A Body Sensitive for Transcendence: A Mystical Understanding of Sensibility

Abstract

In phenomenology and existential philosophy the relation to the divine has been understood as closely connected to the human capacity for transcendence. This understanding can be nuanced through a reading of the beguine Mechthild von Magdeburg’s Das fließende Licht der Gotheit, a Christian mystic text where the body, sensibility and erotic encounter with the divine is central. Sensibility is here understood as the meeting place between the soul and God. The article aims to contribute to a phenomenology of religious experience in which the human capacity for transcendence and human embodiment are thought as intertwined.