The Mystery of Being: Reconsidering the Mystical Element in Heidegger's Thought is a collection of thoughtful and provocative essays that tackle an important dimension of Heidegger's path. Many scholars have previously addressed the mystical dimension in Heidegger's thought but the topic is discussed from new perspectives in this volume and a convincing case is made to reexamine Heidegger under the taxonomy of philosophical mysticism. At the heart of Heidegger's meditational-as opposed to computational-thinking, or what he called "inceptual thinking," is the notion of mystery understood as the revealing concealment by which the concealed is simultaneously hidden and manifest. The mystical element of Heidegger's poiesis undergirds his claim that the essential being of language, which originates in the silence of speaking the unspeakable, safeguarded especially by the poet, may be elicited from the assertion that saying is showing, but what is shown in that showing is the unshowable, for every unconcealment of truth is inescapably a concealment of untruth. The truth of beyng is beyond language but it is not possible for linguistic beings to leap over language to lay bare beyng divested of linguistic attire. The chapters of this book adeptly elucidate Heidegger's indebtedness to the mystical tradition in shaping his idea of thinking as a transformative event. Particularly relevant is his commitment to the hermeneutical principle of letting the veil appear as what veils. In consonance with mystics in various traditions, Heidegger grasped that lifting the veil, ostensibly to see the face laid bare, amounts to discerning that there is no way to see the face but through the veil of the face. The Mystery of Being is a welcome contribution that will benefit students of Heidegger, mysticism, and the interface of philosophy and religion.

Elliot R. Wolfson, Professor Emeritus, University of California, Santa Barbara, USA