Distant Voices

Front cover of a medium-sized book mostly charcoal blacks and grays with green and white text

Back cover of medium sized book mostly charcoal black and gray with white text

Seven books stacked up on left and one book standing up on right

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Hardcover $29.95

Pointing toward a world view that stretches beyond the limits of mainstream scientific and rational approaches.

By John Haller
Foreword by Devin Zuber

The legacy of the Enlightenment philosopher, scientist, and mystic Emanuel Swedenborg (1688-1772) is vast. Swedenborg’s thought permeated widely throughout nineteenth-century literature, art, and social reform movements. In Distant Voices: Sketches of a Swedenborgian World View, John S. Haller presents the reader with a sampling of the many nearly-forgotten ways in which Swedenborg influenced this fascinating era.

In a series of eight well-crafted chapters and a retrospective, Haller takes us from the mid-nineteenth century worlds of Henry James, Sr, Ralph Waldo Emerson and Charles Fourier through to the 1960s era of counterculture that DT Suzuki helped shape.

Hardcover, 396 pages

Category: Swedenborg Society Books, Swedenborg’s Influence

Description

Within the rich tapestry that formed the parameters of the ninteenth and twentieth centuries, the individuals in this study served a purpose larger and more meaningful than themselves…Even when their efforts were thwarted, they possessed an unshakable social conscience that, eschewing public melodrama and acrimonious debate, sought to realize an ever higher spirituality for the individual and society. (pg. 271)

Swedenborg’s influence was felt widely throughout nineteenth-century literature, art, and social reform movements. In Distant Voices: Sketches of a Swedenborgian World View, John S. Haller takes us from the mid-nineteenth-century worlds of Henry James Sr., Ralph Waldo Emerson, and Charles Fourier through to the 1960s era of counterculture shaped by D. T. Suzuki. Each chapter can be read as a self-contained essay: biographical and critical appraisals (and reappraisals) in which the subjects are linked together by their use of Swedenborg, their interest in Eastern culture, and their desire for the betterment of society.

Contents

Foreword – Devin Zuber

Introduction

Henry James Sr., and Ralph Waldo Emerson: Divine-Natural Humanity

Charles Fourier and Albert Brisbane: Passional Attraction

Thomas Lake Harris: Heavenly Fays

J. J. G. Wilkinson and James Tyler Kent: Christian Homeopathy

Charles Bonney and the The World’s Parliament of Religions: The World in Miniature

Paul Carus and Herman Vetterling: Bridge-Builders

Ralph Waldo Trine: Making the Modern Self

D. T. Suzuki: The Wood Chopper

Retrospective

Notes

Selected Bibliography

Index

About the Author

John S. Haller Jr., emeritus professor of history and medical humanities at Southern Illinois University Carbondale, has written on subjects ranging from the history of race and sexuality to medicine, pharmacy and spirituality. His most recent books include The History of American Homeopathy: From Rational Medicine to Holistic Health Care (2009); Swedenborg, Mesmer, and the Mind-Body Complex: The Roots of Complementary Medicine (2010); The History of New Thought: From Mind Cure to Positive Thinking and the Prosperity Gospel (2012); and Shadow Medicine: The Placebo in Conventional and Unconventional Medicines (2014). He is former editor of Caduceus: A Humanities Journal for Medicine and the Health Sciences and, until his retirement at the end of 2008, served for eighteen years as vice-president for academic affairs for the Southern Illinois University system.

Devin Zuber is an associate professor of American Studies, Religion, and Literature at the Graduate Theological Union (GTU) in Berkeley, California, and a member of the Swedenborg Foundation board of directors. His research is focused on the nineteenth-century cultural reception of the Scandinavian scientist-turned-mystic, Emanuel Swedenborg (1688–1772). His recent publications include, A Language of Things: Swedenborg and the American Environmental Imagination (UVA Press, 2019) and Blake and Swedenborg: An Anthology of Critical Essays (Swedenborg Foundation, 2016). In 2017 he was involved in the Swedenborg and the Arts conference held at Bryn Athyn College, PA, where he delivered his paper, “William Blake and His Circles.”

Established in 1810, the main aim of the Swedenborg Society is to translate and publish the works of Emanuel Swedenborg. The Society was incorporated in 1925 and has since become a registered educational charity. Housed in a historic building in central London, they sell not only their own books but Swedenborg-related titles from other publishers, as well as offering a reference and lending library.

Complete list of Swedenborg Society books we carry >

All Swedenborg Society books we carry are imported and contain British spelling, punctuation, and word usage.

To learn more about the Swedenborg Society, visit their website.