My preference is Kant and the Critique of Pure Reasoning.
It’s The Pope’s fault?
What, Bush’s Fault isn’t working out well enough?
This is quite surely.......a Treasure Found! I’ve done extensive research on this very topic and concluded that the core problem with the loss of faith by the general public was the adoption of Cartesian philosophy which inevitably leads to and provides the source underpinning of Secular Humanism and Relativism. Sadly and for reasons quite unclear, the Church has near abandonned any intellectual effort against Cartesian philosophy. The results have been a near catastrophic loss of progress in the effort to move human kind closer to a more perfect relationship with God.
Wilson nails it when he observes that: “If theology lost its grounding in sound realist metaphysics, its truths would inevitably be lost-by-metamorphosis in the processes of inculturation and ecumenical rearticulation”; and again: “Contemporary Continental philosophy takes its orientation from Nietzsche and, largely, sets out merely to describe what the world looks like to one who no longer believes in the integrity of the human person as subject or the integrity of the world as grounded in truth and being.”
This article should be read, studied, read again and researched thoroughly by anyone interested to understand the tragedy of this era.
very good and important post.
Heidegger famously asks right at the beginning of Introduction to Metaphysics, “why are there essents rather than nothing?”.
I read this article to say that JPII would answer that question with a hearty “YES, that is in fact, precisely the question”. As it says, being is the point of contact that all humans (believers and non-believers) share. It seems to follow, then, that a discussion of being is one that we can have with non-believers.
At least that is one thing I take from this article. I ordered the interviews with JP II which were referenced...thanks again for the post.
bkmk
Superb post & article! Timely for me, and will commence a reading of Fides et Ratio.
Wonderful article. Thanks for posting. So ironic—I defended Descartes fiercely versus Hume (who’s probably just too wrong to defend under any conditions) in one course and completely missed Descartes’ own massive failure. He really had put the cart before the horse—inside-out reasoning, truly the bane of modern society.
Philosophy ping!