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Hyper–Kantianism in Recent Discussions of Mystical Experience

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

J. William Forgie
J. William Forgie
Affiliation:
Associate Professor of Philosophy, University of California, Santa Barbara
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Much work on mystical experience has taken for granted a certain view about the relation between experience and its interpretation. This ‘traditional view’ has received perhaps its most explicit statement in Stace's Mysticism and Philosophy. It is a view which is attractive to proponents of the doctrine of unanimity, the doctrine (roughly put) that at the phenomenological level all mystical experiences are basically similar. Recently, however, in a growing body of literature, the traditional view has come under heavy fire. Its critics adopt a Kantian, indeed a hyper–Kantian, picture of experience. And they see the traditional view, accordingly, as ‘naïve’ and ‘simplistic’. In addition, hyper–Kantians typically reject the doctrine of unanimity.

Type
Articles
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 21 , Issue 2 , June 1985 , pp. 205 - 218
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1985

References

page 205 note 1 Stace, W. T., Mysticism and Philosophy (Philadelphia and New York, 1960), pp. 31–2.Google Scholar Further page references will appear in the text.

page 207 note 1 The traditional view is employed in a good deal of writing on mystical experience. For another prominent example see Smart, Ninian, ‘Interpretation and mystical experience’, Religious Studies I, I (1965), 75–87.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 207 note 2 Other discussions of mystical experience from a hyper–Kantian perspective can be found in: Hick, John, ‘Mystical experience as cognition’, in Woods, Richard (ed.), Understanding Mysticism (Garden City, 1980), pp. 422–437;Google ScholarMoore, Peter (I) ‘Recent studies of mysticism: a critical survey’, Religion, III (1973), 146–56CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and (2) ‘Mystical experience, mystical doctrine, mystical technique’, in Katz, Steven T. (ed.), Mysticism and Philosophical Analysis (New York, 1978), pp. 101–31;Google Scholar and the following articles in Katz, Steven T. (ed.), Mysticism and Religious Traditions (New York, 1983):Google ScholarGimello, Robert M., ‘Mysticism and its contexts’, pp. 61–88;Google ScholarKatz, , ‘The “conservative” character of mystical experience’, pp. 3–60;Google ScholarOwen, H.P., ‘Experience and dogma in the English mystics’, pp. 148–62;Google Scholar and Smith, John E., ‘William Jame's account of mysticism: a critical appraisal’, pp. 247–79.Google Scholar Of these writers Al but Hick and Owen use the hyper-Kantian outlook to attack the traditional view.

page 207 note 3 Katz, Steven T., ‘Language, epistemology, and mysticism’, in Katz, Steven T. (ed.), Mysticism and Philosophical Analysis (New York, 1978), p. 26Google Scholar (italics in original). Further page references will appear in the text.

page 208 note 1 Garside, Bruce, ‘Language and the interpretation of mystical experience’, International journal for Philosophy of Religion, III (1972), 93–4.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Further page references will appear in the text.

page 213 note 1 This point is missed in a recent paper by Kessler, Gary E. and Prigge, Norman (‘Is mystical experience everywhere the same?’, Sophia, XXI 1 (1982), 39–55).CrossRefGoogle Scholar They write: ‘To see a wax policeman as alive and to see a wax policeman as wax are two different experiences’ (p. 40). The talk here of a change in ‘seeing–as’, which the authors do not justify, illicitly likens Stace's example to cases of gestalt–shift.

page 216 note 1 See, for example, Swinburne's, R.G. discussion of the ‘Principle of credulity’ in chapter 13 of The Existence of God (Oxford, 1979), pp. 244–76.Google Scholar

page 217 note 1 The points in this and the preceding paragraph are nicely made by Wainwright, William J., ‘Natural explanations and religious experience’, Ratio XV (1973), 98–101.Google Scholar