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GERD VAN RIEL between meaningful language and Geschwátz. Wittgensteins analyses had an important influence on the conceptualization of mysticism. His famous last propositions (6 and 7) opened the way for the acceptance of some kind of reality which cannot be spoken of in any meaningful way but which is nevertheless part of our being. Ihe mystical is, thus, an inaccessible realm which can only be shown, but never argued for or discussed in meaningful language. According to this analysis, mysticism is not seen as an illegitimate project, but it falls outside the scope of philosophy as something about which we cannot talk. Wittgensteins treatise thus establishes a bifurcation between the real world and its states of affairs on the one hand and the world of the unsayable, i.e., ethics, values, aesthetics, religion, etc. on the other. The effect is that mysticism is often seen as inexplicable per se, and that any attempt to discuss it is doomed to fail, because we would use language for purposes for which it cannot be of any use. As a consequence of this view, discourses about the mystical—i.e., other than the mystical experience, or the showing of the mystical—must be disqualified as meaningless, as talking when we would do better to remain silent. The tradition of mysticism that has existed since Antiquity is thereby set outside the limits of meaningful discourse, and it would a priori be impossible to retrieve it within philosophical language. Yet we should not forget that all mysticism known from the tradition has come to us through texts, through philosophical or theological discourse in which the authors try to explain their mystical experiences. According to the judgment described above, the whole corpus would have to be considered meaningless Geschwdtz. There are reasons to believe that this might be the case, as mystics always stress their inability to explain in an adequate way the experience they are trying to communicate. But should that render their language meaningless? Some people within this Wittgensteinian mindset would say it does not, but they still stress that language is not sufficient, as our rational discourse can only express some kind of scepticism vis-a-vis the mystical. This is true, for instance, of scholars like Sara Rappe, who studied Neoplatonism as an attempt to express the inexpressible, focusing on what the Neoplatonists call “nondiscursive” thinking, i.e., what one could also call contemplation: an insight into the whole of reality, not by means of distinct ideas (that is, discursivity), but as a view of truth in itself. According to this view, our discursive language is only a stumbling expression, or, as she put it in the conclusion to her work on non-discursive thought: In the preceding chapters, I have tried to show that this doctrine of intellectual, or unitive, knowing entails precisely that truth is not structured like language and is not a product of any discourse. Hence, intellectual knowing does not posit +172 + Daréczi-Sepsi-Vassänyi_Initiation_155x240.indb 172 6 2020.06.15. 11:04:19
