Since its founding by Jacques Waardenburg in 1971, Religion and Reason has been a leading forum for contributions on theories, theoretical issues and agendas related to the phenomenon and the study of religion. Topics include (among others) category formation, comparison, ethnophilosophy, hermeneutics, methodology, myth, phenomenology, philosophy of science, scientific atheism, structuralism, and theories of religion. From time to time the series publishes volumes that map the state of the art and the history of the discipline.

How does one become a mystic? Padre Pio's early correspondence reveals a real apprenticeship, a process of learning to use language to express his spiritual interpretation of pain and relief. In a similar way, secular philosophers like Wittgenstein and Nietzsche used writing to grapple with the anguish of war or the consequences of sudden enlightenment.

Semiotics offers a framework to understand how, through writing, the mystic both religious and philosophical make their own bodies a plane of expression of spiritual or interior values. Thus, mysticism survives in secularized culture in its original form as philosophical inquiry.

Autorentext

Francesco Galofaro , IULM University, Milan, Italy.