ABSTRACT
This chapter distinguishes between several types of mystic, based on the type of religious experience regarded as ‘mystical’. It examines more thoroughly Immanuel Kant’s reasons for rejecting what he calls ‘fanatical’ mysticism. The chapter demonstrates that Kant himself develops a special Critical type of mysticism. It also examines various factors that shaped this world view, especially the systematic relationship between four of his favorite meditative metaphors. A good general definition of mysticism is suggested by Albert Schweitzer’s description of the mystic as ‘a human being looking upon the division between earthly and super-earthly, temporal and eternal, as transcended, and feeling himself, while externally amid the earthly and temporal, to belong to the super-earthly and eternal.’ The conventional interpretation of Kant portrays him as consistently denying, or at least ignoring, any ‘possibility of an encounter with the transcendent’ and adds that ‘he seems to have found the notion of an immanent God unfamiliar and uncongenial to his mind’.
