You might also like

Availability alert

More about The Apprentice Mystics

• Book details
• Synopsis
• Trending among others

You get 264 loyalty points

Book synopsis

How does one become a mystic? Hagiographies attribute extraordinary gifts to saints from childhood. A reading of the young Padre Pio's correspondence reveals a real apprenticeship, a work of language to tell his spiritual interpretation of pain and relief. In a similar way, secular philosophers like Ludwig Wittgenstein and Friedrich Nietzsche could cope with the anguish of war or with the shocking consequences of a sudden enlightenment.

Semiotics offers a framework to understand how, through writing, the mystic makes his own body a plane of expression for spiritual values, employing writing to connect them to each other. This also happens in the case of secular or even materialistic philosophers. Thus, mysticism survives in a secularized culture by becoming philosophical inquiry, as it was originally.

In the volume, the investigation extends to the relationship between the mystic, his spiritual directors and his literary sources. It is a real agon, in reaction to the anxiety of influence. Writing is a "semio-technique", at the intersection of literature, sociology of culture and philosophy of language, allowing the mystic to produce those spiritual values and states of grace to which he aspires.

Book details

• Full title: The Apprentice Mystics
• Subtitle: Padre Pio, Ludwig Wittgenstein, and Friedrich Nietzsche: A Semiotic Analysis
• Author: Francesco Galofaro
• Series: Religion and Reason,
• Language: English
• Binding: Hardback
• Number of pages: 180
• EAN: 9783112241240
• ID: 53045347
• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Weight: 666 g
• Dimensions: 240 × 160 mm
• Date of publishing: 13. November 2026

---

---

---