Jaspers's Critique of Mysticism

Abstract

Saspers's relation to mysticism both fascinating and frustrating. On one hand, Jaspers seems to be never more himself than when he providing extended commentary and exposition on such spiritual giants as Jesus, Socrates, and Buddha. And when he provides monograph or book-length treatment of mystical philosophers such as Plotinus, Cusanus, and Spinoza, one has distinct impression that Jaspers finds himself mirrored almost perfectly in these thinkers-so much so, in fact, that it sometimes very difficult to ascertain who speaking, Jaspers or his subject. Thus, when Jaspers says that prayer, for Plotinus, is a philosophizing self-movement toward God and that the love of man for God, in Plotinus and Spinoza, is foundation of all authentic life (GP:II,50ff.), reader of Jaspers knows instinctively that such utterances are descriptive avowals and not merely statements of fact. But while depth of Jaspers's self-identification with mystical thinkers fascinating, it simultaneously feature of his work which invites suspicion on part of those who question validity of highly existential historiography, since Jaspers, as we will see, rather selective about he chooses to accept and to reject in certain mystics. Jaspers's critique of mysticism, therefore, may be viewed as following a strategy somewhat analogous to Ricoeur has called hermeneutics of sympathetic reenactment (SE:3ff.). But Jaspers not as methodologically self-conscious as Ricoeur, and herein lies primary reason for I will argue a cause of inconsistency in Jaspers's understanding of nature, meaning, and value of mysticism. In saying this, I am not implying that meaning of mysticism self-evident or that it unconfused, for it one of most supremely confusing subjects one can ever explore. I do believe, however, with J. N. Findlay, and against someone like Bertrand Russell (1917:1-32), that what characterizes myticism a refusal to accept and use notions of identity