RT Article
T1 Embracing the Unknowable: Paradigm of Ineffability
JF Religions
VO 14
IS 6
A1 Piilola, Antti
LA English
PB MDPI
YR 2023
UL https://www.ixtheo.de/Record/1848740417
AB Ineffability is a long-time partner of the philosophy of religion and mysticism. Through apophatic conceptions of the divine, it can act to guarantee the transcendence of the divine, elevate it to something beyond our conceptions. It has also held the central role in defining if not the nature, then at least the characteristics of mystical experience. Sometimes it is that which affirms the unique nature of mystical experience, and sometimes it is what challenges the concept of mysticism as incoherent and paradoxical. In this article, I will explore if there could be a Being Ineffable that unites both the mystical experience and its (purportedly) transcendent object, while acknowledging the problem of coherence that ineffability entails. I will do so by forming an argument for ineffability that attempts to both validate and define absolute ineffability as the point of convergence between three meanings of Being Ineffable: as a definition of absolute (ineffability), as a mystical experience of it, and finally, as the Ineffable, that is, the God/Absolute/Ultimate; all the meanings are held together by an argument from ineffability—a permeating and silently expressed attempt to turn ineffability from its usual role of a negation into a necessary affirmation.
K1 apophatic theology
K1 Apophaticism
K1 philosophy of mysticism
K1 Philosophy of religion
K1 Ineffability
K1 Mystical Experience
K1 Mysticism
DO 10.3390/rel14060767