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Can Philosophers Limit What Mystics Can Do? A Critique of Steven Katz

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 October 2008

Donald Evans
Donald Evans
Affiliation:
University of Toronto
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Extract

Some philosophers such as Ninian Smart have claimed that mystics from different religious traditions may sometimes have the same experience, while nevertheless giving different and tradition-bound descriptive reports of that experience. In two important essays, Steven Katz has challenged such a claim. Mystics from different religious traditions do not have the same experience.

Type
Research Article
Information
Religious Studies , Volume 25 , Issue 1 , March 1989 , pp. 53 - 60
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1989

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References

1 (1): Katz, Steven, ‘Language, Epistemology and Mysticism’, in Katz, Steven, ed., Mysticism and Philosophical Analysis (New York: Oxford University Press, 1978), pp. 22–74.Google Scholar

(II): Katz, Steven ‘The “Conservative” Character of Mysticism’ in Katz, Steven, ed., Mysticism and Religious Traditions (New York: Oxford University Press, 1983), pp. 3–60.Google Scholar

2 I first heard this description of God in a paper given by Benoit Garceau, a Christian philosopher at the University of Ottawa.

3 Cited by Underhill, Evelyn in her Mysticism, 12th edition (London: Methuen, 1952), p. 399.Google Scholar

4 Concerning Eckhart I am here expounding the transition from his second stage to his third and fourth stages as this transition is presented by Fox, Matthew in Breakthrough (Garden City, N.Y.: Image Books, 1980).Google Scholar