Knowledge, Power and Religion

Towards Considering St. Theresa’s Mysticism as Philosophical Discourse

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to defend the idea that several theological and philosophical issues have been ignored for centuries (or relegated to the category of "mystical essays", considered socially less prestigious), in general, due to the simple fact of having been written by women. To do this, I take for granted that knowledge is an axiological practice, thus, I distinguish between scientific practice (carried out by men) and religious practice (carried out by men and very controlled in women), always assuming a difference between the importance of the researcher as a cognitive subject and the role of the informant as an object who produce knowledge. Questioning, then, why the different fragments shown from El libro de la vida by Teresa de Avila, used here as an example, cannot be considered theological-philosophical discourse, its analysis is carried out taking into account the main features of the feminist philosophy of religion –her mystical experience as an access to the knowledge of divinity, assuming the existence of God and interacting directly with him; the role played by her body in the process of knowing the sacred and the consequent rupture of mind-body dualism; and the ethical repercussions that all this implies in the Teresian overcoming of the Christian paradox of evil. The main contribution is to be found in the application of the main features of a feminist philosophy of the Anglo-Saxon religion to a Spanish case, in order to defend the need for the feminine discourse to become a source of knowledge for research, to build scientific practice as well as religious practice. All of this considering a final desire to revise, under this perspective, all the female works written throughout history which have been patriarchally labeled as "mystical literature" or "spiritual literature".