Emanuel Swedenborg (1688–1772)

I had read Swedenborg's Heaven And Hell some time ago and thought it was a decent book, albeit somewhat delusory. This one I probably liked better, but it wasn't free of the same problems. There are some pretty profound ideas though. I especially liked Swedenborg's spiritual analogies (he calls them correspondences) between light/heat and wisdom/love respectively. He later on (specifically in section 9 -probably the best part of the book), makes a further analogy between love and wisdom and show more the heart and lungs. I must say that analogy sparked my interest and I thought it a profound notion. Some of the book suffers from contradiction, vain imaginings and theology that has more in common with Kabbalah than Christianity.
As with the Christian mystic Jacob Boehme, I have some amount of ambivalence towards Swedenborg. He can be profound, but also deluded. I do believe it is worth reading him because there is some gold among the dross. But I would really only recommend writers like this to Christians that are more mature and not easily given over to vain speculation. show less

This book deals with several difficult issues that are still problematic to philosophers and scientists today: The creation of the universe, the nature of infinity, what was there before time and space began, how and if the conscious and free mind can exist in a universe if it is ruled by causality, if there is a God, and what is God.
Swedenborg has a good understanding of the mathematics and science of his age, the early 1700s, and uses this to support his philosophy. Though he is show more definitely Neo-platonist in outlook, he does have an Aristotlean side too, shown by the unnecessary anatomic details and scientific observations which he dwells on, though this is balanced out by plenty of thought experiments too. The discussion throughout is largely compatible with currently accepted science, namely the big bang and atomic theory, and though the terminology is out-dated, it can be understood what he means, with certain things he talks about having up-to-date analogues.
One argument of his that I either could not follow properly, or that possibly was just flawed, was that for the immortality of the soul. The aim for most of this book seems to find philosophical or scientific support for the tentative cosmogonic and theologic principles which he believes in. For the most part, he does this well, but the immortality of the soul seemed to be left hanging on a sky hook as far as I could see.
That the questions he is trying to resolve have still not been resolved nearly three hundred years later is a testament to the nature of the problems he was trying to solve, and he does make progress upon the philosophy of the recent past and in many ways above his contemporaries. He doesn't go with the skeptic idealism of Berkeley or Hume, nor the scientific pessimism that Kant breathed, but puts forward good arguments for using our rational faculties in philosophy as well our observational faculties of science, to learn more about the material and external universe. He also doesn't go for the Cartesian dualism, but believes that human consciousness is an emergent phenomena arising from the physical structure of the membranes in the brain, following the laws of physics, just as the rest of the body must follow them. This is a very modern view, currently believed in by neuroscientists, and is a surprising thing to read in a book of this time, much of which is dedicated to supporting certain theological views.
It isn't an easy book to read, due to the difficult arguments, and technical nature of them, so some experience in mathematics (though there are no equations) would be useful, and also a good understanding of physics. Compared to other books of this time, if you can make certain concessions, then it is a fairly forward thinking discussion of some quite difficult themes, and worth reading for those with an interest in this sort of thing. show less

Testo interessante, per le sue influenze su arte e cultura, dell'illuminista svedese che, all'età di cinquantasette anni, iniziò il suo dialogo con l'aldilà e si trasformò in visionario mistico.

A pretty decent introduction to Swedenborg and New Church philosophy! I approve! I approve.