The Mystical Sources of Existentialist Thought: Being, Nothingness, Love

At the time when existentialism was a dominant intellectual and cultural force, a number of commentators observed that some of the language of existential philosophy, not least its interpretation of human existence in terms of nothingness, evoked the language of so-called mystical writers. This book takes on this observation and explores the evidence for the influence of mysticism on the philosophy of existentialism.

It begins by delving into definitions of mysticism and existentialism, and...