From: hampday@earthlink.net
Date: Wed Dec 15 2004 - 01:20:18 GMT
Ham to David, Chin, Sam, MSH and the Kantosphere Kids --
I still don't know what Kantosphere is, unless it's Immanuel's belated
personal website!
However, since you folks have discovered Schleiermacher, whose thoughts on
transcendence have always fascinated me, I thought you might find this
analysis by Jeff Robbins of particular interest for a comparison with the
MoQ. The first quoted paragraph is good historical background on these two
philosophers. In the second paragraph, try substituting Quality for the
words "religion", "religious" and "theology", and I think you'll see what I
mean.
"During the Enlightenment period religion was variously conceived as
superstition, morality, dogma, and fanaticism. Generally speaking,
rationality took the place that was once the exclusive domain of religion
and revelation, God was equated with moral order, and piety was excused as a
crutch no longer necessary. Yet a more focused analysis shows a more subtle
and nuanced theological sensibility. Take Immanuel Kant, for instance. In
addition to his critical philosophy that turned reason back on itself in an
exploration of the very conditions that make knowledge possible, Kant was
concerned with the place of religion. "Religion within the limits of reason
alone" was Kant's solution to the pitfalls of previous religious thought and
expression; a solution, however, that confined religion to the realm of
ethics, and one that made thought of God an impossibility. The gap inscribed
between the noumenal and phenomenal left an epistemological wound making
theology both an anachronism and oxymoron.
"But what if religion precedes rationality? What if it is theology that
makes thought possible? Then, religion would know no limits; its thought of
transcendence would be its own transgression. What if the religious realm
belonged to the immediate self-conscious, if it were the universal feeling
of absolute dependence? Then, theology would be a thinking that both agrees
and disagrees with Kant. Yes, religion cannot be thought because it comes
before thought and cannot be bound by the limits thought necessarily imposes
on itself in order to think and to know. But at the same time, religion
cannot not be thought, because every thought is incomplete without that
which gives thought to think. As Schleiermacher tells us, thinking is also a
feeling, and feeling is also an action. So the thought that thinks and feels
and acts is the thought rightly named theology. And as long as thought knows
its limits by acknowledging its dependence, then theology is ensured as the
hidden ontology that secures the place of God"
Merry Christmas to all,
Ham
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