Revealing, in an original and provocative study, the mystical contents of the works of famous atheists Virginia Woolf and Iris Murdoch, Donna Lazenby shows how these thinkers' refusal to construe worldviews on available reductive models brought them to offer radically alternative pictures of life which maintain its mysteriousness, and promote a mystical way of knowing. A Mystical Philosophy contributes to the contemporary resurgence of interest in Spirituality, but from an entirely new direction. This book provides a warning against reductive scientific and philosophical models that impoverish our understanding of ourselves and the world, and a powerful endorsement of ways of knowing that give art, and a restored concept of contemplation, their consummative place.

Donna Lazenby is Curate at Springfield Church, Wallington, UK.

1.Introduction
Part I: The Point of Departure
2.The Point of Departure: Readdressing the Mystical in Virginia Woolf
3.The Point of Departure: Readdressing the Mystical in Iris Murdoch Mysticism in Murdoch: A Philosophical and Aesthetic Context
Part II: A Mystical Philosophy
4.Exploring the Cataphatic Dimension of Virginia Woolf's Work: Virginia Woolf and Plotinus
5.Exploring the Cataphatic Dimension of Iris Murdoch's Work
6.Exploring the Apophatic Dimension of Virginia Woolf's Work: Virginia Woolf, Pseudo-Dionysius, and the Aesthetics of Excess
7.Exploring the Apophatic Dimension of Iris Murdoch's Work
8.Conclusion Mystical Contributions to a Theological Aesthetic: Virginia Woolf and Iris Murdoch Concluding Summary
Notes
Bibliography
Index