Hostname: page-component-586b7cd67f-g8jcs Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-11-27T07:44:06.398Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Can Philosophers Limit What Mystics Can Do? A Critique of Steven Katz

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

Donald Evans
Donald Evans
Affiliation:
University of Toronto
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Some philosophers such as Ninian Smart have claimed that mystics from different religious traditions may sometimes have the same experience, while nevertheless giving different and tradition-bound descriptive reports of that experience. In two important essays, Steven Katz has challenged such a claim. Mystics from different religious traditions do not have the same experience.

Type
Research Article
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 25 , Issue 1 , March 1989 , pp. 53 - 60
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1989

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 (1): Katz, Steven, ‘Language, Epistemology and Mysticism’, in Katz, Steven, ed., Mysticism and Philosophical Analysis (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978), pp. 22–74.Google Scholar

(II): Katz, Steven ‘The “Conservative” Character of Mysticism’ in Katz, Steven, ed., Mysticism and Religious Traditions (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983), pp. 3–60.Google Scholar

2 I first heard this description of God in a paper given by Benoit Garceau, a Christian philosopher at the University of Ottawa.

3 Cited by Underhill, Evelyn in her Mysticism, 12th edition (London: Methuen, 1952), p. 399.Google Scholar

4 Concerning Eckhart I am here expounding the transition from his second stage to his third and fourth stages as this transition is presented by Fox, Matthew in Breakthrough (Garden City, N.Y.: Image Books, 1980).Google Scholar