ABSTRACT
The mystics’ embrace of the darkness went hand in hand with their theological emphasis on apophasis and the via negativa. Insofar as the deity was infinite, to know god as “being” or as “good” or as “just” could only serve as a constraint upon the divine. The key to unlocking the potential of mysticism was to apply the via negativa to oneself. Apophatic theology is one thing; apophatic anthropology appears to go further, opening up distinct (if essentially related) horizons. Novalis, the paradigmatic Romantic poet who plays a central role in our book, interpreted kenosis as a figure of a systemless, poetic activity from which arises a peculiar form of political critique. The Nazis thought they could find a volkisch voice in the vernacular theology of Eckhart’s middle high German sermons. The consequences of building a bridge between an earlier reception of mysticism and own reception of that reception must be simultaneously philosophical and political in character.
