ABSTRACT

Grace Jantzen has expounded an extensive critique of the way contemporary male philosophers of religion allegedly treat 'mysticism'. Jantzen's major problem is with the purported attempt to make 'mysticism' no more than, or most centrally, a matter of the 'private' psychological episodes of a solitary person. In one sense, mystical experience is 'private' in that it involves an internal experiential state of a subject. Others may witness a person enduring a mystical episode, but they do not share the experience and are not aware of its content unless conveyed to them by the subject. A neutral or objective standpoint pretends to provide judgments free of personal, class and gender interests. Sometimes, feminists seem to be bothered by talk about 'evidence', thinking male epistemologists want to require having evidence before being 'allowed' to 'believe' something, belief taken to mean assent to a lone proposition.