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The Nature of Mystical Experience

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

Christine Overall
Christine Overall
Affiliation:
Professor of Philosophy, Marianopolis College, Montreal, Canada
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In the philosophy of mysticism, an important and foundational problem concerns the nature of mystical experience. The problem is both significant and basic because an understanding of the nature of mystical experience is a necessary precondition for the evaluation of its epistemological, ontological, and ethical significance, and will in fact influence that evaluation. In other words, our ideas about the nature of mystical experience are premises for our conclusions about the role of mystical experience in human knowledge, about the ‘object (s)’, if any, of mystical experience, and about the value and moral implications of mystical experience.

Type
Articles
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 18 , Issue 1 , March 1982 , pp. 47 - 54
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1982

References

page 47 note 1 In Mysticism and Philosophy (London: Macmillan, 1961)Google Scholar; The Teachings of the Mystics (New York: New American Library, 1960)Google Scholar; and ‘The Philosophy of Mysticism’, in Stace's Man Against Darkness (Pittsburgh: Pittsburgh University Press, 1967).Google Scholar

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page 48 note 3 Ibid. p. 9. See also Galen K. Pletcher, ‘Agreement Among Mystics’, Sophia 1I (1972), p. 13.

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