Hearing the inaudible

Three Pines Press, 2019

A collection of essays that explores the many dimensions of the mystical, including personal, theoretical, and historical. Kohav, a professor of philosophy at the Metropolitan State College of Denver and the editor of this collection, provocatively asks why mysticism is such an "objectionable" topic and considered intellectually disreputable. Borrowing from Jacques Derrida's distinction between aporia (or unsolvable confusion) and a solvable problem, the author suggests mystical phenomena are better understood through the lens of mysterium, that which is beyond the categories of reason and can only be captured by dint of intuition and personal experience. In fact, the contributors to this intellectually kaleidoscopic volume present several autobiographical accounts of precisely such an encounter with the mystically inscrutable. For example, in one essay, Gregory M. Nixon relates "the shattering moment in my life when I awoke from the dream of self to find being as part of the living world and not in my head." The religious dimensions of mystical experience are also explored: Buddhist, Christian, and Judaic texts, including the Bible, are examined to explicate and compare their divergent interpretations. Contributor Jacob Rump argues that the ineffable is central to Wittgenstein's worldview, and Ori Z. Soltes contends that philosophers like Socrates and Spinoza, famous for their valorization of reason, are incomprehensible without also considering the limits they impose on reason and the value they assign to ineffable experience. The collection is precisely as multidisciplinary as billed. It includes a wealth of varying perspectives, both personal and scholarly. Furthermore, the book examines the application of these ideas to contemporary debates. Richard H. Jones, for instance, challenges that mysticism and science ultimately converge into a single explanatory whole. The prose can be prohibitively dense--much of it is written in a jargon-laden academic parlance--and the book is not intended for a popular audience. Within a remarkably technical discussion of the proper interpretive approach to sacred texts, contributor Brian Lancaster declares: "For these reasons I propose incorporating a hermeneutic component to extend the integration of neuroscientific and phenomenological data that defines neurophenomenology." However, Kohav's anthology is still a stimulating tour of the subject, philosophically enthralling and wide reaching. An engrossing, diverse collection of takes on mystical phenomena. - Kirkus Reviews The volume investigates the question of meaning of mystical phenomena and, conversely, queries the concept of “meaning” itself, via insights afforded by mystical experiences. The collection brings together researchers from such disparate fields as philosophy, psychology, history of religion, cognitive poetics, and semiotics, in an effort to ascertain the question of mysticism’s meaning through pertinent, up-to-date multidisciplinarity. The discussion commences with Editor’s Introduction that probes persistent questions of complexity as well as perplexity of mysticism and the reasons why problematizing mysticism leads to even greater enigmas. One thread within the volume provides the contextual framework for continuing fascination of mysticism that includes a consideration of several historical traditions as well as personal accounts of mystical experiences: Two contributions showcase ancient Egyptian and ancient Israelite involvements with mystical alterations of consciousness and Christianity’s origins being steeped in mystical praxis; and four essays highlight mysticism’s formative presence in Chinese traditions and Tibetan Buddhism as well as medieval Judaism and Kabbalah mysticism. A second, more overarching strand within the volume is concerned with multidisciplinary investigations of the phenomenon of mysticism, including philosophical, psychological, cognitive, and semiotic analyses. To this effect, the volume explores the question of philosophy’s relation to mysticism and vice versa, together with a Wittgensteinian nexus between mysticism, facticity, and truth; language mysticism and “supernormal meaning” engendered by certain mystical states; and a semiotic scrutiny of some mystical experiences and their ineffability. Finally, the volume includes an assessment of the so-called New Age authors’ contention of the convergence of scientific and mystical claims about reality. The above two tracks are appended with personal, contemporary accounts of mystical experiences, in the Prologue; and a futuristic envisioning, as a fictitious chronicle from the time-to-come, of life without things mystical, in the Postscript. The volume contains thirteen chapters; its international contributors are based in Canada, United Kingdom, and the United States.

Between faith and belief: toward a contemporary phenomenology of religious life, by Joeri Schrijvers, Albany, SUNY Press, 2016, 380 pp., $90 (hardcover), Between Faith and Belief builds significantly on Schrijvers's earlier work Ontotheological Turnings? 1 In his earlier work, Schrijvers argues that traces of ontotheology remain among French phenomenologists like Lacoste, Marion, and Levinas who expressly sought to overcome metaphysics. While this is a pointed critique, Schrijvers interprets this 'ontotheological turn' constructively. Previous attempts to overcome metaphysics have prematurely presupposed that metaphysics can actually be overcome. They have thereby overlooked, à la Reiner Schürmann, that ontotheology is an existential-ontological problem since there is 'a natural metaphysician in each of us'. It is on this point that Between Faith and Belief begins and builds. Not for the purpose of affirming and reasserting traditional metaphysics, but rather to develop an alternative ontology that gives an account of this proclivity for metaphysics while attentive to those contemporary critiques of ontotheology that led to its collapse. Schrijvers discovers an alternative ontology in the work of the Swiss psychiatrist and existential phenomenologist, Ludwig Binswanger, whose description of Dasein plays a decisive role in what Schrijvers calls an 'ontology incarnate'. Whereas contemporary attempts to overcome metaphysics inadvertently conceive faith at the expense of finitude as an other-worldly, mystical insight or inclination known only for the percipient, Schrijvers and Binswanger conceive love phenomenologically as 'being-beyond-the-world-in-theworld' (über die Welt hinaus sein) so that everyday, finite experience (from a simple salutation to friendship to the lover's embrace) opens up within finitude the possibility for an experience of the infinite for all people in many diverse ways and degrees.

Between faith and belief: toward a contemporary phenomenology of religious life, by Joeri Schrijvers, Albany, SUNY Press, 2016, 380 pp., $90 (hardcover), Between Faith and Belief builds significantly on Schrijvers's earlier work Ontotheological Turnings? 1 In his earlier work, Schrijvers argues that traces of ontotheology remain among French phenomenologists like Lacoste, Marion, and Levinas who expressly sought to overcome metaphysics. While this is a pointed critique, Schrijvers interprets this 'ontotheological turn' constructively. Previous attempts to overcome metaphysics have prematurely presupposed that metaphysics can actually be overcome. They have thereby overlooked, à la Reiner Schürmann, that ontotheology is an existential-ontological problem since there is 'a natural metaphysician in each of us'. It is on this point that Between Faith and Belief begins and builds. Not for the purpose of affirming and reasserting traditional metaphysics, but rather to develop an alternative ontology that gives an account of this proclivity for metaphysics while attentive to those contemporary critiques of ontotheology that led to its collapse. Schrijvers discovers an alternative ontology in the work of the Swiss psychiatrist and existential phenomenologist, Ludwig Binswanger, whose description of Dasein plays a decisive role in what Schrijvers calls an 'ontology incarnate'. Whereas contemporary attempts to overcome metaphysics inadvertently conceive faith at the expense of finitude as an other-worldly, mystical insight or inclination known only for the percipient, Schrijvers and Binswanger conceive love phenomenologically as 'being-beyond-the-world-in-theworld' (über die Welt hinaus sein) so that everyday, finite experience (from a simple salutation to friendship to the lover's embrace) opens up within finitude the possibility for an experience of the infinite for all people in many diverse ways and degrees.

How should we understand religious truth claims in a time when science seems to increasingly have the final say in matters of truth and the nature of reality? What is meant by a statement like ‘God exists’ or ‘Christ returned from the dead’? There is a lot of confusion about the status of such religious doctrines. Should we take them literally? Are they meant metaphorically? How should we even conceive of God existing literally or metaphorically? In what way does God exist if he exists literally or metaphorically? Are there perhaps other ways of interpreting religious truth claims that go beyond the distinction between literal and metaphorical? Questions such as these motivated me to write this essay. I simply could not believe that ideas as old and widespread as religious ones did not hold any truth in them. But what kind of truth could that be? And what kind of reality would they describe? This essay attempts to answer those questions. It tries to understand religion, and religious truth claims in particular, from a perspective on the human being that focuses on his limitations and the confrontation of this limited being with a reality that seems unlimited in its complexity. By emphasizing those aspects of what it means to be human it is possible to view religion, religious truth claims and religious reality in a way that is also meaningful in an era of scientific and materialist primacy.

The problem of Religious Experience: Case Studies in Phenomenology, 2019

This is an introduction to The Problem of Religious Experience: Case Studies in Phenomenology, with Reflections and Commentaries. The book presents an updated overview of the problem of religious experience in phenomenology, from the time of Husserl to French phenomenology's theological turn, which was followed by important publications such as Steinbock (2007), Depraz (2008), Alvis (2016 and 2018) and others. Significantly advancing understanding of religious experience, these studies nevertheless left open a question of what exactly makes religious experience what it is: that is, gives it a specific quality distinguishing it, for its subject, from all other experiences. In contemporary phenomenology, Dahl's (2010) theory of interruptions and Barber's (2017) theory of the appresentative mindset and the finite province of religious meaning comprise two most probable and mutually complementary answers to this question. Further, the Introduction covers the contents of the two volumes, entitled The Primeval Showing of Religious Experience and Doxastic Perspectives in the Phenomenology of Religious Experience. The case studies in Volume I proceed from the descriptive phenomenology of religious experience as it relates to subjectivity research (Part 1) to the relationship between religious experience, intersubjectivity, and alterity (Part 2). Part 2 also serves as a bridge to metaphysical, theological, and theistic approaches in Part 3 and Part 4. Along with the overview of the contents of the book, this Introduction presents Olga Louchakova-Schwartz's (as editor of the book) synthetic meta-reflection on the findings, so that the findings in the book are coherently represented in light of contemporary debates in the philosophy of religion.

Acta Theologica, 2008

The phenomenon of mysticism has been a cause of intense debate for philosophers, religionists, and theologians for centuries. Interest in mysticism is particularly vibrant in the 21 st century, not only among the afore-mentioned, but also from other diverse sectors of society. This is evidenced in the plethora of material dealing with various aspects of mysticism. Negative or apophatic mysticism is eliciting greater attention, both in the academy and in society in general and many of the misconceptions surrounding this concept are currently under scrutiny. It is clear that apophatic mysticism — the “way of unknowing” or “nothingness” — belongs to the essence of the spiritual path. A short survey of this concept in some of the major religious traditions, together with an analysis of the place of apophasis in Christianity, brings this pertinent area of study into greater focus.