Mysticism and Philosophy
Mysticism pertains to experiences that cannot be grasped by reason and are not based on tangible perception but rather on spiritual intuition or perhaps an internal vision. Mysticism represents a form of cognition: the soul's entrancement, the intuition of the unobservable, the kernel of truth embedded in imagination, the psychological elements of dreams or waking visions, and the pathway to acquiring knowledge beyond rationality.
The history of philosophy and science cannot overlook the influence of intuitions and irrational insights on the mind. Numerous strictly scientific investigations and lines of reasoning have begun with intuition. Even inquiries that distance themselves from mysticism exhibit irrational elements. Philosophy intersects with areas of religion, beliefs, and superstitions that share similar content but differ in perspective. The metaphysics of theology and that of philosophy overlap. When this boundary is not clearly delineated in the mind, religion seeks to present itself as philosophy to intellectual minds, and philosophies incorporate theological sources such as faith, visions, and ecstasy as means of acquiring knowledge.
Even in classical antiquity, forms of mysticism can be found within philosophical traditions. Some ancient cults embraced participation in divine mysteries through ecstasy. These practices carried a degree of philosophical generalization, which emerging philosophies absorbed, adopting the cultic methods of ecstasy and imbuing their metaphysics with religious qualities. Plato's theory of forms, Neoplatonism, and Pythagorean philosophy all contained mystical elements. Mysticism inevitably integrated into philosophy when efforts were made to reconcile the teachings of the Scriptures with Greek philosophy. Several Christian books of the New Testament align with the conceptual framework of Greek philosophy. From that point, mysticism became a component of Christian philosophy, or patristics, where logical inquiry and devout faith coexisted and complemented each other in the works of nearly all church fathers. This synthesis found its most unified expression in the philosophical system of Augustine.
During the era following the church fathers, the central focus was so strongly placed on approaching the unknowable essence of God that mysticism became fully embedded in philosophy. The ecclesiastical scholarship initiated during the Carolingian era integrated mystical experience with rational knowledge through divine encounters and Christian pantheism. Scholasticism established boundaries between philosophy and theology. While theology also claimed the status of a science, its subject was the explanation of the contents and experiences of faith. Mystical experiences gradually diverged from philosophy but profoundly influenced hymn-writing parallel to scholasticism.
The philosophy that sought to move beyond scholasticism abandoned mysticism and laid the groundwork for secular philosophy in the sciences. Influential theology professors in Paris emphasized experience over knowledge in religious practice. By the 14th century, mysticism grew increasingly prominent in German literature. The visionary experience of faith was extracted from philosophy and, within theology, often diverged from ecclesiastical interpretations. The foremost representative of this movement was Master Eckhart.
Curiously, mystics were associated with those experimental scientists who laid the foundations for various natural sciences. The laws of nature were surrounded by mysteries as enigmatic as the search for supernatural experiences. To their contemporaries, Albertus Magnus, Roger Bacon, and Agrippa von Nettesheim were considered mystics, although they were early pioneers of a scientific path opposed to mysticism. While they moved toward the natural sciences from philosophy, mystics gravitated toward either lyricism or psychology.
Hegedüs Géza "A szent doktorok tudománya", Kozmosz könyvek, 1990