Heidegger makes the striking claim about modern man that he has lost the ability to contemplate being and so has rendered himself “incapable of wonder.”
In reducing being to ideas of causality, Heidegger famously claimed, the modern mind refuses to let being be, harnesses it for use, and so strips it of all mystery. Heidegger savagely critiqued this practice of what he called “ontotheology,” where God and being are ultimately reduced to their use-value for human rationality. He wanted us to “dwell poetically” in wonder.
David Bentley Hart summarizes his point,
“Perhaps there truly was, precisely in the birth of philosophy as a self-conscious enterprise of rising above the ephemerality of the phenomena to take hold of their immutable premises, a turning away from the light toward the things it illuminated, a forgetfulness of being within philosophy’s very wakefulness to being. And perhaps in this fateful moment of inattention to the mystery of being’s event, the relentless search for being’s positive foundations commenced, and then proceeded along a path that, in the end, would arrive at the ruin of philosophic faith….”
In my previous post HERE I gave DC Schindler’s answer to Heidegger, a more robust notion of “cause”, that brings the whole of reason into the inner-constitution of beings, along with reason structured as drama, that opens up a dialogue rather than closing it upon conclusions, but there its also a more poetic response available.
Perhaps reality is not a math equation. Perhaps it is structured more like a narrative.
After all, after centuries of tossing about premises, metaphysical propositions, rational’s for why things are they way they are, have philosophers really made much progress in securing a sold foundation for thought ?
Logic, conceived on the model of mathematics rather than Logos, has stripped reality of reason; now stands a skeletal world of geometry, where once a living Cosmos throbbed with breathe.
Scientific formulas ought to be studied for the sake of revealing something true about reality, but instead we have forgotten the reality, as Heidegger says, forgotten ‘being’, and study only the formal structures !
The consequent disconnection of logic from the reality of the λόγος: the logos, built on a mathematical construction has been a disaster.
Logic, conceived on the model of mathematics rather than Logos, has stripped reality of reason; now stands a skeletal world of geometry, where once a living Cosmos throbbed with breathe.
Scientific formulas ought to be studied for the sake of revealing something true about reality, but instead we have forgotten the reality, as Heidegger says, forgotten ‘being’, and study only the formal structures !
The consequent disconnection of logic from the reality of the λόγος: the logos, built on a mathematical construction has been a disaster.
Brian Kemple points out,
“The study of modern logic tends towards study of the formal structure for the sake of understanding the formal structure, and consequently in applying the lessons learned to manipulation of data, to engineering possibilities, and to abstracting the structure of thought so as to control its consequences. Consider the above formula of abstract symbols: there is meaning in it, but that meaning is removed from natural language and therefore from natural experience. If we elevate this concern for formula above all else, we enervate the λόγος and make it an empty shell.
In contrast, we propose here, the λόγος is best understood as the intelligibility of the real; not as residing in intellects, but as transcending both the intellect which grasps it and the reality in which it is grasped, irreducible to either. In other words, the λόγος is what really is, as it can be understood, regardless of how poorly or incorrectly we or others might think about it. Logic, on the other hand, is or ought to be the study of this process by which the mind strives for grasping this intelligible reality in its full relation: in thought and in thing, in mind and world, and in the possible connections between the two.”
Did it have to be this way ?
“The study of modern logic tends towards study of the formal structure for the sake of understanding the formal structure, and consequently in applying the lessons learned to manipulation of data, to engineering possibilities, and to abstracting the structure of thought so as to control its consequences. Consider the above formula of abstract symbols: there is meaning in it, but that meaning is removed from natural language and therefore from natural experience. If we elevate this concern for formula above all else, we enervate the λόγος and make it an empty shell.
In contrast, we propose here, the λόγος is best understood as the intelligibility of the real; not as residing in intellects, but as transcending both the intellect which grasps it and the reality in which it is grasped, irreducible to either. In other words, the λόγος is what really is, as it can be understood, regardless of how poorly or incorrectly we or others might think about it. Logic, on the other hand, is or ought to be the study of this process by which the mind strives for grasping this intelligible reality in its full relation: in thought and in thing, in mind and world, and in the possible connections between the two.”
Did it have to be this way ?
Scientists used the the machine as a metaphor to describe nature, and a “mechanical” analogy presided, but the mechanistic view of nature and the musical view of nature are perfectly equivalent in terms of their coherence with the empirical data.
Machines are not the only objects whose behavior can be quantified and predicted. Musical pieces also operate in this manner. A piece of music has its own internal coherence. It operates in terms of its own regular patterns, notes which bear a particular relationship with one another in order to create a whole greater than the particular notes. There is a deep connection between music and mathematics, so that you can quantify the relationship among different notes and even predict the probabilities of other notes following.
And Biologists like Denis Noble, using modern systems theory rather than viewing genes as simple code replicators, claims life itself is a kind of music, a symphonic interplay between genes, cells, organs, body, and environment.
Indeed, there is a difference between a language coming from the outside to grasp and object, and language as a poetic participation in the being of an object, a distinction Gordon Carkner makes clear,
“Within a scientistic outlook, knowledge depends on a designative (versus an expressivist-poetic) tradition of language. Designative language (Hobbes to Locke to Condillac) traps the pursuit of wisdom within language and confines it to immanence where language and its relationship to truth are reduced to pointing or representation.
Language primarily designates objects in the world; the
object is held and studied at a distance, observed but not
participated in. One assumes a use of language based on
quantitative judgments that are non-subject-dependent
(objective). This view of language contributes to scientism’s mechanistic understanding of the universe, rendering it disenchanted.”
Brain Kemple points out that, “poetry as the flourishing of ποίησις, a bringing-forth of what-is through language.
….where what is, is allowed to be what it is, and can therefore be seen, perceived, and understood as what it is, and not as what we wish for it to be, or what we are already-expecting it to be—not what fits any abstraction or ideal.
The poet, the artist in general, succeeds by breaking through the obstinate insistence we have in believing our ill-formed concepts adequate, by bringing us closer to the present, by bringing us into the poetic frame of the present as present."
And in fact, as quantum physics has shown, the Cosmos is appearing very much more like a mind than a machine.
If the world is indeed mind-like, perhaps another method is required.
Thus Esther Meeks takes a more “personal” approach to knowing :
“Knowing takes commitment to that which is yet to be discovered, a kind of pledge of good faith. The lover can see, is permitted to see. The seeing only ever follows and responds to the wanting, the longing, the personal, self-giving pledge”
“The goal of knowing is not complete information; it is communion.
“The goal is no longer comprehensive, mystery-eliminating, reality-denuding information. The goal is communion—the communion of knower and known. Communion is the fulfillment of love. The goal is ongoing friendship. Friendship requires our ongoing pledge.” This is an act of trust and submission, rather than a matter of indifferently amassing already lucid information. ”
David Bentley Hart says rationalistic propositions aren’t enough,
“Thus it is that theology alone preserves and clarifies all of philosophy’s most enchanting prospects upon being: precisely by detaching them from the mythology of “grounds,” and by resituating them within the space of this peaceful analogical interval between divine and worldly being, within which space the sorrows of necessity enjoy no welcome.
Thus, for Christian thought, knowledge of the world is something to be achieved not just through a reconstruction of its “sufficient reason,” but through an obedience to glory, an orientation of the will toward the light of being and its gratuity; and so the most fully “adequate” discourse of truth is worship, prayer, and rejoicing.
Phrased otherwise, the truth of being is “poetic” before it is “rational” (indeed, it is rational precisely because of its supreme poetic coherence and richness of detail), and thus cannot be known truly if this order is reversed. Beauty is the beginning and end of all true knowledge: really to know, one must first love, and having known, one must finally delight; only this “corresponds” to the Trinitarian love and delight that creates. The truth of being is the whole of being, in its event, groundless, and so, in its every detail, revelatory of the light that grants it.”
“Thus it is that theology alone preserves and clarifies all of philosophy’s most enchanting prospects upon being: precisely by detaching them from the mythology of “grounds,” and by resituating them within the space of this peaceful analogical interval between divine and worldly being, within which space the sorrows of necessity enjoy no welcome.
Thus, for Christian thought, knowledge of the world is something to be achieved not just through a reconstruction of its “sufficient reason,” but through an obedience to glory, an orientation of the will toward the light of being and its gratuity; and so the most fully “adequate” discourse of truth is worship, prayer, and rejoicing.
Phrased otherwise, the truth of being is “poetic” before it is “rational” (indeed, it is rational precisely because of its supreme poetic coherence and richness of detail), and thus cannot be known truly if this order is reversed. Beauty is the beginning and end of all true knowledge: really to know, one must first love, and having known, one must finally delight; only this “corresponds” to the Trinitarian love and delight that creates. The truth of being is the whole of being, in its event, groundless, and so, in its every detail, revelatory of the light that grants it.”
John Médaille HERE, speaks of reason as fully grasping the whole within contemplation,
“The rose can be “explained” by reduction to its causes, but it cannot be understood in this way. The scientist or the rationalist philosopher can only explain the rose by ignoring its actual being. ….the purchase of a rose does not have causes, but grounds.
When we look at the cosmos as a whole, we see order and beauty, and can only understand them through an aesthetic view. While the parts are governed by a strictly deterministic rationality and can be understood through knowledge of the causes, the whole is governed by order and beauty, and one that cannot be rationalized. The cosmos is cosmetic and like all things cosmetic, it escapes the purely rational in favor of pure contemplation. What it does not invite is some reduction of cosmic order to the four causes, the endpoint of all rational analysis. That is, the cosmos escapes rationalism.
When philosophy moves from the realm of causes to the realm of grounds it also moves from the world of determinism to the world of freedom. In one world, effects are determined by their causes, but in the other, actions are occasioned by their grounds. And clearly, the same grounds can always lead to different actions. The grounds are given, but the responses are, or can be, free.
Of course, abandoning the “knowledge by causes” of an analytic philosophy has its psychic cost. For one thing, we must abandon (or at least demote) the world of secure knowledge and enter the misty world, the cloud of unknowing, the world where humility rather than certainty is the watchword. And it brings us from the world of propositions into the world of art and story, of image and narrative.
In this world, “reason” itself shifts from “firm conclusions drawn from secure propositions” to reason as the ratio between the image and the object, between the narrative and the world.
Some will allow that stories have an “emotive” power but doubt their necessary hold on reason.
But this gets it exactly backwards: a story might be emotive, but it must be reasonable. That is, a story must be proportional to a view of the world we either have or can imagine having. The story may extend or deepen our rationality, but it must appeal to it in some way, or else it will simply be rejected as untrue or as uninteresting. And it is precisely this proportionality, this ratio, which constitutes reason itself.
This view also solves a problem that bedevils the analyst, namely, why does God choose to speak to us as he does? Why did he give us a sermon on the mount rather than a seminar in the synagogue?
But this question is rooted not so much in bad philosophy as in bad anthropology. For the analytic philosopher, like the capitalist, imagines man to be a “rational” machine. But “rational” here loses it connection with ratio, proportionality, to become something more like “calculating,” either “utilities” (in the case of the capitalist) or “propositions” (in the case of the philosopher.)
But man does not work like that, and neither does God. Or at least, God chose to present himself as artist and historian rather than as philosopher.
He gives us stories, not propositions. And the stories must be believed before they can be used.
That being the case, I must start with the right stories rather than the “right” philosophy. Because that is how all people think and is the only way they can think."
This the 2nd part of a series on alternatives to Enlightenment Reason, part 1 is HERE, part 3 HERE
“The rose can be “explained” by reduction to its causes, but it cannot be understood in this way. The scientist or the rationalist philosopher can only explain the rose by ignoring its actual being. ….the purchase of a rose does not have causes, but grounds.
When we look at the cosmos as a whole, we see order and beauty, and can only understand them through an aesthetic view. While the parts are governed by a strictly deterministic rationality and can be understood through knowledge of the causes, the whole is governed by order and beauty, and one that cannot be rationalized. The cosmos is cosmetic and like all things cosmetic, it escapes the purely rational in favor of pure contemplation. What it does not invite is some reduction of cosmic order to the four causes, the endpoint of all rational analysis. That is, the cosmos escapes rationalism.
When philosophy moves from the realm of causes to the realm of grounds it also moves from the world of determinism to the world of freedom. In one world, effects are determined by their causes, but in the other, actions are occasioned by their grounds. And clearly, the same grounds can always lead to different actions. The grounds are given, but the responses are, or can be, free.
Of course, abandoning the “knowledge by causes” of an analytic philosophy has its psychic cost. For one thing, we must abandon (or at least demote) the world of secure knowledge and enter the misty world, the cloud of unknowing, the world where humility rather than certainty is the watchword. And it brings us from the world of propositions into the world of art and story, of image and narrative.
In this world, “reason” itself shifts from “firm conclusions drawn from secure propositions” to reason as the ratio between the image and the object, between the narrative and the world.
Some will allow that stories have an “emotive” power but doubt their necessary hold on reason.
But this gets it exactly backwards: a story might be emotive, but it must be reasonable. That is, a story must be proportional to a view of the world we either have or can imagine having. The story may extend or deepen our rationality, but it must appeal to it in some way, or else it will simply be rejected as untrue or as uninteresting. And it is precisely this proportionality, this ratio, which constitutes reason itself.
This view also solves a problem that bedevils the analyst, namely, why does God choose to speak to us as he does? Why did he give us a sermon on the mount rather than a seminar in the synagogue?
But this question is rooted not so much in bad philosophy as in bad anthropology. For the analytic philosopher, like the capitalist, imagines man to be a “rational” machine. But “rational” here loses it connection with ratio, proportionality, to become something more like “calculating,” either “utilities” (in the case of the capitalist) or “propositions” (in the case of the philosopher.)
But man does not work like that, and neither does God. Or at least, God chose to present himself as artist and historian rather than as philosopher.
He gives us stories, not propositions. And the stories must be believed before they can be used.
That being the case, I must start with the right stories rather than the “right” philosophy. Because that is how all people think and is the only way they can think."
This the 2nd part of a series on alternatives to Enlightenment Reason, part 1 is HERE, part 3 HERE
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