Mysticism or Mediation

Abstract

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 the concept of mediation pulls in two incompatible directions.I then treat Gill's argument in detail to show more clearly why the "mediational" approach is at odds with the respect for diversity that the approach is intended to encourage and display.Weakening the notion of mediation, on the other hand, only succeeds in frustrating the plan to undercut philosophically the idea of a philosophia perennis, a goal which Katz's approach was primarily introduced to achieve.Mediation, whether considered in the version of Katz and Gill or in a weakened form, is simply too confining to produce the philosophical results alleged for it.Finally, I show how Gill's insistence on the epistemological significance of the non-conceptual (affective, behavioral, in short "bodily") aspects of human existence provides illuminating confirmation of the confined scope of his views.Central to the position of both Katz and Gill is the claim that there are no unmediated experiences; all experiences become available to us only as the result of constitution through complex epistemological processes.3 Katz employs this thesis to argue for irreducible differences among mystical experiences arising in different religious traditions.A proper evaluation [writes Katz] of this fact [viz.that there are no unmediated experiences] leads to the recognition that in order to understand mysticism it is not just a question of studying the reports of the mystic after the experiential event but of acknowledging that the experience itself as well as the form in which it is reported is shaped by concepts which the mystic brings to, and which shape his experience.4 Because all experiences are of necessity contaminated with the conceptual scheme brought to them by the subjects, and because the religions of the world equip those subjects with a multitude of dissimilar schemes, we must (logically must, as Gill has pointed out 5 ) acknowledge variety rather than identity among the mystical experiences of different traditions.Thus Katz characterizes his paper