4 8 S p i r i t ua l i t y S t u d i e s 8 - 1 S p r i n g 2 0 2 2 Notes [1] We use the terms spirituality and religiosity as concepts that can coincide, though they may not always overlap. Spiritual experience is broader and can occur outside the realm of religion (for example, in a form of cultural transcendence). Both terms are specified in the connection with the flow of experience and as part of a “utopian standpoint” describing the openness of human existence. This approach avoids the subordination of these experiences to a reductive schema or position and, on the contrary, opens the realm of their diverse and varied forms. [2] We can mention two forthcoming monographs expected to be published this year, the author’s The Modern Experience of the Religious in its Many Forms, and von Kalckreuth’s Philosophische Anthropologie und Religion: Religiöse Erfahrung, soziokulturelle Praxis und die Frage nach dem Menschen. [3] Cf. Plessner 2017, 353–366. [4] In the following, we will trace how phenomenology, from which Plessner, as a disciple of Husserl, also drew, works with mystical experience, within the work of Anthony J. Steinbock’s Phenomenology and Mysticism. [5] James Elkins dealt with this topic in his book Pictures and Tears: A History of People Who Have Cried in Front of Paintings. One account of a viewer describing his visit to this chapel reads, “it’s hard to look at, you can see it (the consolation) but maybe it’s not even there… In Rothko’s account, this inability to grasp a visual message is comparable to religion…At first glance, his paintings seem to represent a black abyss. And suddenly (as when a glimmer of hope dawns in the world) the painter gives us a small, limited inkling of hope in the form of very subtle variations of color, spots, areas of light in the painting. It is a hope that we are (can never be) sure of.” (Elkins 2007, 173). Why is this so? According to Elkins, there is “a natural bond between the painful closeness and the painful emptiness that make people cry when they look at Rothko’s paintings, and they can appear together in the work of one artist.” (Elkins 2007, 167). [6] To “poetics of ineffability” (Kučerková and Vašek 2020, 3). [7] Transcendence, as Jean Wahl clarifies, can go in two directions – towards trans-ascendence or trans-descendence; Wahl also speaks of bad transcendences (Wahl 2016, 25). [8] Plessner (2019, 320) aptly remarks: “Atheism is easier said than done.” [9] The affinity between certain artistic creation and spirituality, as we have suggested in the case of the visual art, can be seen also by the question of the language of spiritual experience in, for example, poetry. Jana Juhásová addresses this in several texts of hers (2020, 40–53). [10] Cf. Vydrová 2021. Acknowledgment The study originated as a partial outcome of the project VEGA 1/0174/21 Revised Anthropology: The Concept of the Human in the 21st Century.
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