The Grammars of Mystical Experience in Christian Theological Dialogue
April 28, 2018 DOI: 10.17265/2159-5313/2018.04.001 via Semantic Scholar
Summary
This essay argues that phenomenological and grammatical approaches to mystical experience can be productively fused, drawing on Husserl, Wittgenstein, Heidegger, Levinas, and others. It outlines a dialogic method that moves beyond analytic-phenomenological divides, clarifies key terms like experience and evidence, and situates the discussion within Christian theological dialogue from Maritain to Marion. The essay also explores aesthetic dimensions of mysticism, particularly music and silence, proposing a theology of musical logos that reveals the sacramentality of sound and the mystery of silence.
Study at a glance
| Design | theoretical or philosophical paper |
|---|---|
| Key finding | Phenomenological and grammatical descriptions of mystical experience can converge through a dialogic, comparative method that reveals the sacramentality of music and the mystery of silence. |
Abstract
The philosophical horizon of this essay is theoretically comparative and hermeneutically dialogic. Its main philosophical and theological tonality expresses, in first person and through three discursive moments, the differentiated fusion of horizons between phenomenological and grammatical description and understanding of experience. After a philosophical overture—outlining the éthos of the dialogic problematic and situating it within the contemporary diverse and dialogic dynamic of phenomenology—I will expose the consistent, possible modalities of convergence between Husserlian phenomenology and Wittgensteinian grammar of the mystical shapes of experience. The tense, responsorial dialogue among Husserl, Heidegger, Levinas, and Wittgenstein’s styles of thinking, far from being anymore limited to the debates between the analytical and phenomenological, will be considered from the crossed categorial spaces of Austrian philosophy and German culture in general. In a second section, I will show how the styles of phenomenology today are advancing into a cautious micro-logical grammar of comparative inquiry. This thematization will first consider some precise semantic clarifications: Experience, the mystical, extasis, evidence, and truth; in a second section, the theoretical levels of grammar and phenomenology of mystical experience are heralded in the context of the Christian theological dialogue, where I emphasize the rebirth of French theological thinking and dialogic transcendence, beginning with Maritain and de Chardin to Marcel, de Lubac, Levinas, and Marion. Finally, I consider the aesthetic expressions of mystical experience, both from the visual and musical dimensions. I will conclude this talk by highlighting theological perspectives drawn from my research in musico-philosophical problematics, through an awakening to the resonance of Being and the Divine in sonic and musical life. Through a theology of the musical λογος, the grammar of mystical experience reveals the sacramentality of music and the mystery of silence.