Religion (was Re: women?feminism?)

Sam Pawlett rsp at uniserve.com
Thu Nov 18 23:13:20 PST 1999


James Farmelant wrote:
>
> One should hardly be surprised by this development. After all
> the other side of the coin of radical skepticism is religious
> faith. This has been true throughout intellectual history, why
> should the pomos be an exception? Pascal stood out historically
> as exemplifying this link between radical skepticism and religious
> faith. He insisted that none of the principles of human knowledge
> whether of theology, or of natural science or of logic itself were
> rationally provable.

All were based on leaps of faith in his opinion,
> hence there was no reason why we should resist making a leap
> of faith in God. This attitude was very different from that embraced
> by most of the Enlightenment philosophes. Thus Voltaire
> satirized the Pascalian approach to religion.

Don't forget the whole point of Kant's project "to criticize reason to make room for faith." Kant is usually named as a top Enlightenment philosopher (perhaps unjustly?)

I would also add that many PoMos have been influenced by the hermeneutic tradition in German philosophy which started out with Schleimacher and Bultmann as a method for biblical interpretation.


>
> It is hardly surprising that some of the leading pomos after having
> jettisoned Enlightenment philosophical views should now be
> getting around to jettisoning modernist views concerning religion.

Sam Pawlett



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