Abstract
In recent debate concerning the relationship between faith and reason, a pervasive assumption is evident according to which one or other is considered to be original and basic. This paper develops an alternative view of the status of both rational and religious modes of thought drawing on the work of Adriaan Peperzak, and bringing his suggestion in this area into dialogue with a series of interlocators including Pascal, Levinas, Heidegger, Desmond and Van der Veken. Accordingly, neither rational and/or scientific methods, nor by religious orthodoxies, can claim primordiality. Rather, both of these phenomena are determinate concretions of a more elemental pre-conceptual source that can be spoken about in terms of a background experiential faith, or a metaphysical trust. It is on this basis that an alternative account of the relation between religious faith and reason is offered, according to which they are understood to be distinct yet intimately related at source.
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Notes
- 1.
Note that the classificatory terms introduced in this first section are used descriptively with reference to the content matter of this essay. As such, they are not to be understood with reference to their usage in other familiar philosophical debates (e.g., incompatibilism with reference to the metaphysics of human freedom, or eliminativism with reference to physicalist accounts of mind).
- 2.
Space constraints preclude a more expansive typology of worldviews that have been lumped together here under the headings of “rational-empirical” approaches (by which I include both scientific and rational philosophical outlooks in their myriad varieties) and “religious” interpretations (in their equally diverse manifestations). However, given the contentions of the essay that seeks to challenge at least one important aspect by which these two approaches are so commonly opposed, little is lost in initially granting such a broad-brush (if, in itself inadequate) characterisation.
- 3.
Such claims are akin to pre-emptive notions about the ultimate sameness of all religions; claims that – as any careful analysis will show – are at best inconclusive, most likely misleading, and often just plain false.
- 4.
Peperzak generally takes philosophy as his representative discipline of modern rationality. However, it seems to me perfectly consistent to extend this (as I do in this essay) to include all forms of rational thought, including the contemporary empirical sciences.
- 5.
This is a matter on which I have written at length elsewhere. See Colledge 2014.
- 6.
Having said that, Peperzak does not help his cause, it seems to me, by his references to this fecund “existential” dimension of human life as “the religious dimension” (2005, 74; emphasis added). His justification for this “very broad definition of religion” is, to my reading, never sufficiently explained, for it is not clear why faith in this more elemental and existential sense needs to be associated with the religious per se, with the elemental religious dimension then having to be distinguished from “concrete (or ‘positive’) religions” (2005, 74). Terminological confusions aside, there is also a significant risk here of a telling asymmetry forming according to which an ambiguous priority is afforded after all to the religious over the rational, where no such slanting is necessary. In what follows, I abstain from using this terminology which seems to me both unnecessary and incurring significant risks of misunderstanding.
- 7.
Such staunchly incompatibilist thinking is echoed in a very different context by Leo Strauss in his famous address on Jerusalem and Athens: “According to the Bible, the beginning of wisdom is fear of the Lord; according to the Greek philosophers it is wonder. We are thus compelled from the very beginning to make a choice, to take a stand. Where then do we stand? Confronted by the incompatible claims of Jerusalem and Athens, we are open to both and willing to listen to each … Yet since we say that we wish to hear first and then to act or to decide, we have already decided in favor of Athens against Jerusalem (Strauss 2011).
- 8.
In saying as much, I admit that across his various works Peperzak is not especially consistent with his use of the terminology of “faith”. A notable case in point is his 1999 text, Reason in Faith (the sub-title of which is “On the Relevance of Christian Spirituality for Philosophy”), where faith is often used in a specific sense to mean adherence to the Christian tradition.
- 9.
It is interesting that Peperzak prefers the term “pre-intentional” (which is more suggestive of Merleau-Ponty and indeed Husserl) than it is of Levinas. To speak of the pre-intentional is to suggest a temporal orientation in relation to the intentional. The “non-intentional”, on the other hand, is entirely other to intentionality, and it is perhaps for this reason that it is generally preferred by Levinas. Nonetheless, the absoluteness suggested by utter “non-intentionality” is in some senses inconvenient for Peperzak, given his interest in the transition from indeterminate to determinate forms of faith.
- 10.
While I do not deal with this topic here, Peperzak’s phenomenological roots are also evident in his suspicion of the impoverished metaphysics of rationalistic and empirical scientific accounts of the world. Even while being highly critical of the Heideggerian and post-Heideggerian critique of onto-theology, he clearly accepts aspects of this critique insofar as western thinking about God has reduced the Divine to a definable term in a syllogistic game of chess (see Peperzak 2005, 98 ff).
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Colledge, R.J. (2016). Faith, Philosophy and the Elemental. In: Tālivaldis Ozoliņš, J. (eds) Religion and Culture in Dialogue. Sophia Studies in Cross-cultural Philosophy of Traditions and Cultures, vol 15. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-25724-2_4
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