Curs de filosofia religiei: Text stabilit de Dorli Blaga, Christu Nastu, si G. Piscoci Danescu

by Lucian Blaga

262 pages, Paperback

Published January 1, 1994

About the author

Lucian Blaga was a Romanian philosopher, poet, and playwright. He was a commanding personality of the Romanian culture of the inter-bellum period. He was a philosopher and writer higly acclaimed for his originality, a university professor and a diplomat.

Reviews

[Ciuras Adrian · Rating 4 out of 5]

I never meet an author to love soo deeply and also disagree so deeply with.

This would have got 5 stars if not for the final chapters. But I will get in the end to why, first lets start with some context. I have never read any other philosophy by Blaga and I barely scratched the surface of his believes on what other people say. This being said I think he has a heavy bias for christiantiy and especially the mythic type of christians. So lets put it this way: if he would have to chose between a christian and a non christian he choses the first but if he has to chose between a mythic non christian and a christian he will ditch the christian. Now lets get in what I loved.

I think he tries to be as objective and not bias as he possibly can. And he delivers that I would say until the last third of the book.
One thing that is hard to do when you try to understand another religious system then the one your culture developed on is to give up your a priori axioms and take the new ones. So Blaga tries his hard to help the reader (this was not meant to be a book but a course for students so actually he tries to help them not a reader) in this process. And I think the comparations, analysis and the way he explains is top notch. So if you want to learn basic ideas from different religions this book is such a great starter and helper. I can't stress this enough.

Now the bad part and the reason for loosing one star.
I don't mind his bias. He clearly loves mythic and does not like the rationality or faith without the experience of union with god (i won't explain this concept here cause it takes too much). And this is fine to a certain point. For example I don't mind that after doing an excellent job at describing Kierkegaard's religion he says that he says he thinks deep down it is shallow. And I get why he thinks so about protestants in general cause they put too much an accent on theology but not enough on experience. But when he starts to do second hand psychoanalysis and speculations then I can't get over it so easy.
He says that he think Nietzsche actually deep down he believed in god but was trying to burry this truth and also if he would have not gone crazy and die he might have said: "God has risen". I have no problems when u have Blaga's philosophy to not like rationality and non mythic experience humans. But when you start to do stuff like this it begins to feel personal and not objective or at least assumed subjectivity. This does not seem to come from the way you view irrationality because of the numinosity experience with the "what". It just seems like a personal vendetta.
Also in the end he suck the mythic practitioners pretty hard. I admit I got sour after the Nietzsche ending so I might be bias and not give him the credit there.

Anyway one of the best books I read in the last 5 years.

[Daniel Mureșan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I regard this book as the best effort to encapsulate the teachings, metaphysics and differences of +20 religions and thinkers into a compact and comprehensive course (because the author intended for this to be a uni course, not a public book). The language is more accessible for me than in Blaga's other philosophy book. The first half of the book was not really spectacular. Instead the second half, especially the last two chapters were (surprisingly for a book of this kind) breathtaking. Lucian Blaga is passionate about mysticism and it shows by the way he changed the atmosphere that had predominated until then. From a cold, objective, distant break down of the subject, Blaga unfolded mysticism by going somewhat deeper into its particularities. As he was going deeper into the subject, I felt my fascination and attention growing in intensity.

I got my mind blown by these chapters, thus my 5 stars go to this book.