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Faith And Experience IX The Rational, The Irrational, And the Non‐Rational
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 April 2024
Extract
Recent discussions of religion have, as we have seen, made much use of the idea of “ineffable experiences”. It is suggested that there is, beyond reach of conceptual language and the discursive intellect, a primary experience which grounds religion. It is also suggested, at least sometimes, that this experience is common to all religions, in spite of their considerable doctrinal and philosophical differences.
In my last article I expressed some doubts about this suggestion. And it is, in fact, very difficult even to see what it is actually meant to be suggesting. Quite apart from the extreme vagueness of the word “experience”, it is not at all clear what sense can be given to “ineffable” simply on the basis of experience. Presumably experiential ineffabilists, if I may so designate them, would not wish to deny that there might be all kinds of experience which make us talk in terms of ineffability or inexpressibility. “It was inexpressibly beautiful”. “It was unspeakably horrible”. “It was more terrifying than you can conceive of’. And so on. But if it is possible to pick out in some way (as, for instance, Otto tries to do) just what kind of inexpressible experience is intended, then it is not clear in what sense it is said to be inexpressible, unless, indeed, nothing more is meant than that the experience is “too wonderful for words”.
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- Copyright © 1979 Provincial Council of the English Province of the Order of Preachers
References
1 Tao Te Ching, £1.1 quote from the translation in Wing‐Tsit Chan, A Source Book in Chinese Philosophy (Oxford, 1963).
2 Ibid. §25.
3 Ibid. §4.
4 Ibid. §11.
5 Ibid. §20.
6 Ibid. §19.
7 Ibid. §18.
8 Ibid. §18.
9 Ibid. §17.47; and especially §57.
10 Ibid. §16.
11 Ibid. §52,
12 Ibid. §16.
13 Ibid. §14.
14 Ibid. §1.
15 Ibid. §11.
16 Tractatus Logico‐Philosophicus, 6.45.
17 Ibid. 6.522.
18 Ibid. 4.114; 6.13; 5.62.
19 Ibid. 5.143; Notebooks 3.6.15.
20 Tractatus, 5.61.
21 Ibid. 5.471ff.
22 Ibid. 5.143.
23 Notebooks, 3.6.15.
24 Cf Gareth Moore, Some Fundamental Aspects of the Logic of Mysticism (Unpublished Thesis), pp. 15ff.
25 The Brihadaranyaka Upanisad, with Shankara's commentary. I quote from the translation by SwamiMadhavananda (Calcutta, 1965). II iv 14.
26 Tractatus, 5.633f.
27 Brihad. Up. Ill viii 11.
28 Kena Up. I 3ff. I quote from the translation by Swami Gambhirananda (Calcutta, 1972).
29 E.g. Vivekananda,/§‐Koga (Calcutta, 1966), chapter I.
30 Kena Up. (ed. cit.) p. 48.
31 Ibid. p. 51.
32 E.g. Genesis Rabbah 68:9; Philo, Leg. All. I 44; Hernias, 26; Gospel of Truth, 22:25‐7; Clement of Alexandria, Strom. II 2,6,2.
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57 e. e. cummings, since feeling is first (quoted in the previous article).
58 Emily Dickinson, Poems, 838; 613.