Mysticism as a way of knowing: Does pre-modern Christian mystical literature reveal an approach to knowledge outside of the Cartesian binary?

The writings of pre-modern Christian mystics strongly suggest the occurrence of a phenomenon called ‘mystical experience’. Unless one takes the cynical path of denouncing the veracity of these claims on the basis of an atheistic or cessationist standpoint, a unique epistemological problem arises here. Is mystical experience a genuinely separate way for human beings to acquire knowledge? Through analysis of The Cloud of Unknowing and both texts of Julian of Norwich’s Revelations of Divine Love, I suggest that it is. Through looking into notions of privacy and incompleteness as essential features of this kind of knowledge I conclude that in order for mysticism to feature in a complete epistemological worldview, one must adopt a notion of ‘poetic truth’ which sceptical philosophers are in the habit of introducing in order to attack.