I wrote this as part of my MA in Studies in Mysticism and Religious Experience. I would update it a little now, mostly on the distinction between bhakti and jnani which I worked out more fully in my book Secularism: The Hidden Origins of Disbelief. The remainder of my essays from the MA are here.
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This dissertation sets out to examine the evidence for Socrates as a mystic of a certain type. In Part 1 a view of mysticism is put forward proposing a crucial distinction between devotional and non-devotional mysticism (bhakti and jnani), and stressing the importance of the "proximity text." The jnani type of mysticism is then elaborated on in detail, using three well-known mystics to arrive at a composite portrait. In Part 2 this portrait of a jnani is used as model against which evidence for the status of Socrates as mystic is assessed. Part 2 starts out with an overview of evidence for the historical person of Socrates, examines the Platonic canon (firstly in a broad-brush manner, and then in detail with four dialogues), and finally weighs this picture of Socrates against that portrayed by Xenophon. It is then concluded that the evidence for Socrates as mystic is substantial, though the weak status of Plato’s Socratic dialogues as "proximity texts" means that the evidence is not conclusive.
Keywords: Socrates, mysticism, Plato, bhakti, jnani.
First published: originally submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the MA Studies in Mysticism and Religious Experience, University of Kent at Canterbury, 1996
Year: 2018, no of words: 23,865
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