Simone Kotva: Abyssal Apex. On Scale and scala in Christian Mysticism

In the history of Western Christian mysticism, height meets depth and scales collide. In this lecture, Kotva will be thinking about the coincidence of apex and abyss in selected manuals of mystical theology. While some manuals favour the image of the mind’s ascent, others emphasise its descent — but all speak of ‘stages’ (scalae) and step-by-step itineraries. A tension emerges between incremental progress (where scale appears measurable) and the collapsing of scale in mystic union (where scale appears suspended). What is the relationship between scalae and scale, between linear progress on the one hand and suspended scales on the other?
Simone Kotva is a Reader in Systematic Theology in the Department of Literature, History of Ideas and Religion at the University of Gothenburg. Simone is a scholar-practitioner of mysticism with a special interest in Catholic spiritual exercises. She is the author of Effort and Grace: On the Spiritual Exercise of Philosophy (Bloomsbury, 2020) as well as Ecologies of Ecstasy: Mysticism, Philosophy and Vegetal Life (Columbia, 2026).
Organized by Franco Constantini and Hannah Lucas