In the philosophy of mysticism, constructivism has become the dominant view, arguing that mystical experiences are shaped by the cultural and linguistic context of the experiencer, making unmediated experiences impossible. This paradigm has largely overtaken the earlier perennial philosophy, which held that all mystical experiences share a common core. Scholars such as Jess BryonHollenback, Francis X. Clooney, and Torben Hammersholt note that constructivism now represents the mainstream consensus, with Steven Katz's 1978 article on the topic considered a classic. The constructivist position undercuts claims that mystical experiences provide direct, veridical knowledge, and aligns with postmodern concerns for diversity and the rejection of unmediated experience.
The essay argues that Maimonides's Guide of the Perplexed contains a kind of phenomenology centered on the ontological category of world. Rather than engaging standard debates, it examines how the text investigates not the existence of particular beings but the possibility of any being at all—the conditions under which anything first appears and a world of objects becomes possible. The guiding question is taken from Thoreau's Walden: why precisely these objects make a world. The essay stresses the importance of this ontological inquiry in Maimonides's work.