From Individual Experience to “Inner Experience”——Focusing on Bog om Adler

Abstract: The significance of individual experience has been problematic in Western philosophy. The situation becomes even more acute when such experience manifests as what Søren Kierkegaard termed "Aabenbarings-Faktum- revelation fact", or what the French writer and philosopher George Bataille described as "expérience intérieure-inner experience". How to view and evaluate such experiences becomes unavoidable. For Kierkegaard, the authenticity of an individual's encounter with revelation requires no evidence beyond the individual's own testimony. It is his or her post-eventual conduct that distinguishes a genius from an apostle. A century later, Bataille initiated discussions on "inner experience" in the background that "God is dead". "Inner experience" constitutes an individual's exploration of possibilities of thought, and bears inherent legitimacy which requires no external validation. "Inner experience" thus differs from action, and its validity depends on the presence of a "community" sharing similar experiences, which constrains the scope of its utility. No individual has right to refute the authenticity of the other's extraordinary experience or "inner experience". Meanwhile the safe place for these experiences might be within the Kierkegaardian conception of "Inderlighed-Inwardness", a realm capable of embracing the experiences of the other.