The Impossible Possibility of Palmquist’s Kant and Mysticism

Abstract

AbstractStephen R. Palmquist’s Kant and Mysticism revisits his earlier work on Kant and Swedenborg, arguing that, contrary to standard interpretations, the arguments of Dreams of a Spirit-Seer expand into ‘Critical mysticism’ throughout the Critical philosophy and into the Opus Postumum. Although the beginning portions of Palmquist’s book successfully disturb the standard portrait of Kant as the all-destroyer of metaphysics and religious experience, his argument for critical mysticism is inconclusive. It is impossible to know if his interpretation of the Opus Postumum is more right than its competitors. The conflict of interpretations shows Palmquist’s interpretation to be a hermeneutic impossible possibility.