How Not to Read Fichte's Anweisung Zum Seligen Leben
Kevin Zanelotti
Sign up for access to the world's latest research
checkGet notified about relevant papers
checkSave papers to use in your research
checkJoin the discussion with peers
checkTrack your impact
Abstract
AI
AI
A close reading of Fichte's Anweisung Zum Seligen Leben reveals significant inadequacies in mystical interpretations of the text. By critically examining the characteristics of mysticism as outlined by prominent scholars and contrasting them with Fichte's systematic approach, the analysis demonstrates that Fichte's work aims to elevate the reader beyond the sensory world rather than indulge in mystical rhapsody. The paper ultimately argues for a reinterpretation of the Anweisung that acknowledges its departure from previous transcendental philosophy while rejecting the notion of it being a mystical text.
Related papers
Four Ways of Understanding Mysticism
I suggest that several different flavors of mysticism, and the possibility for communicating such experiences, can be better understood by taking into account the intentional structure of consciousness and the emergent nature of being. The extreme nature of mystical experience suggests that there is a radical change in the perceiver, the perceived, or the means of perception. Similarly, there are changes in our concepts, the conceived, and perhaps even our tools for conceptualization. I use Michael Polanyi’s notions of tacit knowing and emergent being as a general framework, since it provides a plausible general structure for understanding the development and functioning of conceptual schemes, and also relays the moral depth and totality that such perceptual and conceptual changes can accomplish. It also distinguishes a third category between the ineffable and the explicit: the tacit. Building on Polanyi’s understanding of how experience is structured and develops, my extrapolations of his theory into the areas of ethics and spirituality, and Polanyi’s own writings on aesthetics and mystical experience, I will present three general possibilities for what the experience of mysticism might be: (1) One can understand mystical experience as an emergent development, i.e., a breaking in to a new way of being that answers fundamental and embodied human questions; (2) one can understand it as a breaking out entirely from humanly constructed conceptual schemes; or (3) one can understand it as a breaking upward, that is, an integration of all our personal experience into a totalizing focal meaning. Each possibility will give more plausibility to a particular flavor of mysticism as the canonical experience. Also, each possibility will indicate a different prospect for meaningfully speaking about such an experience. In conclusion, I will suggest that these three ways of understanding mysticism might all be modes of a unified mystical experience that I will call (4) a breaking through. Looking at the viewer’s experience of beauty in art and the mystic’s relation to his life as one of detached engagement will strengthen the idea that breaking through is a sideways solution to the problem of human suffering that combines breaking in, out, and up.
Interpreting Mysticism. An Evaluation of Steven T. Katz's Argument Against a Common Core In Mysticism and Mystical Experience
rapport nr.: Skrifter 32, 2008
Defining Mysticism, A Survey of Main Definitions
Since the beginning of the modern studies about mysticism in the second half of the nineteenth century, defining the term "mysticism" has remained one of the controversial issues in this field, and different authors has been using the term to refer to different subjects. Studying some major effective sources in the field of mysticism, this article surveys the modern definitions of mysticism and evaluates them according to their comprehensiveness. It also tries to clarify the different classifications of mysticism by using the dimensional definition of the term.
Critical observations on some philosophies of mysticism
International Journal for Philosophy of Religion, 1976
Mysticism and Meaning: Multidisciplinary Perspectives, edited by Alex S. Kohav
Three Pines Press, 2019
A collection of essays that explores the many dimensions of the mystical, including personal, theoretical, and historical. Kohav, a professor of philosophy at the Metropolitan State College of Denver and the editor of this collection, provocatively asks why mysticism is such an "objectionable" topic and considered intellectually disreputable. Borrowing from Jacques Derrida's distinction between aporia (or unsolvable confusion) and a solvable problem, the author suggests mystical phenomena are better understood through the lens of mysterium, that which is beyond the categories of reason and can only be captured by dint of intuition and personal experience. In fact, the contributors to this intellectually kaleidoscopic volume present several autobiographical accounts of precisely such an encounter with the mystically inscrutable. For example, in one essay, Gregory M. Nixon relates "the shattering moment in my life when I awoke from the dream of self to find being as part of the living world and not in my head." The religious dimensions of mystical experience are also explored: Buddhist, Christian, and Judaic texts, including the Bible, are examined to explicate and compare their divergent interpretations. Contributor Jacob Rump argues that the ineffable is central to Wittgenstein's worldview, and Ori Z. Soltes contends that philosophers like Socrates and Spinoza, famous for their valorization of reason, are incomprehensible without also considering the limits they impose on reason and the value they assign to ineffable experience. The collection is precisely as multidisciplinary as billed. It includes a wealth of varying perspectives, both personal and scholarly. Furthermore, the book examines the application of these ideas to contemporary debates. Richard H. Jones, for instance, challenges that mysticism and science ultimately converge into a single explanatory whole. The prose can be prohibitively dense--much of it is written in a jargon-laden academic parlance--and the book is not intended for a popular audience. Within a remarkably technical discussion of the proper interpretive approach to sacred texts, contributor Brian Lancaster declares: "For these reasons I propose incorporating a hermeneutic component to extend the integration of neuroscientific and phenomenological data that defines neurophenomenology." However, Kohav's anthology is still a stimulating tour of the subject, philosophically enthralling and wide reaching. An engrossing, diverse collection of takes on mystical phenomena. - Kirkus Reviews The volume investigates the question of meaning of mystical phenomena and, conversely, queries the concept of “meaning” itself, via insights afforded by mystical experiences. The collection brings together researchers from such disparate fields as philosophy, psychology, history of religion, cognitive poetics, and semiotics, in an effort to ascertain the question of mysticism’s meaning through pertinent, up-to-date multidisciplinarity. The discussion commences with Editor’s Introduction that probes persistent questions of complexity as well as perplexity of mysticism and the reasons why problematizing mysticism leads to even greater enigmas. One thread within the volume provides the contextual framework for continuing fascination of mysticism that includes a consideration of several historical traditions as well as personal accounts of mystical experiences: Two contributions showcase ancient Egyptian and ancient Israelite involvements with mystical alterations of consciousness and Christianity’s origins being steeped in mystical praxis; and four essays highlight mysticism’s formative presence in Chinese traditions and Tibetan Buddhism as well as medieval Judaism and Kabbalah mysticism. A second, more overarching strand within the volume is concerned with multidisciplinary investigations of the phenomenon of mysticism, including philosophical, psychological, cognitive, and semiotic analyses. To this effect, the volume explores the question of philosophy’s relation to mysticism and vice versa, together with a Wittgensteinian nexus between mysticism, facticity, and truth; language mysticism and “supernormal meaning” engendered by certain mystical states; and a semiotic scrutiny of some mystical experiences and their ineffability. Finally, the volume includes an assessment of the so-called New Age authors’ contention of the convergence of scientific and mystical claims about reality. The above two tracks are appended with personal, contemporary accounts of mystical experiences, in the Prologue; and a futuristic envisioning, as a fictitious chronicle from the time-to-come, of life without things mystical, in the Postscript. The volume contains thirteen chapters; its international contributors are based in Canada, United Kingdom, and the United States.
Mysticism & Understanding: Steven Katz and his Critics
Studies in Religion, 1995
Mysticism: A Way of Unknowing
Acta Theologica, 2008
The phenomenon of mysticism has been a cause of intense debate for philosophers, religionists, and theologians for centuries. Interest in mysticism is particularly vibrant in the 21 st century, not only among the afore-mentioned, but also from other diverse sectors of society. This is evidenced in the plethora of material dealing with various aspects of mysticism. Negative or apophatic mysticism is eliciting greater attention, both in the academy and in society in general and many of the misconceptions surrounding this concept are currently under scrutiny. It is clear that apophatic mysticism — the “way of unknowing” or “nothingness” — belongs to the essence of the spiritual path. A short survey of this concept in some of the major religious traditions, together with an analysis of the place of apophasis in Christianity, brings this pertinent area of study into greater focus.
Theorizing about one mystical approach
Meta-Philosophy Research Centre Names and links to other texts can be found in this research by myself - (apparently the first video link in that text no longer works) - https://www.academia.edu/30704161/NON-PHILOSOPHY_OF_THE_ONE_Turning_away_from_Philosophy_of_Being This work consists of short summaries of the mystical ideas and visions of a number of well known mystics. The theme of the work concerns the so-called ‘unity experience’ of these mystics. The unity or oneness or the realization of ‘being oned’ with, can be referred to the beatific vision. In the case of Christian mystics it is unity experience of The Gottheit (or Godhead) of Meister Eckhart, in Sufism it is being united with The Beloved, in Buddhism it could be said to realize The Buddha mind or Cosmic Buddha’s consciousness and in Vedanta, the realization of The One Real Self, non-dualism, non-religious non-duality and to be more and only in the ‘present now’ moment with a type of depth psychology and introspection and a kind of ‘the brain watching the brain’, physicalist, neuro-scientific approach. What is absent from mystical studies and required is a multi-disciplinary neurosciences approach, as well as detailed, micro research by different disciplines.
On the varieties of mystical experience
Sophia, 1979
The issue with which I shall be concerned in this paper is one of perennial interest to philosophers of mysticism. And yet, it is more than that. In an age in which Eastern philosophies are making their presence felt in the West, when the ultimate validation of truth is the experience of the in= dividual, the relationship between teachings which profess to assert the nature of that which is ultimately real and those praeternatural experiences which such teachings are putatively expressive of is of crucial importance.
Mysticism and Philosophy
Cambridge History of Jewish Philosophy: From Antiquity Through the Seventeenth Century, 2009
Mysticism (in Encyclopedia of Science and Religion)
Encyclopedia of Science and Religion, 2003
"Mysticism,” in Encyclopedia of Science and Religion, ed. by J. Wentzel Vrede van Huyssteen, Niels Henrik Gregersen, Nancy R. Howell, and Wesley J. Wildman (New York: Macmillan Reference USA, 2003), Vol. 2, pp. 585-590.
The Mystic and the Ineffable: Some Epistemological, Political, and Metaphilosophical Concerns
MA Thesis, Concordia University, 2004
Loading Preview
Sorry, preview is currently unavailable. You can download the paper by clicking the button above.