Thinker · TH-0391
Steven Katz
Steven T. Katz is an American scholar of religion and Jewish studies whose work reshaped the philosophical study of mysticism. In an influential 1978…
Steven T. Katz is an American scholar of religion and Jewish studies whose work reshaped the philosophical study of mysticism. In an influential 1978 essay he argued against the view that mystics of every tradition share a single core experience, holding instead that there are no unmediated experiences: concepts, expectations and practices shaped by a tradition enter into the experience itself. This constructivist position became the main rival to the perennialist and common-core accounts associated with Walter Stace.
Key ideas
- There are no pure, unmediated experiences; all experience is shaped by prior concepts and training.
- Mystical experiences therefore differ across traditions in their content, not only in later interpretation.
- Comparisons of mystics must attend to the specific texts, practices and beliefs of each tradition.
- The common-core thesis wrongly separates experience from interpretation.
Major works
- "Language, Epistemology, and Mysticism", in Mysticism and Philosophical Analysis (1978, editor)
- Mysticism and Religious Traditions (1983, editor)
In the conversation
In the Coordinates
The questions of philosophy where Steven Katz takes a place, from The Coordinates of Thought.
- 6.1.1 Religious Experience If someone tells you they have met God, what have you learned?