Book contents
- Frontmatter
- CONTENTS
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction: Philosophy of Religion in the New Style
- Part I The Problem of Ineffability
- Part II Attempted Solutions to the Problem of Ineffability
- Part III Ineffability Revisited
- 5 The Nature of Philosophical Evocation of the Ineffable
- 6 The Aesthetic and Ritual Embodiment of the Ineffable
- Notes
- Works Cited
- Index
6 - The Aesthetic and Ritual Embodiment of the Ineffable
from Part III - Ineffability Revisited
- Frontmatter
- CONTENTS
- Acknowledgements
- Introduction: Philosophy of Religion in the New Style
- Part I The Problem of Ineffability
- Part II Attempted Solutions to the Problem of Ineffability
- Part III Ineffability Revisited
- 5 The Nature of Philosophical Evocation of the Ineffable
- 6 The Aesthetic and Ritual Embodiment of the Ineffable
- Notes
- Works Cited
- Index
Summary
In this chapter, I want to develop further my neo-Jaspersian account of religious ciphers. This account differs from Jaspers's own account, as we have just seen, in that such ciphers cannot have a direct relationship to the subject–object dichotomy if they are to succeed in bodying forth the ineffable. As Jaspers described ciphers, his rather narrow focus was on the possibility of an experience connected with Transcendence or God. Mutatis mutandis, I want to broaden the focus in keeping with the philosophical demand, left hanging at the end of Chapter 2, for an account of modes of comportment that consist in a constellation of experience, language and practice and, comparable to what Heidegger called ‘dwelling’, cultivate an awareness of, and therefore body forth, the ineffable. In a religious connection, I want to provide an account of religious practices, specifically religious ritual (and, even more specifically, the Eucharist) in the light of my foregoing argument according to which the notion of ineffability must be central to a convincing philosophical account of religion. I hope that, in this way, I may at least begin the appropriation by religious thought of the philosophical resolution of the tension between ineffability and answerability that I have been advocating in this book.
- Type
- Chapter
- Information
- Ineffability and Religious Experience , pp. 133 - 154Publisher: Pickering & ChattoFirst published in: 2014