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Self-annihilation in Marguerite Porete

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  20 February 2023

Michael Rea Open the ORCID record for Michael Rea [Opens in a new window]
Michael Rea*
Affiliation:
Department of Philosophy, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, IN, USA
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Email: mrea@nd.edu
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Abstract

This article critically engages Christina Van Dyke's interpretation of ‘annihilation’ in Marguerite Porete's Mirror of Simple Souls. Van Dyke's interpretation – well in accord with the consensus line among Porete scholars – emphasizes the alienness of Porete's understanding of union with God, and so seemingly guts the challenge of Porete's text. In other words, if Porete is saying what Van Dyke takes her to be saying, it is no wonder that anyone would find her vision alien, her posited end of Christian life undesirable, and the challenge to attain it inert. In this article, I describe and defend an alternative reading of the Mirror, one that makes the goal of ‘self-annihilation’ surprisingly more palatable.

Type
Book Symposium
Information
Religious Studies , First View , pp. 1 - 9
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Copyright
Copyright © The Author(s), 2023. Published by Cambridge University Press

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