Abstract

Why does a journal that intends to »bring out reason into culture« give so much space to the question of mysticism? The contemporary rise of extra-ecclesial reli- giosity is well known. A critique of culture that questions the significance of its given forms must problematize the enthusiasm for mysticism. But in its claim for immediacy, mystical experience constitutes a kind of impossible object for the phi- losophy of culture. I interpret the reflection on mysticism as a test for the capacity of the philosophy of culture to account for cultural life and not only its objectified forms. This reflection reveals a structural tension of the Logos program as an effort to recover the link between life and its objectivations.