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Education Quote by Elie Wiesel

"What does mysticism really mean? It means the way to attain knowledge. It's close to philosophy, except in philosophy you go horizontally while in mysticism you go vertically"

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Wiesel’s “horizontal” versus “vertical” split is a sly bit of intellectual cartography: philosophy as lateral movement across ideas, mysticism as a plunge (or climb) through them. The phrasing resists the usual caricature of mysticism as foggy feeling. He insists it’s epistemology: a method of knowing. That’s a provocation aimed at secular modernity, which often treats “knowledge” as what can be argued cleanly, footnoted, and replicated. Wiesel doesn’t reject that world; he redraws its map so that another route counts as rigorous.

The subtext is shaped by where Wiesel stands in history. As a Holocaust survivor and a writer steeped in Jewish tradition, he is intimately familiar with the failure of purely “horizontal” systems-ideological, bureaucratic, even rationalist language-to prevent catastrophe or to make suffering intelligible afterward. “Vertical” knowledge hints at depth, interiority, encounter: the kind of understanding that isn’t accumulated like facts but undergone like an ordeal. It’s not anti-reason; it’s post-innocence about reason’s limits.

The metaphor also functions as a quiet defense of faith without triumphalism. “Vertical” doesn’t claim to be more correct; it claims to be more penetrating. It suggests that mysticism doesn’t compete with philosophy on philosophy’s terms. It changes the axis. That’s why it works rhetorically: Wiesel offers a reframing rather than a rebuttal, giving modern readers permission to treat spiritual insight as disciplined inquiry, not intellectual surrender.

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TopicWisdom
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APA Style (7th ed.)
Wiesel, Elie. (2026, January 18). What does mysticism really mean? It means the way to attain knowledge. It's close to philosophy, except in philosophy you go horizontally while in mysticism you go vertically. FixQuotes. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/what-does-mysticism-really-mean-it-means-the-way-23367/

Chicago Style
Wiesel, Elie. "What does mysticism really mean? It means the way to attain knowledge. It's close to philosophy, except in philosophy you go horizontally while in mysticism you go vertically." FixQuotes. January 18, 2026. https://fixquotes.com/quotes/what-does-mysticism-really-mean-it-means-the-way-23367/.

MLA Style (9th ed.)
"What does mysticism really mean? It means the way to attain knowledge. It's close to philosophy, except in philosophy you go horizontally while in mysticism you go vertically." FixQuotes, 18 Jan. 2026, https://fixquotes.com/quotes/what-does-mysticism-really-mean-it-means-the-way-23367/. Accessed 5 Feb. 2026.

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About the Author

Elie Wiesel

Elie Wiesel (September 30, 1928 - July 2, 2016) was a Novelist from USA.

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