Experience: A Philosophical View

The philosophical account of experience presented here considers this ‘most deceitful’ (Whitehead 1959: 16) and ‘obscure’ (Gadamer 1998: 346) word as an epistemological category, that is, as integral to our access to truth in both its gnoseological and ontological dimensions. Experience, in this sense, is the practical or speculative knowledge that emerges in time as the fruit of the eventful engagement of all of ourselves with others, the world, and, ultimately, God. While less directly existential than descriptive elucidations of experience that emphasize the affective and sensorial resonance of what the subject lives and undergoes, the philosophical approach grants better grasp of the way experience contributes to the building of different worldviews within which people understand and order human life. The polysemic and ubiquitous character of experience, while forestalling a univocal and all-encompassing narrative, does not prevent us from discovering threads tying various discourses on experience together. It also does not hinder the recognition of the essential elements that constitute every human experience of the engagement of the whole person with all of reality. The entry begins by examining the etymology of experience to show the original richness and permanent complexity of this term. Without the claim of being exhaustive, the following study keeps a speculative emphasis and illustrates some key shifts of meaning that occurred during the historical unfolding of Western culture. It first shows the early Greek understanding of experience as a kind of knowledge and its deepening enabled by the Christian perception of reality as created from nothing by a transcendent God. It then suggests that, in the course of its historical development, the concept of experience undergoes a threefold conceptual reversal. During the long centuries of modernity, experience is no longer seen as a type of knowledge but as its very form. Experience is then conceived mostly as an experiment carried out by the human subject who has the measure of truth within. Finally, more recent attempts conceive experience as the living out of human historical finitude and seek to avoid the interpretative control of subjectivity. Although it does not deal directly with religious or Christian experience, this philosophical elucidation explores the intrinsic relation between reality, God, and our knowledge of both. Furthermore, without absorbing theology into philosophy, it also integrates significant elements of Christian revelation. This philosophical view on experience thus sets the foundation for an exploration of Christian experience that is carried out elsewhere.