as a clever charlatan, preying on human gullibility and
fascination with the mystical and the miraculous. This would be still the
opinion of many today, who, as a matter of principle, are dismissive of
parapsychology as a fraudulent “science,” despite the fact that, to my factual
knowledge, this strange discipline was seriously, although very inconspicuously,
pursued in the USSR “under the rose” of the Alexander Popov Radio and
Electronics Research Center, under the larger auspices of the Soviet Ministry
of Defense.
What
I also find remarkable about Swedenborg’s posthumous legacy, apart from the
fact that he had one, of a lasting nature, is the fact that some of the
greatest homeopathic physicians of the past, mostly in America, but also elsewhere,
Dr. Kent and Dr. Boericke prominently among them, were “Swedenborgians.” What was so special about
the Swedenborgian fellowship that all these eminently reputable healers of the
maladies of the human race were happy to count themselves among their number?
Apparently, there is something about the discipline of homeopathy, which
combines all three of the Swedenborgian fortes: philosophy, science, and parareligious
mysticism.
The
title of this entry is taken from Immanuel Kant’s personal investigation of the
mystical experiences of the man he never met, but was apparently fascinated with,
all his life. Kant’s account of Swedenborg is very contradictory: on the one
hand, he cannot help being critical of the man’s alleged supernatural visions,
but, on the other hand, he cannot conceal his admiration, and admittedly
borrows some of the man’s ideas. Thus Kant’s personal attitude to Swedenborg becomes
characteristic of the general attitude of the brightest minds of humanity toward
him, which may not be such an inscrutable mystery after all. Here is the lucky
guy who has been there, done that, crossing over from rationality to
irrationality, and being proud of it!
Although
it is true that one of Swedenborg’s "talent descriptions" includes philosophy,
(in fact, the history of
philosophy counts him as one of her own, and among his works there are
titles, like Opera Philosophica et Mineralia, in three volumes, 1734),
his chief preoccupation in life was science (he was active as a scientist well into
his late fifties, earning for himself a very solid international reputation);
and later, since the age of fifty-eight, his passion was overwhelmingly Christian
mysticism.
It
was his mystical side, his visions translated into a new and highly unusual
kind of theology, that attracted to him the most attention from geniuses
like Kant, and that in fact constitutes the most important part of his legacy.
Curiously, he never claimed for himself the role of a religious leader, and
even less so, of a founder of religion, yet, because of his experiences,
described in copious writings, and all, perhaps, not deliberately, carrying
upon them the stamp of the highest religious authority, as “direct revelations from our Lord
Jesus Christ,” a considerable society formed by his enthralled followers
known as the Swedenborgians, became a major religious force after his
death, with a powerful ecclesiastical organization, known as New Jerusalem
Church, or simply, as New Church.
For
this last reason, I am not considering Swedenborg in any of the philosophical
sections, but only here, in the Religion section, where, in my
opinion, he indeed belongs.
(This
is the end of Part I. Part II will be posted tomorrow.)
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