Re: Fideism: WP, LW, CSP


Subject: Re: Fideism: WP, LW, CSP
From: Ken Ketner (b9oky@TTACS.TTU.EDU)
Date: Wed Jun 16 1999 - 16:30:23 EDT


Gregory J Zuschlag wrote:
>
> On Tue, 15 Jun 1999 12:19:03 -0500 Ken Ketner writes:
> >Marshall Smith and group: I take a dissenting view on Wittgenstein's
> >TRACTATUS. It is basically an essay on mysticism. So faith is the
> >basic item in it (the most important paragraph numbers are at the end,
> and
> >about mysticism, not as a theory, but as something lived). So I argue
> >that your setting of the context is upside down: not faith discussed
> >in the context of logic, but logic discussed in the context of mysticism
> >(faith, not to quibble). LW was a fideist, like Tolstoy or William
> >James. Charley Peirce was a closet fideist. As I grasp fideism, it
> >states that faith is basic, is primitive, and all else arises from it.
> >Perhaps Walker was a fideist. I do know that he respected LW.
>
> Prof. Ketner,
> Thank you for making these distinctions. Would you be willing to provide
> more clarification on:
>
> --What do you see is the nature of fideism (more than above def.)?
> --What does it contrasts with philosophically?
> --What is a "closet fideist"?
> -- Why is CSP a one?
> --Is WP really a fideist?
>
> Any help on this would be immensely appreciated. Thanks.
>
> Greg

Dear Gregory and group: We have been getting in some new computing
equipment and software here at the Institute. As a way to both learn how
to use the scanner and to contribute to your question, here is a scan of
the entry for FIDEISM (by Richard Popkin), from THE ENCYCLOPEDIA OF
PHILOSOPHY, edited by Paul Edwards, published by Macmillan: New York,
1967. I believe quoting it here is entirely within the fair use
doctrine.
        With the right stuff, it is surprisingly easy to do this kind of data
shifting.
        Peirce is a hidden fideist, because his approach coincides with what
Popkin identifies as Moderate Fideism, see: "Once rational inquiry has
revealed the need to accept some fundamental principles ...." -- that
part of the article. This is Peirce's hypothesis, only he expresses it
in his own unique terminology, which one has to learn to decode.
Peirce's version: abduction (guessing) is absolutely essential in all
scientific method. What is abduction? It is an instinctive (fideistic)
ability humans have. This is similar to William James's THE WILL TO
BELIEVE.

-- 

Ken Ketner

Postal service: Institute for Studies in Pragmaticism Box 40002, Texas Tech University Lubbock, TX 79409-0002 Telephone: voice 806 742 3128, fax 806 742 3172 Email: b9oky@ttu.edu

FROM ENCYCLOPEDIA OF PHILOSOPHY

FIDEISM is the view that truth in religion is ultimately based on faith rather than on reasoning or evidence. This claim has been presented in many forms by theologians from St. Paul to contemporary neo-orthodox, antirationalist writers, usually as a way of asserting that the fundamental tenets of religion cannot be established by proofs or by empirical evidence but must be accepted on faith. Some forms of fideism denigrate or deny the value of reason and science, and these amount to a kind of irrationalism, as indicated in Hume's ironic statement at the end of his essay "Of Miracles":

[The] Christian Religion not only was at first attended with miracles, but even to this.day cannot be believed by any reasonable person without them. Mere reason is not sufficient to convince us of its veracity; and who ever is moved by Faith to assent to it, is conscious of a continued miracle in his own person, which subverts all the principles of his understanding, and gives him a determination to believe what is most contrary to custom and experience. (Essay Concerning Human Understanding, L. A. Selby-Bigge, ed., Oxford, 1951, p. 131)

Extreme fideism. Extreme fideists like J. G. Hamann and S0ren Kierkegaard have praised Hume's formulation as a proper characterization of religious orthodoxy.

Starting with St. Paul's contention that the central doc- trine of Christianity was nonsensical by Greek philosoph- ical standards and with Tertullian's announcement credo quia absurdum (I believe that which is absurd), there have been theologians who have insisted that religious truths are contrary to those which might be supported or justified by reasonable evidence and that rational activities are not proper means to arrive at such truths. Some have insisted that there are suprarational or extrarational ways, such as mystical or revelatory experiences that provide the "knowledge" of fundamental truths. Such writers have tended to ignore rational arguments or standards, and often, as St. John of the Cross did, they have offered means by which one could train oneself to escape the confines of rationality in order to intensify religious experience and belief.

Others have tried to show the inability of reason to es tablish any fundamental or absolutely certain truth. Usu ally employing skeptical arguments, they have contended that ultimate principles are open to question or rational standards, and also that these standards can themselves be questioned. In view of this, they have contended, basic truths are to be accepted on faith. Montaigne, Pierre Char ron, and other so-called Christian skeptics set forth this form of fideism.

Others, like Pierre Bayle, Kierkegaard, Felicite Robert de Lamennais and L. I. Shestov, went further and asserted that religious truths were of such a nature that they were contrary to the kinds of assertions that were probable, plausible, or even possible on rational or reasonable stand- ards and that such truths could therefore be believed or accepted only on faith. Bayle insisted that religious tenets were not only above and beyond reason but also were in opposition to it and that the strongest faith was that which denied the truths based on natural light and embraced those most incomprehensible to or contrary to reason. (For a discussion of the nature of Bayle's skepticism and fideism, see BAYLE, PIERRE.) Kierkegaard first accepted the type of skepticism developed by Bayle and Hume about rational knowledge and then insisted that the funda- mental tenet of Christianity, the Incarnation, is not only contrary to rational evidence but is even a self-contradiction on rational standards: "No knowledge can have for its object the absurdity that the eternal is the historical" (Philosophical Fragments, or A Fragment of Philosophy, p. 50). Kierkegaard held Hamann's view that Hume had summed up the nature of religious belief—that it really is contrary to reason, custom, and experience. For Kier- kegaard the very absurdity of the Christian claim makes it worthy of belief, and it is only by total commitment, or "the leap into faith," that it can be accepted. There can be no reasons for the leap, no justification for it. In the words of Bayle's opponent, Pierre Jurieu (also an irrationalist), all the believer can say is, "I believe it because I want to believe it."

In the twentieth century, among the fideists who have advanced Kierkegaard's view, one of the most striking is the Russian Orthodox theologian Shestov, who has insisted that the rejection of all rational standards is a part of true belief. In a commentary on Dostoyevsky he contended that the refusal to accept that 2 + 2 = 4 and the ability to believe that 2+2=5 are intimately connected with attaining reli- gious truth.

Moderate fideism. In contrast to irrationalist or antira- tionalist fideism, a more moderate kind has developed, especially within the Christian Augustinian tradition. Rather than insisting that all ultimate certitude rests on faith in contrast to reason, this tradition has admitted that faith precedes reason in establishing certain fundamental truths but that reason and evidence can play some role both in the search for these truths and in the explanation and comprehension of them. The Augustinian slogan, credo ut intelligam (I believe in order to know), places the primary emphasis on faith. However, as Augustine's philo- sophical dialogues show, the recognition of the basic fideistic element may be (and perhaps must be) preceded by a rational search for truth. Once rational inquiry has revealed the need to accept some fundamental principles or beliefs on faith, then it may be possible to show that these commitments are reasonable, probable, or plausible. Purported proofs of the existence of God, metaphysical systems interpreting what is accepted on faith, and histor- ical and psychological evidences about the nature of reli- gion and its effects on believers can all be offered as ra- tional explanations or even justifications of what has already been accepted on faith.

Pascal's presentation in the Pensees illustrates this form of fideism. He forcefully argued that the natural capacities of man are inadequate to lead him to any completely cer- tain truth. A man can show that it is unreasonable or un- wise to be an atheist but not that it is reasonable to be a theist. Once one has realized the human predicament— man's fundamental need for ultimate truths and his inabil- ity to find them—then one is ready to hear God and to accept his revealed Word on faith alone. Once one has faith, one can see the force of the apologetic and psycho- logical evidence for the truth of the Christian religion. Such evidence might then constitute "good reasons" for believing what one has already accepted fideistically.

Fideism in philosophy. A nonreligious analogue of moderate fideism appears in various skeptical philosophi- cal views, such as those of Hume, Russell, and Santayana. Hume's contention that it is belief that "peoples the world," and that everybody lives within his own private belief system, could be considered as a kind of fideism. The ultimate presuppositions by which we live cannot be justified by reason or evidence and are accepted not on religious faith but (to use Santayana's term) on "animal faith." Russell, in his Human Knowledge, insisted (on the basis of Hume's arguments) that the fundamental assump- tions of science cannot be justified but must be accepted on faith. However, even if one has the mystical skeptical experience Santayana described, of seeing all in doubt, it is still rational investigation that led Hume and his suc- cessors to the recognition of the belief factor involved in rational activities. Having discovered this, Hume then showed that one can study the causes of beliefs and that beliefs can be explained even though they can never be justified; working from the basis of a set of "reasonable" beliefs, one can evaluate other beliefs in terms of psycho- logical factors. The philosophical tradition emanating from Hume, then, can be considered as a kind of fideism, shar- ing some of the characteristics of the moderate fideism of the Augustinian tradition.

Contemporary developments. At present irrationalistic fideism, especially of the Kierkegaardian variety, is ex- tremely popular, especially among Protestant theologians (partly in reaction to liberal, rationalistic theological tend encies of the nineteenth century). Many theologians have been concerned with man's apparent inability to find any ultimate answers through science, secular political move- ments, and so forth, and his need to base his ultimate com- mitment on faith alone. The existentialist stress on the fundamental absurdity of man's world is part of this move- ment. The official Catholic position from the time of the Council of Trent to the present remains opposed to the central fideistic thesis, that ultimate beliefs can be estab- lished not by reason or evidence but only by faith. How- ever, in a world in which so many optimistic, "reasonable," scientifically supported views have been undermined by the cataclysmic events of the twentieth century, fideism may provide one of the main avenues to some kind of signif- icant belief for the present age. William James's analysis, in his "Will to Believe," of the psychological need for commitment and belief despite the lack of evidence may represent much of the present mood. The religious fideists, however, find James's own faith too tepid, and they seem to be moving more and more to the irrationalist fideism of Kierkegaard, Dostoyevsky, and Shestov.

Bibliography

Bartley, William W., Retreat to Commitment. London, 1964. A critique of some contemporary fideistic views.

Bayle, Pierre, Historical and Critical Dictionary, Selections, translated by R. H. Popkin. Indianapolis, 1965. "Pyrrho" and the "Third Clarification" deal especially with fideism.

Harent, S., ''Foi,'' in Dictionnaire de theologie catholique, Vol Vl. Paris, 1920. Cols. 55-514.

Herberg, Will, Judaism and Modern Man. Philadelphia, 1951.

Herberg, Will, Four Existentialist Theologians, A Reader From the Works of Jacques Maritain, Nicolas Berdyaev, Martin Buber and Paul Tillich. New York, 1958.

Kierkegaard, Soren, Philosophical Fragments, or A Fragment of Philosophy, translated by David F. Swenson. Princeton, N.J., 1946.

Kierkegaard, Soren, A Kierkegaard Anthology, Robert Bretall, ed. New York, 1959.

Popkin, Richard H., "Theological and Religious Scepticism." The Christian Scholar, Vol. 39 (1956), 150- 158.

Popkin, Richard H., "Kierkegaard and Scepticism." Algemeen Nederlands Tijdschrift Voor Wijsbegeerte en Psychologie, Vol. 51 (1959), 123-141.

Santayana, Ceorge, Scepticism and Animal Faith. New York, 1955.

Sauvage, C. M., ''Fideism," in Catholic Encyclopedia, Vol. V. New York, l9O9. Pp. 68-69.

Shestov, Lev 1., In Job's Balances, translated by Camilla Coven try and C. A. Macartney. London, 1932.

Shestov, Lev 1., Kierkegaard et la philosophie existentielle, translated by T. Rageot and Boris de Schloezer. Paris, 1936.

Tillich, Paul, Dynamics of Faith. New York, 1957.

RICHARD H. POPKIN



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