2009-05-30

Do Reason And Philosophy Have Limits?

One of my favorite books is Dante's "The Inferno". So much so, I've written a script based on Dante's hell set in a modern context. There's much more for me left to learn about this epic poetic journey.

Dante Alighieri, as far as I can see, is more often than not referred to as a literary master - which of course he was. However, was he not a philosopher as well (to say nothing of being an ancestor to a vineyard that produced good wine)? Dante had not found a happy dwelling among the great Enlightenment philosophers perhaps because for him, reason and philosophy had its limits. Dante was religious and accepted faith as a legitimate conduit to understanding humanity.

If Dante were alive today, he'd probably be tagged an "extremist" by self-labeled progressives.

As I've asked before, can reason (secular logic) traverse into a realm of indifference? Can a society truly be built on nothing but reason and logic and no faith?

3 comments:

  1. If reason and philosophy did not have limits, we would all be gods.

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  2. I agree they have limits. Faith and science, theology and history fly on different planes and should be kept separate. No historian, for example, even if religious, can explain the defeat of Hitler as an intervention of God.

    But man is not only rationality and logical thought. Art is full of non rational stuff. And in my view faith being close to myth doesn’t necessarily belong to the domain of a religion.

    Believing in UFOs or that Elvis Presley is still alive can be considered acts of faith as well.

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  3. People believe all sorts of things.

    Some think Andy Kaufman is still alive.

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