The Divine Names and Mystical Theology: And, Mystical Theology (Mediaeval Philosophical Texts in Translation)

A superb translation. Less readable than others, perhaps, but certainly faithful to the Areopagite.

A good read BUT if you get dust by big words you will lose interest

The English translations in this volume are invaluable because they are remarkably accurate and consistent, systematically following principles set out in the introduction. That makes for weird English -- but not difficult to follow and no weirder than Pseudo-Dionysius's Greek. Dionysius's way of writing is so "philological" (dependent on word structure and word play) that a tolerably idiomatic English translation is bound to obscure rather than reveal Denys's thinking and argument. The best modern translation of these two treatises is in French: that of Ysabel de Andia in Sources Chrétiennes (Cerf) nos 578-579.

I believe the author's approach to commentary and translation is inappropriate to Pseudo-Dionysius, and I do not find it useful or particularly readable. Jones versifies Pseudo-Dionysius' prose, which is both pointless and distracting, and opts to render it in a latter-day Heideggerian jargon, which is rather tedious.I have little patience and no appetite for locutions like "imagine nothing to be beyond-beingly beyond beings." It's hard enough to swallow from a thinker as original and profound as Heidegger. From an undistinguished academic aping his style, it borders on insufferable. Jones criticizes most English translations of Pseudo-Dionysius as being too much under the spell of Eriugena's interpretation - how much less appropriate is it to cast his writing through the lens of a twentieth-century phenomenologist?I would much sooner recommend Colm Luibheid's translation in the "Classics of Western Spirituality" series.