[MD] Rorty and Mysticism

[david buchanan]

dmb said to Matt:
But poetry is poetry even when it's about mystical experience. It's better than prose but it is still language. And the mystical reality is outside of language so the phrase "mysticism as poetry" seems dismissive and it seems to defy the MOQ's central distinction.


Matt replied:

Yeah, I don't see it that way.  The definition of poetry being used isn't limited to the lyric or epic, or even what we standardly shuffle into the class called "poem."  Rorty's sense of "poet" includes all thinkers, from Homer to Plato, Plutarch to Nietzsche, both James brothers, Wallace Stevens, Freud, Davidson, etc.

dmb says:
Okay. You're using the term "poet" in a much broader sense than usual. (That's probably worth mentioning if you want to be understood.)
But that expansion of the term doesn't really address the point because all those thinkers are working within language at the same. In fact, the notion that mystical reality is outside language is a view that all philosophical mystics have in common. The non-linguistic nature of mystical reality is explained pretty clearly in the following quotes:

"Some of the most honored philosophers in history have been mystics: Plotinus, Swedenborg, Loyola, Shankaracharya and many others. They share a common belief that the fundamental nature of reality is outside language; that language splits things up into parts while the true nature of reality is undivided. Zen, which is a mystic religion, argues that the illusion of dividedness can be overcome by meditation. The Native American Church argues that peyote can force-feed a mystic understanding upon those who were normally resistant to it,..." (LILA, ch 5) 

"Quality is indivisible, undefinable and unknowable in the sense that there is a knower and known, but a metaphysics can be none of these things. A metaphysics must be divisible, definable, and knowable, or there isn't any metaphysics. Since a metaphysics is essentially a kind of dialectical definition and since Quality is essentially outside definition, this means that a 'MoQ' is essentially a contradiction in terms." (LILA, ch 5) 

Matt said:
The central issue dividing us, it would seem, is what "the mystical reality is outside of language" means.  Because if it doesn't mean "transcendence," as you've indicated, then I'm not sure what issue is left that Rorty would've had a hard time with, an issue that makes "mysticism as poetry" seem dismissive, rather than the highest compliment Rorty could think to give something.

dmb says:
Well, as you pointed out, his highest compliment is being paid to thinkers and their contribution to the conversation. It is Rorty's emphasis on language, on the thinkers and their text and contribution to the conversation. It's all about language and you're trying to make non-language fit into this vision. I think it's a rather clear and simple contradiction and I honestly don't know why it remains unclear to you. To say that mystical experience is outside of language simply means that conceptual distinctions are absent, words are absent. It just means it is NOT language. It is prior to language, experience before concepts enter. If this distinction raises questions or objections, please articulate them in specific terms.

Matt said:
To me, the issue seems almost entirely verbal.  You have, it would seem, a low estimation of poetry (at least, in comparison).  Rorty used "poetry" as the genre-label for where secularists housed their spiritual texts.


dmb says:

A low estimation of poetry? No, I don't just mean that "mysticism as poetry" is dismissive in the sense that it reduces mysticism to mere poetry. I mean it dismisses poetry the way a teacher dismisses her students. She lets them leave the room or the building. The mysticism has been dismissed in the sense that it has been evacuated and replaced by the very thing it is not. Spiritual texts are still texts and that exactly what mysticism is not. See?


> 
> Matt
>  		 	   		  
> Moq_Discuss mailing list
> Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc.
> http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org
> Archives:
> http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/
> http://moq.org/md/archives.html