Maurice Blondel and the Mystic Life

Maurice Blondel made an exceptional contribution to the discussion of mysticism in the early decades of the twentieth century. His Problem of the Mystical (1925) is one of the most penetrating analyses of the mystic state from a philosophical (and, indeed, theological) perspective. The text itself, however, remains quite inaccessible if it is not placed and understood from within the complex contours of Blondel's university, ecclesial, and personal worlds.