tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1651908162607091292.post4367634035660177101..comments2024-01-05T01:21:21.702-08:00Comments on <center>SPECULUM CRITICUM TRADITIONIS</center>: Ismpressionistic self-portraitskholiasthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/05410057905377189336noreply@blogger.comBlogger6125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1651908162607091292.post-39114691556792546652011-07-25T07:40:53.612-07:002011-07-25T07:40:53.612-07:00Thill, a very brief example of what I mean is the ...Thill, a very brief example of what I mean is the so-called pre-critical or pre-Kantian situation in western philosophy. For my purposes here I am just going to accept the standard 101 textbook history that lays out rationalism (Descartes-Malebranche-Leibniz-Spinoza) and empiricism (Bacon-Hobbes-Locke-Reid). You don't have to follow Kant all the way to see that both positions are grounded in what I was calling intuitions-- if you prefer, let's call the dispositions-- a tendency to <i>look first</i> for an explanation in the structure of thinking, <i>or</i> in sensual experience-- and neither must you accept Kant's solution, to want, like him, to preserve each of these without throwing the other one out.<br /><br />I'd say that Kant found the articulations of both rationalism and empiricism unacceptable, and strove to re-articulate them in a different context that gave them their due. Of course partisans of one or the other approaches were free to insists that Kant had misconstrued their starting intuition, or had ruined it in the course of his re-articulation.skholiasthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05410057905377189336noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1651908162607091292.post-72324994568244914702011-07-24T15:46:08.423-07:002011-07-24T15:46:08.423-07:00"My working assumption is that the intuitions..."My working assumption is that the intuitions at the root of any position are valid even if the articulation is problematic."<br /><br />How do you identify these intuitions without articulating them?<br /><br />How can the "intuitions" of blatantly contradictory positions be equally valid?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1651908162607091292.post-8651203580393225212011-07-22T08:02:14.857-07:002011-07-22T08:02:14.857-07:00Om., aside driving home from the pressing need to ...Om., aside driving home from the pressing need to brush up on my Sanskrit, your paragraph looks recognizable from my point of view.<br /><br />Re. non-conformism, I hasten to add that these isms by themselves do not add up to a philosophy unless I can show how they mutually entail each other or at least support each other. As a list of positions, all they are is a kind of personal ad. But I wanted to get it all down, or as much as I could, without confronting the devil in the details.skholiasthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05410057905377189336noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1651908162607091292.post-57351838590704747632011-07-22T03:12:16.003-07:002011-07-22T03:12:16.003-07:00Hi Skholiast,
I wrote this to Elisa Freschi just n...Hi Skholiast,<br />I wrote this to Elisa Freschi just now about fideism. Do I dare to call it rational fideism?<br />Elisa,<br />That debate about natural theology is a continuing one. Being of a slightly fideist disposition I hold on the one hand that trust, assurance, faith, sraddha is built up as a gradual thing, not a sudden plunge. On the other hand this very trust enhances understanding (credo ut intelligam) and brings insights that might not be accessible to the 'raw' intellect. Meditation precedes understanding very often in that we get below the body of cliché that has to be surpassed. This is the triad of sravana, manana and nididhyasana (forgive the transliteration ye scholars). <br /><br />Skh:<br />Your palette is a sturdily non-conformist one, we're all protestants now.ombhurbhuvahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/07789523088428270027noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1651908162607091292.post-8122673450238658042011-07-21T18:22:44.493-07:002011-07-21T18:22:44.493-07:00Grad,
I was curious to see which -ism would get t...Grad,<br /><br />I was curious to see which -ism would get the first bite, and rather speculated this one would be it. Partly, this was because I recognized my presentation was a bit hasty. I'm referring here to a decision to regard life as meaningful in a deep sense-- beyond the horizons of mortality and historicity but impinging upon or immanent within what happens within that horizon.<br /><br />I am not sure I follow you when you describe your X as "an uninteresting subset of beliefs for those of your philosophical and theological disposition." But I am with Lessing, who acknowledged that no empirical set of facts could bear the weight of "ultimate concern" (you will note I am paraphrasing / translating between different philosophical vocabularies).<br /><br />I have a little more I could say but I don't want to bog it down with too much commentary if I am not being pertinent to your question. If I take your meaning, you hold that something like "God is love" is too weak to be the real object of a leap like I advocate; and a historical claim ("Jesus rose" is too... well, I'm not sure ). But I'm not confident I read you right.skholiasthttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05410057905377189336noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1651908162607091292.post-68342045069087237732011-07-21T17:12:49.332-07:002011-07-21T17:12:49.332-07:00Skoliast,
"I am a rational fideist (the stru...Skoliast,<br /><br />"I am a rational fideist (the structure of our experience is aporetic and does require a (Jacobian, Kierkegaardian) leap..."<br /><br />As a scientist, I have difficulty understanding how those in the humanities approach Christianity (I hope you don't mind if I count you in this category). If it weren't for my spouse, whose thinking about religion is vaguely similar to your own, I would probably be somewhat sympathetic to Dawkins et al. on this subject. I follow blogs like this for a variety of reasons beyond simply trying to understand my spouse, one of them being that I'm curious to know if there is some position that is recognizably Christian which is open to me.<br /><br />I'd like to know more about the "leap" you refer to. To my scientific sensibilities, an important subset of beliefs (X, from here on) that a religious person wants to leap onto are simple factual statements about historical events like "Jesus rose from the dead." Yet, from my experience, X tends to be an uninteresting subset of beliefs for those of your philosophical and theological disposition (If I'm wrong here, please correct me). If X is uninteresting, and those subsets of beliefs consisting of higher order concepts (e.g. "God is love" or even "Jesus is God") are merely "created concept[s]" that God is "beyond", then as a Christian what are you leaping onto?Anonymousnoreply@blogger.com