Montaigne and Descartes

2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael Moriarty
Keyword(s):  
Human Experience ◽  
Knowledge Structures ◽  
Existence Of God ◽  
Self Presentation ◽  
Human Reason ◽  
Reliable Knowledge

Descartes’s exposition of his search for truth in the Discourse on the Method draws on Montaigne’s self-presentation in the Essays as well as on the recurrent metaphors of the “Apology for Raymond Sebond.” In his construction of reliable knowledge he is assisted by Montaigne’s demolition of existing knowledge-structures. Though claiming to achieve certainty on issues Montaigne proclaims philosophically doubtful (such as the existence of God and the nature of the soul), he emphasizes God’s transcendence of human reason; nor does his dualism deny the embodied nature of human experience, on which Montaigne insists. But, contrary to Montaigne, Descartes insists on the gulf between humans and animals.

God and his Attributes

Gersonides ◽  
2010 ◽  
pp. 59-80
Author(s):  
Seymour Feldman
Keyword(s):  
Common Ground ◽  
Existence Of God ◽  
Underlying Assumption ◽  
Human Reason ◽  
Anselm Of Canterbury ◽  
The World ◽  
The Common ◽  
Religiously Based ◽  
Articles Of Faith ◽  
Basic Beliefs

This chapter explains how the existence of God is philosophically provable. It adopts the terminology of Thomas Aquinas about some of the basic beliefs of monotheistic religion. In attempting to delineate the distinct domain of theology, Aquinas distinguished between the “preambles of faith” and the “articles of faith.” This chapter analyzes the underlying assumption that human reason can prove and explain some of the basic beliefs of monotheistic religion. Not only does it discuss the common ground for philosophy and faith, but it explains monotheistic religions without religiously based assumptions. It describes the ontological proof of Anselm of Canterbury and points out various arguments about the world and how they cannot be explained without positing the existence of God.

scholarly journals Filsafat Kenabian Muhammad Saw. di dalam al-Quran

2021 ◽  
Vol 6 (2) ◽  
pp. 189-203
Author(s):  
Hakam Al-Ma'mun
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Good News ◽  
Existence Of God ◽  
Philosophical Approach ◽  
Human Reason ◽  
Religious Doctrine ◽  
The Middle Ages

The discussion of Prophetic philosophy was one of the central themes for Muslim philosophers in the Middle Ages. This is because one of the foundations of the Muslim faith is built on trust in God's messengers as recipients and transmitters of divine messages. Therefore, if someone has claimed to be a believer, the consequence that must be accepted is to believe in the existence of Muhammad's prophecy. However, history records the existence of some groups of Muslims in the Middle Ages that have ruled out the role of a prophet. The assumption that underlies them solely rests on the role of human reason which is considered sufficient to lead him to the truth so that the role of prophethood is no longer needed. This paper highlights how the Qur'an explains the concept of Muhammad's prophecy with all the visions and missions it carries. The Qur'an through sura al-Ahzab verses 45-46 has captured some of the prophetic characteristics of Muhammad. The philosophical approach in this research is a concrete effort to understand and explain religious doctrine more logically and systematically. The results of this study indicate that sura al-Ahzab verses 45-46 contain the prophetic message of Muhammad's prophethood, that is his testimony as a messenger who brings good news as well as a warning to people who are in denial of the existence of God. In addition, Muhammad also played a role as a caller for truth and a guide for lost mankind.

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.

Love Came Down at Christmas

2021 ◽  
pp. 140-177
Author(s):  
George Pattison
Keyword(s):  
Human Experience ◽  
Karl Barth ◽  
Human Suffering ◽  
Human Reason ◽  
Social Forms ◽  
New Beginning ◽  
The Social ◽  
New Birth ◽  
Bear Witness ◽  
The Ideal

Even if we can envisage the social forms that a Kingdom of Love might require, is such a kingdom a pure ideal? Can love become a reality in a world such as ours, where even love itself is a source of human suffering and mutual affliction? Kant postulates an archetypal life of love that is humanly imaginable, but it seems it would take a near-miracle to realize the ideal. This is the miracle Christian theologians such as Karl Barth see in Christmas. The Christmas event, Barth argues is incomprehensible to human reason and we can only bear witness to it. Against this view, it is argued that the new beginning that Christians see in the Incarnation coheres with human experience, as in the ‘novelty’ of a new birth and the possibility of forgiveness. Yet, as the Christian Eucharist shows, this new beginning in history remains also a focus of eschatological hope.

Clothing and refugee identity in Des sneakers comme Jay-Z

2020 ◽  
Vol 45 (3-4) ◽  
pp. 317-336
Author(s):  
Zachary R. Hagins
Keyword(s):  
Social Construction ◽  
Human Experience ◽  
Sense Of Agency ◽  
First Person ◽  
Transnational Identity ◽  
French Society ◽  
Self Presentation ◽  
The Social ◽  
Jay Z ◽  
Clothing Choices

This article presents and analyzes how clothing shapes refugee identity in Des sneakers comme Jay-Z, an engaged photographic project from 2018 by French photographers Frédéric Delangle and Ambroise Tézenas. Commissioned by the association Emmaüs Solidarité, the series features forty-six portraits of men seeking asylum in France. The refugees wear outfits they selected from available donations at the Centre de premier accueil de la Porte de la Chapelle in Paris. First-person texts featuring the men’s thoughts about their clothing choices accompany the images. I contend that vestimentary choices in Des sneakers comme Jay-Z reflect each man’s sense of agency in the social construction of his nascent transnational identity as he adapts to life within the French Republic. Although casual, everyday outfits rarely draw engaged reflection by those around us, photographing the refugees in their selected outfits and questioning them about these items creates a project that defamiliarizes common garments to encourage viewers to reflect on clothing’s role in fashioning new subjectivities. Reading the accompanying texts through the lens of the sociology of clothing and fashion, the article investigates how the men’s apparel choices reflect both nostalgia for their homelands and a desire to integrate into French society. Through the shared human experience of self-presentation through dress, Des sneakers comme Jay-Z thus constructs a narrative emphasizing refugees’ basic humanity in order to contest anti-migrant discourses.

QOHELET AND THE EXIGENCIES OF THE ABSURD

2001 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 141-179 ◽  
Author(s):  
Benjamin Lyle Berger
Keyword(s):  
Albert Camus ◽  
Human Experience ◽  
Human Reason ◽  
Foundational Principle ◽  
Lev Shestov ◽  
The Universe

AbstractThis article considers the Book of Qohelet in terms of its concerns and stylistics and with an eye towards the book's modern analogues. In particular, I look at the themes of toil and progress, time and memory, justice, and wisdom and knowledge while endeavouring to maintain the contradictory and self-negating dynamics of the text. Qohelet, I conclude, finds no ultimate good and no foundational principle in the universe. The declaration that all is judgement about the human experience of existence. Ours is not a world that admits human reason or responds to our longing for meaning-it is an absurd existence. Various stylistic strategies are employed in the text to support and sustain this message and these techniques combine to form a poetics of absurdity. The book is cast in an autobiographical voice, plays with the dynamics of aphorism and tautology, and, most significantly, builds itself around the poetics of contradiction. The text is engaged in a continual process of erasure whereby statements are made, explored, and then negated. I conclude by considering two modern analogues to the book of Qohelet, Albert Camus and Lev Shestov. These two thinkers parallel the book of Qohelet in both concern and style. They too find that the universe is infused with contradictions and does not bend to our longing for order and reason. Ultimately, all three sources convey a similar understanding of the human existential condition.

scholarly journals Presença Anselmiana na Summa Aurea de Guilherme de Auxerre

2009 ◽  
Vol 17 (34) ◽  
pp. 261-276
Author(s):  
Bernardino Fernando da Costa Marques ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Christian Faith ◽  
Human Being ◽  
Existence Of God ◽  
Human Reason ◽  
The Subject ◽  
In The Beginning ◽  
The University ◽  
First Time ◽  
Opening Up

William of Auxerre († 1231), theology master in the University of Paris, was the procurator of the pope Gregory the IX of the Bull Parens scientiarum. The same pope named him, by letter of April 23, 1231, president of the Commission entrusted to examine Aristotle’s books and to expurgate the noxious doctrine for the Christian faith contained in them. He wrote Summa Aurea, following the structure of Peter Lombardic’s Liber Sententiarum, but with his own ordo disciplinae. His thought registers in the average platonic-agustinian, opening up prudently to the novelty of the aristotelism. In the path of the fides quaerens intellectum, Master William treats, for the first time in a theological summa, the problem of the faith-reason relationship. Like this the rationes humanae, while seeking the knowledge of the divine things, are the rationes theologicae and not the rationes propriae rerum naturalium, just as it is demanded by the nature of the subject of knowledge of the theological science. Assuming the dialectic of the Magnificent Doctor’s greatness, he presents in the beginning of the Summa Aurea four proofs of the existence of God, founded in philosophical arguments. The fourth argument belongs to the magister Anselmus Cantuariensis\ Intelligibile est aliquidquo maius excogitari nonpotest.... And if we ask him for the role of the reason in the ambit of the theology, he answers: the human reason guarantees, in fact, the validity of the reflexive understanding, and the credibility of the knowledge of the divine things in the pattem of a qualitative scale of the human being noetic possibilities.

scholarly journals Argumen Adanya Tuhan: Wacana Historis dan Estetis

2021 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 30
Author(s):  
Mira Fauziah
Keyword(s):  
Existence Of God ◽  
Human Reason ◽  
Human Recognition ◽  
Works Of Art ◽  
The Absolute

Historically, humans are creatures who need God. Due to the limitations of human reason to reach the existence of God, humans perceive God in various images and different forms. Humans have built the argument for the existence of God with a historical and aesthetic approach. History proves human recognition of the existence of God as the Absolute, who creates and maintains nature and its contents. To get closer to God, humans build places of worship of God and even create God who is worshiped in the form of works of art.

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