FRONTIERS BETWEEN MYSTICISM AND AESTHETICS IN THE 20TH CENTURY: UNDERHILL, JANKÉLÉVITCH AND GARCÍA BACCA

Abstract

Mysticism, despite implying certain relationship with the suprasensible, presents common phenomenological features with the sensible experience of beauty and with artistic creation. This article intends to examine the tenuous frontiers between mysticism and aesthetics according to three 20th century authors, experts on Plotinus: Evelyn Underhill, Vladimir Jankélévitch, and Juan David García Bacca. To that end, it will firstly analyze the status of sensibility, art, and spirituality in Underhill. Secondly, it will evaluate how the domain of ineffability, emphasized throughout Jankélévitch’s work and specially in his musical aesthetics, guarantees the kinship between both areas. Thirdly, it will investigate the confluence between the mystical path and the path to Beauty in García Bacca’s reading of the itinerary towards the Transcendent, proposed by Plotinus. In conclusion, it will highlight points of convergence and divergence between the authors.

Keywords: Beauty. Art. Ineffability. Transcendent. Neoplatonism.