In his letter to the Galatians, the apostle Paul writes: “I no longer live, but Christ lives in me.” The controversial French mystic Madame Guyon (1648-1717) saw in these words the ideal of Christian life. My dissertation examines how, according to Guyon, we can achieve this mystical ideal, and what the implications are of such a life without “I”. For example, are you still free if “you” no longer make your own decisions? And are you still responsible for what you say and do if it is not your “I” but God who lives in you? And can you still sin? My dissertation answers these questions by studying Madame Guyon's writings. In line with her ideal, she claimed that it was not she, but God who had written her work. Previous studies of Guyon often interpreted this claim as a purely rhetorical device to legitimise her authorship – as a lay person and as a woman. However, my research shows that this claim can only be properly understood in the context of her “selfless” mystical theology. An appendix to the thesis further shows how Guyon's mysticism can shed new light on the automatic writing of the Surrealists in the early twentieth century.
Lieven De Maeyer is a literary scholar and philosopher. He studied at the University of Antwerp, the Vrije Universiteit Brussel and KU Leuven, and was affiliated with the Titus Brandsma Institute as a research assistant from February 2021 to September 2025. In 2018, he published Simone Weil. Leven op de rand van de wereld (Simone Weil: Life on the Edge of the World), an anthology of Weil's spiritual texts that he compiled and translated. Between October 2023 and September 2025, he was also a visiting researcher at the Ruusbroec Society at the University of Antwerp. His research focuses on mystical literature from the early modern period and on the rediscovery of mysticism in the philosophy, art and literature of the early twentieth century.