Promise and Peril

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
C. Michael Shea
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Existence Of God ◽  
Technical Language ◽  
Faith And Reason

This chapter undertakes a comparison of John Henry Newman’s reflections on faith and reason with those of his French contemporary, Louis Bautain, and the German writer, Georg Hermes. Both writers faced scrutiny from ecclesiastical authorities on the issue of faith and reason in the middle decades of the nineteenth century. The analysis shows that Newman shared affinities with both thinkers on the level of technical language and teachings regarding faith and reason. Newman’s view of implicit reason was at times strikingly similar to Bautain’s notion of raison, and Newman’s passing statements on proofs for the existence of God and use of Butler’s language of probability bore close and sometimes misleading resemblances to Hermes’s notion of Wahrscheinlichkeit. There were also key differences between Newman and these writers, which are shown in later chapters to have played a role in the early reception of the Essay on Development.

From Theatre to Theatricality—How to Construct Reality

1995 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 97-105 ◽  
Author(s):  
Erika Fischer-Lichte
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Western Culture ◽  
The State ◽  
Richard Wagner ◽  
Semiotic System ◽  
Technical Language ◽  
Short Period

At the end of the nineteenth century, the dominance of language, so typical of Western culture since the Renaissance, was increasingly challenged. As early as 1876, Nietzsche wrote on Richard Wagner in Thoughts Out of Season:He was the first to recognize an evil which is as widespread as civilization itself among men; language is everywhere diseased, and the burden of this terrible disease weighs heavily upon the whole of man's development. Inasmuch as language has retreated ever more and more from its true province— the expression of strong feelings, which it was once able to convey in all their simplicity—and has always had to strain after the practically impossible achievement of communicating the reverse of feeling, that is to say, thought, its strength has become so exhausted by this excessive confusion of its duties during the comparatively short period of modern civilization, that it is no longer able to perform even that function which justifies its existence, to wit, the assisting of those who suffer in communicating with each other concerning the sorrows of existence. Man can no longer make this misery known unto others by means of language; hence he cannot really express himself any longer. And under these conditions, which are only vaguely felt at present, language has gradually become a force in itself which with spectral arms coerces and drives humanity where it least wants to go.The disease of language which Nietzsche here diagnoses, can be described as a degeneration of language from the state of being a polyfunctional, ambiguous, flexible semiotic system that allows people to express their feelings, constitute their selves and communicate with each other, into a restrictive technical language.

James Frederick Ferrier

2020 ◽  
pp. 207-228
Author(s):  
W. J. Mander
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Existence Of God ◽  
Absolute Idealism

Following a general discussion of how idealism relates to both agnosticism and empiricism, its origin in nineteenth-century British philosophy are explored through consideration of how Ferrier reacted to the philosophy of William Hamilton. Insisting that the minimal epistemic unit is always subject-plus-some-object, Ferrier challenged agnosticism by claiming that we could only be ignorant of what we might at some point know, and this challenge is examined by means of a detailed exploration of his conceptions of knowledge, ignorance and the contradictory, before it is explained how this stance leads to a form of absolute idealism and belief in the existence of God. The chapter concludes with a discussion of Ferrier’s influence on the British Idealists.

Religion, Gender Ideology, and the Training of Female Public Elementary School Teachers in Nineteenth Century Chile

2005 ◽  
Vol 62 (2) ◽  
pp. 209-243 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gertrude Yeager
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Elementary School ◽  
Elementary School Teachers ◽  
Primary Education ◽  
Gender Ideology ◽  
School Teachers ◽  
Existence Of God ◽  
National Integration ◽  
The Common ◽  
Modern Thinking

After only five days she felt like a different person, so much unpicked and resown and made over to a different pattern…. Catholicism isn’t a religion, it’s a nationality. In her four years at [school], it [religion] had grown into every fiber of her nature; she could not eat or sleep or read or play without relating every action to her secret life as a Christian and a Catholic. She rejoiced in it and rebelled against it. She tried to imagine what life would be like without it; how she would feel if she were a savage blessedly ignorant of the very existence of god. But it was as impossible as imagining death or madness or blindness. Wherever she looked, it loomed in the background … the fortress of God, the house on the rock.Education became a responsibility of the state in Chile soon after independence. Scholarship has usually linked the expansion of public primary education to the broader liberal agenda of the secularization of society through the introduction of modern thinking, while the common curriculum became a tool of national integration.

PARSING GOD: CONVERSATIONS ABOUT THE MEANING OF WORDS AND METAPHORS IN NINETEENTH-CENTURY SOUTHERN AFRICA

2001 ◽  
Vol 42 (3) ◽  
pp. 417-447 ◽  
Author(s):  
WILLIAM H. WORGER
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Southern Africa ◽  
Moral Authority ◽  
National Character ◽  
Existence Of God ◽  
African Languages ◽  
The Bible ◽  
Literal Truth ◽  
The World

During the first half of the nineteenth century, European missionaries in southern Africa sought to establish their intellectual and moral authority over Africans and propagate the tenets of Christianity. Men like Jacob Döhne, Robert Moffat, John Colenso, Henry Callaway and others viewed a knowledge of African languages as key to disclosing ‘the secrets of national character’, to the translation and transmittal of ideas about the Christian ‘God’, and to accepting the ‘literal truth’ of the Bible. Africans, especially the Zulu king, Dingane, disputed these teachings in discussions about the existence of God, suitable indigenous names for such a being (including uThixo, modimo, and unkulunkulu), and his attributes (all-powerful, or merely old), arguing for the significance of metaphor rather than literalness in understanding the world.

Rationality and Religious Belief

1979 ◽  
Vol 15 (2) ◽  
pp. 159-172 ◽  
Author(s):  
Louis P. Pojman
Keyword(s):  
Religious Belief ◽  
Natural Theology ◽  
Existence Of God ◽  
Human Reason ◽  
Faith And Reason ◽  
Reason And Faith ◽  
Articles Of Faith

In debate on faith and reason two opposing positions have dominated the field. The first position asserts that faith and reason are commensurable and the second position denies that assertion. Those holding to the first position differ among themselves as to the extent of the compatibility between faith and reason, most adherents relegating the compatibility to the ‘preambles of faith’ (e.g. the existence of God and his nature) over against the ‘articles of faith’ (e.g. the doctrine of the incarnation). Few have maintained complete harmony between reason and faith, i.e. a religious belief within the realm of reason alone. The second position divides into two sub-positions: (1) that which asserts that faith is opposed to reason (which includes such unlikely bedfellows as Hume and Kierkegaard), placing faith in the area of irrationality; and (2) that which asserts that faith is higher than reason, is transrational. Calvin and Barth assert that a natural theology is inappropriate because it seeks to meet unbelief on its own ground (ordinary human reason). Revelation, however, is ‘self-authenticating’, ‘carrying with it its own evidence’.1 We may call this position the ‘transrationalist’ view of faith. Faith is not so much against reason as above it and beyond its proper domain. Actually, Kierkegaard shows that the two sub-positions are compatible. He holds both that faith is above reason (superior to it) and against reason (because reason has been affected by sin). The irrationalist and transrationalist positions are sometimes hard to separate in the incommensurabilist's arguments. At least, it seems that faith gets such a high value that reason comes off looking not simply inadequate but culpable. To use reason where faith claims the field is not only inappropriate but irreverent or faithless.

Brahms's Violin Sonatas

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joel Lester
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Late Nineteenth Century ◽  
Major Focus ◽  
Technical Language ◽  
Musical Notation ◽  
Award Winning ◽  
Late Nineteenth ◽  
And Performance ◽  
Solo Violin

Brahms’s Violin Sonatas: Style, Structure, and Performance is a companion volume to Joel Lester’s award-winning 1999 study Bach’s Works for Solo Violin: Style, Structure, and Performance. Using a minimum of technical language and with annotated musical examples illustrating almost every point, Brahms’s Violin Sonatas explores three masterpieces of the concert repertoire in a book designed for performers and music scholars alike. A major focus is how much can be learned by carefully reading Brahms’s artistically nuanced musical notation and by understanding Brahms’s style—especially his music’s deep connections to Classical-Era harmony, phrasing, and form while at the same time using late nineteenth-century harmonies, dissonances, and thematic evolutions, along with the contrapuntal textures that imbue all his works with a uniquely “Brahmsian” sound. The book also explores how these works relate to important events in Brahms’s life. Practical and concrete suggestions on performance arise from many of these discussions, calling performers’ and analysts’ attention to both technical and interpretive matters. The aim of the book is to inspire readers to explore their own individual approaches to Brahms’s music, balancing what they find in the music to how they balance today’s performance and interpretive styles with the ways that Brahms himself and his contemporaries might have played and experienced his creations.

BERTRAND RUSSELL E O DEBATE ATUAL SOBRE FÉ E RAZÃO

2014 ◽  
Vol 40 (128) ◽  
pp. 407
Author(s):  
Agnaldo Cuoco Portugal
Keyword(s):  
20Th Century ◽  
Basic Assumption ◽  
Religious Faith ◽  
Alternative Conceptions ◽  
Bertrand Russell ◽  
Current Debate ◽  
Existence Of God ◽  
Faith And Reason ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Relationship

O presente artigo parte do famoso texto “Por que não sou cristão” de Bertrand Russell para apresentar algumas linhas fundamentais do debate atual sobre a relação entre fé e razão, e avaliar o quanto esse debate responde as indagações de Russell. Após expor as críticas do filósofo britânico aos principais argumentos em favor do teísmo, o artigo vai mostrar quatro abordagens da questão no debate atual. A primeira tenta dissolver o problema razão versus fé, ao defender que há concepções de fé que dispensam uma fundamentação da crença na existência de Deus. A segunda exemplifica as recentes abordagens da defesa argumentativa da crença na existência de Deus em termos indutivos e probabilísticos, apresentando algumas respostas às objeções de Russell. A terceira rejeita a tese fundamental de que a crença na existência de Deus só é racional se for baseada em argumentos. A quarta ataca o naturalismo cientificista pressuposto nas críticas de Russell à fé religiosa. Longe do que parecia no início do século XX, o debate sobre razão e fé está longe de resolvido.Abstract: This article stems from Bertrand Russell’s famous text “Why I am not a Christian” in order to present some fundamental lines of the current debate on the relationship between faith and reason and to assess to which extent this debate responds to Russell’s questions. After expounding the British philosopher’s criticisms to the main arguments offered to support theism, the article will show four approaches to the question in the current debate. The first one intends to dissolve the problem of faith versus reason by defending that there are alternative conceptions of faith which do not require a rational justification of the belief in the existence of God. The second exemplifies recent approaches concerning the arguments for the existence of God. This second approach uses inductive and probabilistic terms and presents some answers to Russell’s objections. The third one rejects the basic assumption that belief in the existence of God can only be rational if it is based on arguments. The fourth attacks the scientific naturalism which is presupposed by Russell’s criticisms towards religious faith. Different from what appeared to be at the beginning of the 20th century, the debate about faith and reason has yet to be resolved. 

Interpreting Faith and Reason: Denys Turner and Bernard Lonergan in Conversation

Horizons ◽  
2008 ◽  
Vol 35 (2) ◽  
pp. 191-202
Author(s):  
David Hammond
Keyword(s):  
Human Subject ◽  
Historical Consciousness ◽  
Bernard Lonergan ◽  
Natural Light ◽  
Existence Of God ◽  
Faith And Reason ◽  
Vatican Council

ABSTRACTThe dogmatic constitutionDei Filiusof the First Vatican Council held as a matter of faith that it is possible to prove the existence of God through the natural light of reason and apart from the aid of revelation. The doctrine has been criticized for its abstractness and lack of historical consciousness, in that it neglects the conditions in the human subject for the possibility of such a proof. Denys Turner has recently defended this claim ofDei Filius. InFaith, Reason and the Existence of God(Cambridge, 2004), however, Turner does not address the nuanced position of Bernard Lonergan, who interpretedDei Filiusin a way that defended its conclusion but severely limited its applicability. I propose to bring Turner and Lonergan into conversation on the matter ofDei Filius'doctrine regarding the possibility of proving the existence of God.

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