“Our Most Serious Deficiency-Disease”– Reason, Faith and the Rediscovery of Sensibility
The essay addresses the complex cultural historical claim that with modernity the earlier unity of reason and sensibility underwent a dissociation that has important consequences for our current predicament and for our present understanding of the relationship between reason, faith and sensibility....
Main Author: | |
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Format: | Electronic Article |
Language: | English |
Check availability: | HBZ Gateway |
Journals Online & Print: | |
Interlibrary Loan: | Interlibrary Loan for the Fachinformationsdienste (Specialized Information Services in Germany) |
Published: |
2009
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In: |
New blackfriars
Year: 2009, Volume: 90, Issue: 1030, Pages: 718-737 |
Further subjects: | B
Blaise Pascal
B The Unity of the Mind B Sensibility B Faith B Reason |
Online Access: |
Volltext (JSTOR) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) Volltext (lizenzpflichtig) |
Summary: | The essay addresses the complex cultural historical claim that with modernity the earlier unity of reason and sensibility underwent a dissociation that has important consequences for our current predicament and for our present understanding of the relationship between reason, faith and sensibility. Three case studies (Géza Ottlik, T. S. Eliot and Blaise Pascal) are examined in order to establish the nature of the divide and provide an archaeology (with the help of Pascal) of one of its first conceptualisations as well as of an early attempt to heal the growing fissure between what is termed by Pascal as reason and the heart. The second part examines current thought concerning the need to enlarge the narrow Enlightenment conception of reason and the recent call to re-envision its theological contours. The argument is then made that the same procedure should be applied to the theologically long-neglected domain of human sensibility. Theology is registered as also being accountable for internalising and perpetuating the cultural dissociation due to its failure to preserve the traditional theological contours of affectivity and its naivety in leaving the exploration of this domain entirely to the competence of secular philosophy. |
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ISSN: | 1741-2005 |
Contains: | Enthalten in: New blackfriars
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Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1111/j.1741-2005.2009.01306.x |