Browsing by Author "Ogren, Brian"

Now showing 1 - 4 of 4
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    Leone Ebreo on Prisca Sapientia: Jewish Wisdom and the Textual Transmission of Knowledge
    (Angelo Pontecorboli Editore, 2016) Ogren, Brian
    Book chapter for a volume on Humanism and Jewish Culture in the Italian Renaissance
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    Mysticism Historicized: Historical Figures and Movements
    (MacMillan, 2016) Ogren, Brian
    Book chapter on the historical approach to studying mysticism
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    Psychedelics and Religious Insight: A Precedent in American Psycho-Spirituality from William James to Timothy Leary
    (2021-04-26) Storck, Connor J.; Ogren, Brian; Parsons, Bill; Kripal, Jeffrey
    The primary purpose of this thesis is to stress that there is a relationship between the texts one reads and the psychedelic experiences one may have. Reading texts has an effect on set and setting with respect to psychedelic experiences. Further, texts read—by figures like Timothy Leary—in the afterglow of a psychedelic experience can influence later integration of said experiences into one’s worldview. This thesis tracks this through the influence of mind-altering substances in the works of both William James (1842-1910) and Timothy Leary (1920-1996) in order to display James’ influence on Leary. James’ impact of Leary intellectually is critical because recent scholarship and changes in cultural and societal perspectives have led to a Psychedelic Renaissance in many disciplines from the clinical-therapeutic to the religious-spiritual. The paper covers select and relevant historical information relating to periods of the Anesthetic Revolution and the Long Sixties. I show how James came to experiment with various mind-altering substances and the results of those experiments. For this reason, the thesis also interacts with Benjamin Paul Blood, a figure whose work guided James’ thought towards the use of mind-altering substances. These mind-altering substances include nitrous oxide, diethyl ether, alcohol, chloroform, and peyote. I apply Leary’s theory of set and setting to better understand James’ Hegelian insights while on nitrous oxide. The thesis explicitly shows how James’ mystical hallmarks of noetic quality and ineffability were influential in Leary’s early psychedelic research. Further, I argue for the thesis that James set a precedent for the use of mind-altering substances for religio-mystical insight that was later expanded upon and entrusted to the masses in the form of Leary’s psychedelic projects. Evidence suggests that these theorists used psychedelics for insights akin to an anagogic interpretation of various works from Hegel to the Tao Te Ching. The conclusion of this thesis briefly ties in contemporary examples and suggests these trends will continue today in the wake of the current Psychedelic Renaissance.
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    Sefirotic Depiction, Divine Noesis, and Aristotelian Kabbalah: Abraham ben Meir de Balmes and Italian Renaissance Thought
    (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2014) Ogren, Brian
    In 1509, the famed Italian Jewish linguist and philosopher Abraham ben Meir de Balmes wrote a patently Averroean commentary on the kabbalistic hypostases known as the sefirot. This commentary is entitled Igeret ha-ʻaśiriyah, or Epistle of the Decad, and it is a prime example of an Aristotelian trend of kabbalistic interpretation within the Italian Renaissance. After briefly reconstructing and discussing the importance of de Balmes’s life and works, this article focuses on the Epistle of the Decad and its unique synthesis between kabbalah and Aristotelian concepts of intellection and divine noesis. Possible influences on de Balmes in the drafting of the Epistle are examined, as is the structure of the Epistle itself. Finally, detail is given to de Balmes’s casting of the sefirot as tziyyurim, or divine depictions. The article describes de Balmes’s Aristotelian sense of divine noesis through the medium of the sefirotic depictions as phantasms. This is contrasted with the Neoplatonic sense of some of his contemporaries, such as Isaac Abravanel and Yohanan Alemanno, which sees the sefirot as divine depictions in relation to Platonic Ideas. De Balmes’s unique Aristotelian portrayal hearkens back to a concept of ultimate unity and singularity in the godhead, with the sefirot as processes of human to divine cognition that allow for a cognitive unity with the divine.