The Grammars of Mystical Experience in Christian Theological Dialogue

This essay argues that phenomenological and grammatical approaches to mystical experience can be brought into productive dialogue, particularly through the work of Husserl, Wittgenstein, Heidegger, and Levinas. It first outlines the ethical and dialogic character of this philosophical problem, then explores how Husserlian phenomenology and Wittgensteinian grammar converge on the shapes of mystical experience. The essay clarifies key terms—experience, the mystical, ecstasy, evidence, truth—and situates this inquiry within Christian theological thought, emphasizing French thinkers from Maritain to Marion. Finally, it considers aesthetic expressions of mysticism in visual art and music, proposing a theology of musical logos that reveals the sacramentality of music and the mystery of silence.

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Abstract

The philosophical horizon of this essay is theoretically comparative and hermeneutically dialogic. Its main philosophical and theological tonality expresses, in first person and through three discursive moments, the differentiated fusion of horizons between phenomenological and grammatical description and understanding of experience. After a philosophical overture—outlining the éthos of the dialogic problematic and situating it within the contemporary diverse and dialogic dynamic of phenomenology—I will expose the consistent, possible modalities of convergence between Husserlian phenomenology and Wittgensteinian grammar of the mystical shapes of experience. The tense, responsorial dialogue among Husserl, Heidegger, Levinas, and Wittgenstein’s styles of thinking, far from being anymore limited to the debates between the analytical and phenomenological, will be considered from the crossed categorial spaces of Austrian philosophy and German culture in general. In a second section, I will show how the styles of phenomenology today are advancing into a cautious micro-logical grammar of comparative inquiry. This thematization will first consider some precise semantic clarifications: Experience, the mystical, extasis, evidence, and truth; in a second section, the theoretical levels of grammar and phenomenology of mystical experience are heralded in the context of the Christian theological dialogue, where I emphasize the rebirth of French theological thinking and dialogic transcendence, beginning with Maritain and de Chardin to Marcel, de Lubac, Levinas, and Marion. Finally, I consider the aesthetic expressions of mystical experience, both from the visual and musical dimensions. I will conclude this talk by highlighting theological perspectives drawn from my research in musico-philosophical problematics, through an awakening to the resonance of Being and the Divine in sonic and musical life. Through a theology of the musical λογος, the grammar of mystical experience reveals the sacramentality of music and the mystery of silence.