Mystification

John Berger, the British art critic, novelist, and poet, says, in Ways of Seeing (1972), that "mystification is the process of explaining away what might otherwise seem evident."¹ 

Mystification is a process of making misplaced assumptions about the purpose or meaning of a work of art in order to somehow explain or justify it.

Perhaps mystification is also a way of making the ordinary seem mysterious, and demystification is a way of making the mysterious seem ordinary. Perhaps mystification is a way of making the obvious seem obscure, and demystification is a way of making the obscure seem obvious.

Could mystification be a way of acknowledging that there are truths beyond our understanding (such as mysteries of faith, mysteries of nature, sacred or sacramental mysteries, or mysteries revealed by God)?

  

In what ways do we mystify our own being or presence in order to maintain social distance from others?

"Who am I?" --Isn't the answer to that question always a mystery?

Is my way of seeing the world only interesting insofar as it's different from the way others see the world? Is difference the defining characteristic of being interesting?

Is expressing yourself a matter of what you can do with language or is it a matter of what language can do with you?

Wittgenstein, in the Tractatus (1922), says that everything that can be thought can be thought clearly, and everything that can be said can be said clearly (4.116). However, there are things that can't be said, and of which we can't speak, because we can't formulate logical propositions about them. Wittgenstein calls the inexpressible "the mystical" (6.522).

The mystifying may be the puzzling, perplexing, bewildering, or confusing. Some examples of how it may be expressed include the sentences: "I'm mystified by their decision to promote him," "His carelessness really mystifies me," and "Her nonchalance was truly mystifying."

Mystification of language may be produced by the use of circumlocution, elaborate metaphors, idiosyncratic or unusual terminology, technical jargon, neologisms, indefinable terms, and deliberately vague or ambiguous expressions.

Demystifying or demythicizing an utterance, text, or discourse may take the form of deconstructing its mystifying or mythicizing aspects, explaining how it functions as a mystery or myth.

Abraham Joshua Heschel, the Polish-American rabbi, theologian, philosopher, and civil rights activist, says in Between God and Man: An Interpretation of Judaism (1959) that 

"mystery...is a dimension of all existence and may be experienced everywhere and at all times. In using the term mystery we do not mean any particular esoteric quality that may be revealed to the initiated, but the essential mystery of being as being, the nature of being as God's creation out of nothing, and therefore something which stands beyond the scope of human comprehension. We do not come upon it only at the climax of thinking or in observing strange, extraordinary facts but in the startling fact that there are facts at all: being, the universe, the unfolding of time...Everything holds the great secret. For it is the inescapable situation of all being to be involved in the infinite mystery...The world is something we apprehend but cannot comprehend."² 

Heschel also says that there are three basic approaches or attitudes toward the mystery of God. The fatalist attitude is that the world is controlled by an inscrutable, blind, and irrational power that is without justice or purpose, and thus there is no meaning to be understood within the mystery. The positivist attitude is that the mystery doesn't actually exist; whatever we regard as mystery is merely that which we haven't yet explained and which we'll be able to explain at some point in the future. And the biblical attitude is that whatever is unknown to us is known by God, and whatever is concealed from us is apparent to God.³

According to Heschel, the sense of wonder, awe, and reverence in response to the presence of God leads us to an act of worship in which we acknowledge that God surpasses and transcends all mysteries. Our faith in God is expressed through the act of worship. Faith leads us think of the world in terms of God and to attempt to live in accord with what's relevant to God.

FOOTNOTES

¹John Berger, et al., Ways of Seeing (London: British Broadcasting Corporation and Penguin Books, 1972), pp. 15-16.

²Abraham J. Heschel, Between God and Man: An Interpretation of Judaism, edited by Fritz A. Rothschild (London: Collier Macmillan, 1959), p. 45.

³Ibid., pp. 50-51.