| | Philosophy is filled with binaries, dualisms, like good and evil, mind and body, objective and subjective, classic and romantic, and faith and reason. Some of these are a bit artificial, just ways of trying to categorize things so that we can understand them. We do it as soon as we are born. We seperate things, as babies, into that which goes into our mouths and that which doesn't. It's a Piagetian schema. And, we know that sometimes each category can be broken down further, or two opposing categories, like thesis and anti-thesis, can be synthsized and then become another category which opposes something else. Plato, Kant, Hegel, Marx, and others had a ball building up systems with this, and Derrida enjoyed deconstructing them. Nevertheless, it does sometimes help us devise a simple conceptual model, and then we can talk and think about things about which we might not otherwise be able talk and think. Does this make sense?
Anyway, faith and reason play hugh roles in history and philosophy, and the history of philosophy. Faith represents religion and belief, and reason represents wondering, questioning, doubt, and thinking. Perhaps faith can be equated with the right-wing side of politics, the conservative side. It is the side where convictions are firm. Things don't change quickly. Tradition is important. Order is important. Reason can be equated with the left-wing side of politics, the liberal side. Things are a little more fluid. Convictions are challenged. Laws are questioned. If faith is religion, reason is philosophy.
The history of philosophy is a history of the relationship between faith and reason. (Yes, I know I am speaking generally. There is some reason in faith and some faith in reason, perhaps more than some in each. But there are still some interesting developments which arise when we see them as seperate entities.) Prior to Thales, people relied on myths, religious beliefs. Thales and his students emphasized the rational way of looking at things. Later Plato and Aristotle advanced this way of looking at things. However, the rise of Christianity and the fall of Rome, the dark ages, represented a set back for reason and a reemergence of faith, for a thousand years. Gradually, reason fought back.
Some people have tried to combine faith and reason. Agustine and Aquinas brought back Plato and Aristotle but only within the parameters of their Christian dogmas. Faith, for them, was still primary, but they kept reason alive. With reason, they made faith stronger and more appealing to intellectuals. Reason was the hand-maiden for religion, for faith. However, while Aquinas said that he had to believe to understand, Abelard said that he had to understand to believe. Faith and reason were being combined in different ways. And, in the Age of Enlightenmenmt, reason often became an adversary to faith.
I don't know to what extent I combine faith and reason in NickOtani'sNeo-Objectivism. I try to justify everything with reason, but I also know that there are axioms upon which my reason rests. And, some people will say that free-will, natural rights, and essentialism cannot be justified entirely with reason. And, there are those who have said that all rational arguments are merely sophisticated pronouncements of faith. (I refered to this, myself, in my writng on Perception, Logic, and Language.) However, there are certain fixed things in my philosophy which could be equated with the right-wing side of this model. I do say that we are free within generalizable parameters. The Objectivism of my Neo-Objectivism, is fixed and universal, but the Existentialism, the Neo part of my philosophy, is fluid and free. It is the left-wing side of my philosophy.
Anyway, before I get side tracked again. Let me ask a question: How do you think reason and faith should be related? Do we need both? What happens if there is too much of one or the other?
bis bald,
Nick
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