Charles Victor on Religion

Philosophy and theology have anciently exhibited a difficulty in harmonizing the temporal and eternal, the ideal and real, the phenomenal and noumenal. The rationalists and empiricists of early modern thought intensified the bifurcation of reality with Kant providing a compromise, an experience based epistemology with an ideal based morality. Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, et al. seized upon his idea of ego in transcendence, abstracted it, and elevated it to the prime principle of reality. The pragmatists deflated it to the level of the merely utilitarian. Man became again the measure of all things, soon however, man himself was lost to the mere act of measuring with science and logical analysis, technology and mathematical order excoriating both practicality and artistry. But there was concomitant with nineteenth century transcendental idealism and pragmatism other visionary forces: existentialism and evolution, both of which would prove the invigoration of the artistry of philosophy. Continue reading →

From Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle through to the great scholastics and on to the modern masters, all philosophers of note have been at pains to proceed logically, and to begin by defining their terms as clearly as possible. That is not to say words have not been used ambiguously or inconsistently, or understood by all in like manner. But, in general, the great scholars have done as best might be expected of their day and academics to not speak willy-nilly. The truth of the matter is this: language is an art. Our sounds may be more precise than the strokes of a brush full of paint or a twirl of the body, but still they are tools to convey an image, and the less tangible the entity denoted, the less precise the tool and its usage. We do not speak to one another in mathematical equations, we speak in words, sonic pictures, verbalized ideas, entities saturated in nuance–personal, cultural, historical. Continue reading →

Existentialism arises in response to the abstractness proffered by the post-Kantian infatuation with an absolute creative ego as spun out in the works of Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, et al., and it contrarily posits the individual as the ultimate point of interest and meaning. It is not the lone response. Some looked to ground humanity in something more certifiable than the individual. They set their foundations on positive fact and pragmatic action, on science and society. Continue reading →

Schleiermacher is not customarily set among the existentialists, however, his investigation into man as rudimentally aware of the contingency of his being makes him, in my assessment, the radix of this movement that surrenders the speculative search for man’s nature and settles upon something more concrete: a considered description of man’s being. Indeed, “existentialist” was a prolapsed appellation for both Kierkegaard and Nietzsche. Continue reading →