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The Word, the Experience of the Inexpressible, and Philosophy
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Abstracts
In the current article I briefly outline the apophatic standpoint in its approach towards the Absolute and the Unconditional. I subsequently point that the standpoint in question, while denying that there exists a distance between the Absolute and a religious human being, on the one hand seems to assumesome kind of experience of the Unconditional, but on the other hand questions its very possibility on the grounds that any object that is being experienced must be conceptually determined. Then I present an analysis and a criticism of two competing philosophical theories of religious experience, namely, Steven T. Katz’s constructivism (which is irreconcilable with the apophatic standpoint) and the conception of pure consciousness events proposed by Robert Forman (which openly refers to the apophatic intuitions, but, as I argue, is not sufficiently apophatic). Drawing on the work of Meister Eckhart, one of the most eminent representatives of apophaticism, I attempt to show that the fallacy inherent in both theories under scrutiny consists in understanding the apophatic discourse as one that refers to an «object» distinguished from among others, thus describing its nature.According to the interpretation I defend, the apophatic discourse (in the sense of the term “apophatic” as it is used to describe Meister Eckhart’s argument) is of pragmatic character and it is used in order to shape the subject, namely, to provide a liberation from the need to seek for a particular experience conceived of as religious or mystical which might then become an object of philosophical scrutiny. Translated by Dorota Chabrajska
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published
2020-02-21
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YADDA identifier
bwmeta1.element.ojs-issn-0860-8024-year-2012-volume-25-issue-1_2_97_98_-article-5872
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