Augstine and Nietzche on Reason

This is in response to Paul's post my view on reason as seen through Augustine and Nietzche:
In Saint Augustine and Friedrich Nietzsche, one finds two well respected philosophers whom have oppositional ethics. Nietzsche after all, famously declared God dead and Saint Augustine based his entire ethic on the supremacy of God. With that in my mind I recall the words of a one of my undergraduate professors who stated opposite well articulated theories when compared and contrasted yield some of the best fruit.
With Descartes Cogito ergo sum the he western world dived into reason as supreme way to sort out one’s ethic. Augustine and Nietzsche respected reason but saw it as limited. Nietzsche states in his book Genealogy of Morals: “let us beware of the tentacles of such contradictory notions as "pure reason”," absolute knowledge," "absolute intelligence” (Nietzsche, 1956, P. 255). He argued that reason was limited because a person perspective influenced their reason. Nietzsche even challenged the logic of cause and effect in his book The Gay Science:
Cause and effect: such a duality probably never exists; in truth we are confronted by a continuum out of which we isolate a couple of pieces, just as we perceive motion only as isolated points and then infer it without ever actually seeing it. The suddenness with which many effects stand out misleads us; actually, it is sudden only for us. In this moment of suddenness there are an infinite number of processes which elude us. An intellect that could see cause and effect as a continuum and a flux and not, as we do, in terms of an arbitrary division and dismemberment, would repudiate the concept of cause and effect and deny all conditionality. (Nietzsche, 1974 P.173)

Yet Nietzsche despite questioning the supremacy of reason thinks it a necessary tool. For example when questioning religion he asserts, “One is supposed to be cast into belief without reason, by a miracle, and from then on to swim in it as in the brightest and least ambiguous of elements” (Nietzsche's Daybreak, P.89). This tension between reason and the limits of reason is something that continues to rise up in Nietzsche’s work. Nietzsche will state in one paragraph that the, “The irrationality of a thing is no argument against its existence, rather a condition of it” and in another “(we have) with blind desire, passion or fear, and abandoned ourselves to the bad habits of illogical thinking” (Nietzsche, 2002, P.16)
Nietzsche’s resistance to reason is that reason might lead to truth or an absolute, something Nietzsche was absolutely opposed to. As Nietzsche states”
What then is truth? A mobile army of metaphors, metonyms, and anthropomorphisms -- in short, a sum of human relations, which have been enhanced, transposed, and embellished poetically and rhetorically, and which after long use seem firm, canonical, and obligatory to a people: truths are illusions about which one has forgotten that is what they are; metaphors which are worn out and without sensuous power; coins which have lost their pictures and now matter only as metal, no longer as coins.
We still do not know where the urge for truth comes from; for as yet we have heard only of the obligation imposed by society that it should exist: to be truthful means using the customary metaphors - in moral terms, the obligation to lie according to fixed convention, to lie herd-like in a style obligatory for all... (Nietzsche, The Viking Portable Nietzsche 1954, p. 46-47)

Reason must be limited and in Nietzsche’s paradigm one would know reason has gone astray if it thought it ascertained truth. Truth for Nietzsche holds danger because it can lead to conviction- “Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies” (Nietzsche, P. 483). Conviction in turn leads ultimately to feelings of guilt. For Nietzsche a guilty conscious is a sign of sickness because a guilty conscious will so weaken a healthy man that he will become unhealthy. In fact, Nietzsche goes so far as to saying his bock On the Genealogy of Morals that a guilty conscious is “man’s greatest danger” (p. 122). Therefore the greatest truth for Nietzsche is that there are no absolutes. All absolutes are merely constructs originated because in order for man to turn civil, he had to contain his instincts, something Nietzsche terms “the internalization of man” (p. 84). This internalization creates a “serious illness” because it turns man against his natural instincts.
Augustine would find agreement with Nietzsche that reason has its limits. In fact, Augustine is famous for making the statement “Crede, ut intelligas, Believe in order that you may understand". Reason for Augustine is contained in time and therefore it is material. Material is mutable and changeable and thus not eternal or error free. For example in the City of God Augustine states:
For it is one thing, by the aid of things temporal and changeable, to conjecture the changes that may occur in time, and to modify such things by one's own will and faculty -- and this is to a certain extent permitted to the demons -- it is another thing to foresee the changes of times in the eternal and immutable laws of God, which live in His wisdom, and to know the will of God, the most infallible and powerful of all causes, by participating in His spirit; and this is granted to the holy angels by a just discretion. (Augustine, 1993, P. 299)

God’s law’s are however, eternal and immutable and thus from a foundation deeper then
what humans can reason. This does not mean that Augustine does not value reason; he in fact makes the statement, “[Even] If I am mistaken, I am.” In making such a statement he predates Descartes and becomes the first Western philosopher to utilize what it termed an argument by analogy: “there are bodies external to mine that behave as I behave and that appear to be nourished as mine is nourished; so, by analogy, I am justified in believing that these bodies have a similar mental life to mine” (Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, 2006). However, unlike Kant and Descartes he believes in the supremacy of revelation even to arguments by analogy seeing that our understanding is quite limited. In Confessions, he states that to assume that a human can understands the mind of God and all it complexities is like thinking one can contain all the oceans in a teacup. Therefore humans as limited and finite, can only reason from a finite perspective and therefore have a flawed logic.

I liked this quote and thought I would share it (especially since it looks like Paul is into quotes too!) (love ya babe) :-)

Human relations are built on feeling, not on reason or knowledge. And feeling is not an exact science; like all spiritual qualities, it has the vagueness of greatness about it. - Amelia E. Barr

Reposting: How Then Do we Deal with Faith?

Every man must do two things alone; he must do his own believing and his own dying.
-Martin Luther -

Reason is a whore, the greatest enemy that faith has.
-Martin Luther-

Reason is the enemy of faith.
-Martin Luther-

In the last year, several leading voices in the world of atheism have put forth best-selling books to the general public that attempt to coerce people to embrace a world without faith, a world without religion or at worst a life in that same light. These include the likes of Richard Dawkins, Daniel Dennet, Christopher Hitchens, and Sam Harris. They claim to have had a positive reception by many people living in the closet afraid to proclaim what they really believe, most often out of fear of the implications for family and relationships. These authors have varying takes on the what they would hope for the world in regards to religion. Dennet and Dawkins yearn for a world absolutely without religion or faith. They believe it does more harm towards enlightenment and progress than good. Sam Harris has a more nuanced desire for a world without Dogma. Although he denies the supernatural nature of spiritual experience he does not deny the experience itself. Hitchens although a self-proclaimed anti-theist who hates everything about religion would hate to see the ultimate demise of religion and faith as this would be an end to a source of satisfying his needs as a contrarian. Ultimately, though they all agree that faith is the antithesis to progress and actually is something very dangerous to us all, even those who are part of the faithful.

All of these men are what people would label as very extreme. Why do people like this make it to the top? Are they the cream that rises (they most likely believe so, i.e. Brights) to the top? Part of the reason for their popularity is that people respond to extremism. Moderation is boring to be quite frank and doesn't really challenge a person to reflect. Moderation--perhaps tolerance is a better word--is more likely to induce sleep or the closing of a book than to illicit a visceral response. This is why hyperbole speaks so much more to our senses in a poem or in the words of Christ than the mere status quo drivel of age old dogma. I, myself, have endured a number of heart wrenching confrontations with reality all of which, I believe, made me reflect sincerely on my beliefs. Not because they were slightly contrary to my belief or a permutation thereof, but because they turned my belief system upside down. Often times, my reactions were "how dare you say such a thing" or "you don't understand where I am coming from" or "do you realize the implications of what you are saying are for me?" or "if you have experienced what I have you wouldn't be saying such things". All though these emotional responses are real they don't lend anything to the truth--one way or another--to what I believe or to what someone else claims to believe. All this means is that I am ready to put up a fight. An example based in the tangible world would be of an adopted child. The adopted child may be raised to believe he/she is the real son or daughter of his/her parents. In this child's mind, his family is no different than the next. His parents are real and conceived him just as any other child. They are connected by blood. At some point in time, the parents may decide to let the child know the truth of their child's past. The initial reaction might be quite emotional and even reject what seems impossibly true. The reaction might be fear of losing the essence of his existence. Might he feel as though his identity has in an instant become nebulous or less tangible. Is the child to actually believe that he is the product of people in his past of which he knows nothing. This emotional reaction does not speak to the truth of the situation. Once these emotions pass, a more rational peaceful affect will arise which can take the facts and finally process them for what they are, truth or fiction.

Of course the nature of the facts in this situation moves one more easily towards truth. What about when it is our faith that is questioned? What if your faith is exposed as the adopting parents? How many people can honestly set their faith aside for even an instant to see if its dissenters hold water? Wouldn't the very nature of doing this mean you didn't have faith? But what is the reason we can't lay the faith to the side even for an instant? Is it because of fear of the implications of doing such a thing? Is it the fear of the consequences if you decide not to pick it back up? If it is fear, then is it really faith we are talking about?

What is our initial feeling when someone tells us something that is totally contrary to what he have been told by people we love? Do we not feel angry, driven to fight? Is this reaction bad? I am not sure this reaction can be avoided. The reaction itself, however, speaks only to the truth of your emotions or feelings, not the challenge. What do you do then? If you place faith aside to consider the questions honestly, you are a blasphemer. If you don't place faith aside to consider the question you can't know if you are being honest with yourself. It is almost as if faith itself is a virtue. How so? What does it achieve? If you embrace this virtue what are you left with? Where do you draw the line? How do you hold others of contradicting faith accountable?

Many people of faith are quite reasonable. Some are highly reasonable. In fact, they may not see themselves as anything but reasonable. Despite this, however reasonable one may describe oneself, where faith begins reason may end or at best be perverted. In the end, I fear, as difficult as it may be to swallow, faith may not be amenable to reason. Even the reformist Martin Luther himself--trained in law and theology using reason to assimilate his ideas that formed the foundation of the reformation--seemed to know this hard to avoid truth. Some will find this difficult to hear because the truth of it is quite painful. It is a claim that the faithful are without reason if not all of the time at least some of the time. Where does that leave a person? Wondering if they have really thought things through.