Contemporary Epistemology and the Study of Mysticism
The Problem of Pure Consciousness March 29, 1990 DOI: 10.1093/oso/9780195059809.003.0006 (opens in new tab)
Study at a glance
AI-extracted from the abstract| Characteristics | Theoretical or philosophical paper Peer reviewed |
|---|---|
| Topics | Mysticism |
| Citations | 17 |
| Key points | Argues that the constructivist approach to mysticism, while valuable, has limits that obscure aspects of mystical phenomena by focusing primarily on contextual factors. |
Abstract
Abstract What epistemologies and methodologies help us to understand the phenomena of mysticism? How do these epistemologies and methodologies clarify some aspects of these phenomena while obscuring or occluding other aspects? When we investigate mystical traditions, how and where do we look? Do we look only where we think there is more light to see? In this essay I would like to help open up these questions more by focusing especially on the limits of one influential contemporary approach, which emphasizes study of the contexts of mysticism-the core texts, practices, social relations, and historical traditions out of which a given form of mysticism develops-and the way that mystical experience is, at least in part, constructed on the basis of a particular background context. Such an approach has been recently developed in two collections of essays edited by Steven T. Katz. I will, following others in this volume, identify this approach as constructivism (although it is important to note that there are other contemporary variants of constructivism with differing assumptions).