Replies

Hank,

Great citation from CS Lewis. While I have the greatest respect for Plato, I am afraid that he may have been tempted not to look in the cupboard, but simply to reason about what was in it.

At the same time, I think all of his reasoning about the realm outside the senses had the same purpose that much of Aristotle's thought did - to lead man to the good life. In fact, there are times when he seems pretty self-consciously to say "I know we can't know any of this, but let me tell the story, and you draw the lesson from it." For example,
near the beginning of the Phaedo, where Socrates talks about reworking some of Aesop's fables. And a good lesson it is.

To betty and Alamo-Girl, and Hank, I guess I believe that there are virtuous pagans (perhaps Hank is one - he seems to be virtuous at least) who can live well without Christianity. Again, St. Paul seems to suggest the way to that when he appears to talk in Romans about those who have never heard the Gospel, but who know there is a God through what we would call natural reason, and who are judged according to their consciences.

Now whether living well is enough is yet another question. I think one can live well, but to be truly human - to realize one's end - is only possible when one lives according to that end. So far, so good for Aristotle, I think, but where he thought the end of man was happiness defined as an activity of the soul according to what makes man fully man (as I read it at least - rationality, community, friendship), we Christians would throw in that the end of man is communion with his Creator, and that this communion is made possible through Jesus Christ.

Through the senses, we don't know everything there is to know about Christ, of course. We do know that he had a body, which was touched. We do know what the apostles heard and what they saw, and in the case of St. Thomas, what he felt when he placed his hands in Christ's wounds.
We know there was an actual physical empty tomb in an actual physical place, and we know what was physically in it (and not in it!). Without our senses, we would have no Gospels to read or hear. So through our senses, we do know Jesus Christ as he appeared on earth.

For Orthodox and Catholic Christians, Christ is also known in part via the senses - through the Eucharistic feast, and the Holy Spirit is received via the water of baptism and the oil of chrism. I recall that my dad who was a Southern Baptist minister was ordained when someone physically laid hands on him, an act of the senses that had a spiritual meaning.

But now I'm getting way off the point. All of this is quite different than the kind of irrationality that we so often confront nowdays. Some of it is found in Christianity, when folks insist on making their private experiences normative for everyone else, or when it is suggested that because we have revelation, there is no need for reason. Much of it is found on our campuses, as when it is suggested that any work of philosophy or literature is really an expression of the writer's subjective will to power or desire to oppress, or that there is no such thing as human nature, or that reason itself is a tool of oppression.

Not that I'm accusing anyone who has been part of this discussion of anything like the above.

Thanks again.

And to follow up on my previous post, I'm not suggesting that there is some kind of unbridgable dichotomy between faith and reason (as alot of folks seem to think today when they talk about religion vs. science), or between reason and revelation so that (as an instructor I had at even the conservative religious school I went to suggested)faith and revelation are ultimately unreasonable. Nor am I suggesting that faith should not be subject to an examination by reason, or the other way around.

On the other hand, I agree with Hank that there is a certain amount of Manicheism and Platonism - I might say also gnosticism - that has permeated popular Christianity. A pretty provocative (and by no means always accurate) book in this regard is Harold Bloom's The American Religion, which according to him is a kind of private gnosticism that has a somewhat distant relationship to traditional Christianity. Like I said,it's not always accurate, but it makes you think.

I hope I have given no offense. I enjoyed your postings and they have provoked me to thought.

While I have the greatest respect for Plato, I am afraid that he may have been tempted not to look in the cupboard, but simply to reason about what was in it.

Yes. Or else, like Kant, he did look in the cupbaord but believed the cat was only an illusion created by his ability to see. The question is, which is worse, to not look, or to look and not believe what you see? Neither is good.

... I believe there are virtuous pagans ....

I don't. There aren't many viruous Christians, either.

...to be truly human - to realize one's end - is only possible when one lives according to that end...

Yes. That is correct, though, as stated, it seems somewhat circular, "to be a man one must be man." The meaning you intend is nevertheless true.

Out of curiosity, except for perceptual consciousness, by which I mean all that is usually meant by "the senses," (seeing, hearing, feeling, smelling, and tasting) but also all other direct conscious experience, the internal "senses" of pain, neausea, vertigo, etc., as well as the emotions (which are only our perception of the complex general physiological reactions to the content of conscious at any moment), what else can be known, and how? If we cannot be conscious of something, how can we know it?

Usually examples are given of things we are not directly conscious of, like atoms or electrons. But, in fact we are conscious of them directly in everything we see and feel, we just do not perceive tham as atoms, but without them there would be nothing to see or perceive, in fact, we would not be either.

If there is some means to knowledge that does not originate in our direct conscious perception (the only consciousness we have), we ought to be able to have that knowledge without that which concsioucsness is conscious of, namely, material existence. If, for example, we can know about God without any physical means (which is how perception works), then why are physical means employed? Why must there be physical Bibles, why did Christ have to come, "physically," and why do Christians have to witness using physical literature and physically spoken words? (Sound waves are physical.)

I'm not making an argument here either way, only asking the question, so you can make the arugment.

Another thing C.S. Lewis said is that God loves matter, else He would not have made so much of it.

Hank