Abstract “SHUT YOUR EYES, and change to and wake another way of seeing, which everyone has but few use.” Plotinus, understood in the context provided by the spiritually charged atmosphere of Neoplatonism and of his own writings, here endorses the idea that an innate capacity for mystical union is possessed by all of us. (He sounds as well the frequently accompanying note in mystical writers...
Abstract Although Immanuel Kant was unremittingly hostile in his attitude toward the claims of mystics to have experience of the divine already in this life, a great many philosphers of mysticism have subsequently been attracted to the epistemological scheme of the Critical Philosophy, at least in its general outlines. Kant denied the possibility of genuine mystical experience (as opposed to...
Jerry H. Gill seeks 1 to clarify, reinforce, and extend some of the epistemological claims of Steven Katz regarding mysticism;2 his most notable success, however, consists in revealing the limitations of the position both he and Katz defend, llimitations that lead at times to incoherence.The following discussion begins with a preliminary statement of this incoherence, explaining how the use of...