William James on Faith

Faith is belief in something concerning which doubt is theoretically possible. Since doubt is theoretically possible with respect to any belief, we cannot live or think at all without some degree of faith.
– William James, ‘The Sentiment of Rationality’ (1879), p. 79
Christians believe that faith is one of the most significant dimensions of human life. [...]

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Intellectual Sloth

The most serious noetic effects of sin have to do with our knowledge of God. Were it not for sin and its effects, God’s presence and glory would be as obvious and uncontroversial to us all as the presence of other minds, physical objects, and the past. Like any cognitive process, however, the sensus divinatus [...]

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Cornel West on Relativism and Scepticism

Yet to give in to sophomoric relativism (“Anything goes” or “All views are equally valid”) is a failure of nerve, and to succumb to wholesale scepticism (“There is no truth”) is a weakness of the will and imagination.
– Cornel West, The Cornel West Reader (1999), p. xvii
Moral relativism (‘right’ and ‘wrong’ are not a fixed, [...]

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On Complexity in Ethics

Literary critics are moral advisers simply because they have an exceptionally large range of acquaintance. They are moral advisers not because they have special access to moral truth but because they have been around. They have read more books and are thus in a better position not to get trapped in the vocabulary of any [...]

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The Limits of Reason

The human understanding is subject to influence from the will and the emotions, a fact that creates a fanciful knowledge; man prefers to believe what he wants to be true.
– Francis Bacon, The New Organon (1620: Cambridge UP, 2000), p. 44
Lurking behind all philosophical conversations, and particularly conversations about religion and ethics which hope to [...]

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Kierkegaard on Faith and Philosophy: I. Knowledge

Even if one were able to convert the whole content of faith into conceptual form, it does not follow that one has comprehended faith, comprehended how one entered into it or how it entered into one…Philosophy cannot and must not bestow faith but must understand itself and know what it has to offer and take [...]

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Know Thyself

 
Nothing is so difficult as not deceiving oneself.
– Ludwig Wittgenstein, Culture and Value (1938)
 
Only the descent into the hell of self-knowledge can pave the way to godliness.
– Immanuel Kant, The Metaphysics of Morals (1797)
 
Humanity never achieves a clear knowledge of itself unless it has first looked upon God’s face, and then descends from contemplating Him [...]

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Christianity as Comprehensive Cultural Tribunal?

Once conversation replaces confrontation, the notion of the mind as the Mirror of Nature can be discarded. Then the notion of philosophy as the discipline which looks for privileged representations among those constituting the Mirror becomes unintelligible. A thoroughgoing holism has no place for the notion of philosophy as ‘conceptual’, as ‘apodictic’, as picking out [...]

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