write an essay on rationalistic religion

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Sample Essay on Is Rationalism Compatible With Religion?

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Rationalism is a thought structure that underlines the function of reasoning in acquiring knowledge. Rationalism is not compatible with religion because, in the Islamic religion, an individual is not permitted to ask questions regarding the religion. Additionally, a lot of rationalistic perceptions emerge from individuals’ understanding of the Koran. In the Koran, Abdullah Ibn Abbas states that anyone who talks about the Koran based on his/her own view will burn in hell forever. The majority of Muslims have strong faith, which usually rebukes rationalistic opinions. Regarding faith, several rationalists in the religion are certain that it is not necessary to express faith physically. People who show their rational values do not physically believe. Therefore, rationalists can think about God and conclude that they are one with God. They question the reason for physically expressing their faith.

Concerning prayer, Muslims offer prayers to God five times each day. However, when rationalists pose questions about it, the religion responds that God gave that command and the prayer is regarded to be an endless and everyday discipline for Muslims. During prayer, Muslims engage in reciting the Koran, which contains God’s real words as well as instructions. They also show gratitude and bless God, and the prayer is regarded to be a plea to God. Prayer is among God’s laws , which Muslims should conform with. Nevertheless, the role of reason makes rationalism incompatible with religion.

According to the Islamic religion, nothing is considered more important than God. The term Islam denotes submission, whereas Muslim refers to a person who submits. Therefore, Islam stresses obedience to God. Some Muslim followers are categorized as doubters and deniers, and they believe that there is no need of practicing the faith since they are destined for heaven and hell. They refute the normal performances and can be categorized as rationalists. Such rationalists also ask questions about several topics and do not agree with the responses that are provided. Koran, 6: 21 states that a person who falsifies a lie against god and deceits about his communications is unjust and cannot succeed. The verse demonstrates proof to dispute the motivation of a rationalistic opinion of questioning God’s words. A rationalist can be termed as a “physical believer’ who queries anything that cannot be physically observed or heard.

The presence of God is a question with no certain answer. According to religion, God’s existence is the basis of all religions . However, rationalists think that because God’s existence is subject to doubt, he is not perfect and thus not the cause of existence. Muslims obtain God’s existence from His words in the Koran. Furthermore, religion has no error, and no questions should be raised concerning the existence of God as well as His words.

The origin of incompatibility between rationalism and religion is the aspect of the ‘physical believer.’ Individuals who question the unexplainable are not able to improve the intervening of rationalist thinking as well as religious teachings. Rationalism uses the power of reasoning to obtain understanding whereas religion entails believing and having faith.

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• Religion in the public sphere

Religion as a catalyst of rationalization

For Habermas, religion has been a continuous concern precisely because it is related to both the emergence of reason and the development of a public space of reason-giving. Religious ideas, according to Habermas, are never mere irrational speculation. Rather, they possess a form, a grammar or syntax, that unleashes rational insights, even arguments; they contain, not just specific semantic contents about God, but also a particular structure that catalyzes rational argumentation.

We could say that in his earliest, anthropological-philosophical stage, Habermas approaches religion from a predominantly philosophical perspective. But as he undertakes the task of “transforming historical materialism” that will culminate in his magnum opus, The Theory of Communicative Action , there is a shift from philosophy to sociology and, more generally, social theory. With this shift, religion is treated, not as a germinal for philosophical concepts, but instead as the source of the social order. This approach is of course shaped by the work of the classics of sociology: Weber, Durkheim, and even Freud. What is noteworthy about this juncture in Habermas’s writings is that secularization is explained as “pressure for rationalization” from “above,” which meets the force of rationalization from below, from the realm of technical and practical action oriented to instrumentalization. Additionally, secularization here is not simply the process of the profanation of the world—that is, the withdrawal of religious perspectives as worldviews and the privatization of belief—but, perhaps most importantly, religion itself becomes the means for the translation and appropriation of the rational impetus released by its secularization. Here, religion becomes its own secular catalyst, or, rather, secularization itself is the result of religion. This approach will mature in the most elaborate formulation of what Habermas calls the “linguistification of the sacred,” in volume two of The Theory of Communicative Action . There, basing himself on Durkheim and Mead, Habermas shows how ritual practices and religious worldviews release rational imperatives through the establishment of a communicative grammar that conditions how believers can and should interact with each other, and how they relate to the idea of a supreme being. Habermas writes:

worldviews function as a kind of drive belt that transforms the basic religious consensus into the energy of social solidarity and passes it on to social institutions, thus giving them a moral authority. [. . .] Whereas ritual actions take place at a pregrammatical level, religious worldviews are connected with full-fledged communicative actions.

The thrust of Habermas’s argumentation in this section of The Theory of Communicative Action is to show that religion is the source of the normative binding power of ethical and moral commandments. Yet there is an ambiguity here. While the contents of worldviews may be sublimated into the normative, binding of social systems, it is not entirely clear that the structure, or the grammar, of religious worldviews is itself exhausted. Indeed, in “A Genealogical Analysis of the Cognitive Content of Morality,” Habermas resolves this ambiguity by claiming that the horizontal relationship among believers and the vertical relationship between each believer and God shape the structure of our moral relationship to our neighbour, but now under two corresponding aspects: that of solidarity and that of justice . Here, the grammar of one’s religious relationship to God and the corresponding community of believers are like the exoskeleton of a magnificent species, which, once the religious worldviews contained in them have desiccated under the impact of the forces of secularization, leave behind a casing to be used as a structuring shape for other contents.

In the “postmetaphysical” stage of Habermas’s intellectual itinerary, he turns his attention away from sociology and towards philosophy once again, in particular, political and moral philosophy. Metaphysical thinking, which for Habermas has become untenable by the very logic of philosophical development, is characterized by three aspects: identity thinking, or the philosophy of origins that postulates the correspondence between being and thought; the doctrine of ideas, which becomes the foundation for idealism, which in turn postulates a tension between what is perceived and what can be conceptualized; and a concomitant strong concept of theory, where the bios theoretikos takes on a quasi-sacred character, and where philosophy becomes the path to salvation through dedication to a life of contemplation. By “postmetaphysical” Habermas means the new self-understanding of reason that we are able to obtain after the collapse of the Hegelian idealist system—the historicization of reason, or the de-substantivation that turns it into a procedural rationality, and, above all, its humbling. It is noteworthy that one of the main aspects of the new postmetaphysical constellation is that in the wake of the collapse of metaphysics, philosophy is forced to recognize that it must co-exist with religious practices and language:

Philosophy, even in its postmetaphysical form, will be able neither to replace nor to repress religion as long as religious language is the bearer of semantic content that is inspiring and even indispensable, for this content eludes (for the time being?) the explanatory force of philosophical language and continues to resist translation into reasoning discourses.

In contrast to metaphysical thinking, with its overvaluation of philosophy’s power, and thus its belief that philosophy is itself the voice of the truth of being, postmetaphysical thinking would neither dismiss religion as mere myth, and thus as the other of reason, nor assimilate itself to religion, usurping religious language and contents (as with mystical philosophies, such as that of the later Heidegger, with his call for a God who would save us). In other words, metaphysical thinking either surrendered philosophy to religion or sought to eliminate religion altogether. In contrast, postmetaphysical thinking recognizes that philosophy can neither replace nor dismissively reject religion, for religion continues to articulate a language whose syntax and content elude philosophy, but from which philosophy continues to derive insights into the universal dimensions of human existence.

Since 2001, when he was awarded the Peace Prize by the German Booksellers Association, Habermas has been engaging religion even more directly, deliberately, and consistently. In the speech he gave on the occasion of this prize, for instance, Habermas claims that even moral discourse cannot translate religious language without something being lost: “Secular languages which only eliminate the substance once intended leave irritations. When sin was converted to culpability, and the breaking of divine commands to an offence against human laws, something was lost.” Still, Habermas’s concern with religion is no longer solely philosophical, nor merely socio-theoretical, but has taken on political urgency. Indeed, he now asks whether modern rule of law and constitutional democracies can generate the motivational resources that nourish them and make them durable. In a series of essays, now gathered in Between Naturalism and Religion , as well as in his Europe: The Faltering Project , Habermas argues that as we have become members of a world society ( Weltgesellschaft ), we have also been forced to adopt a societal “ post-secular self-consciousness .” By this term Habermas does not mean that secularization has come to an end, and even less that it has to be reversed. Instead, he now clarifies that secularization refers very specifically to the secularization of state power and to the general dissolution of metaphysical, overarching worldviews (among which religious views are to be counted). Additionally, as members of a world society that has, if not a fully operational, at least an incipient global public sphere, we have been forced to witness the endurance and vitality of religion. As members of this emergent global public sphere, we are also forced to recognize the plurality of forms of secularization. Secularization did not occur in one form, but in a variety of forms and according to different chronologies.

With respect to his preoccupation that “the liberal state depends in the long run on mentalities that it cannot produce from its own resources,” through a critical reading of Rawls, Habermas has begun to translate the postmetaphysical orientation of modern philosophy into a postsecular self-understanding of modern rule of law societies in such a way that religious citizens as well as secular citizens can co-exist, not just by force of a modus vivendi , but out of a sincere mutual respect. “Mutual recognition implies, among other things, that religious and secular citizens are willing to listen and to learn from each other in public debates. The political virtue of treating each other civilly is an expression of distinctive cognitive attitudes.” The cognitive attitudes Habermas is referring to here are the very cognitive competencies that are distinctive of modern, postconventional social agents. Habermas’s recent work on religion, then, is primarily concerned with rescuing for the modern liberal state those motivational and moral resources that it cannot generate or provide itself. At the same time, his recent work is concerned with foregrounding the kind of ethical and moral concerns, preoccupations, and values that can guide us between the Scylla of a society administered from above by the system imperatives of a global economy and political power and the Charybdis of a technological frenzy that places us on the slippery slope of a liberally sanctioned eugenics.

Eduardo Mendieta

Eduardo Mendieta is Professor and Department Chair of Philosophy at the State University of New York, Stony Brook. He is the author of The Adventures of Transcendental Philosophy (2002) and Global Fragments: Globalizations, Latinamericanisms, and Critical Theory (2007), and recently co-edited  Pragmatism, Nation, and Race: Community in the Age of Empire (2009). Mendieta is co-editor of two forthcoming SSRC volumes on secularism and religion: The Power of Religion in the Public Sphere and Habermas and Religion .

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University of Notre Dame

Notre Dame Philosophical Reviews

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Religion and Rationality: Essays on Reason, God, and Modernity

Habermas, Jurgen, Religion and Rationality: Essays on Reason, God, and Modernity , edited by Eduardo Mendieta, MIT Press, 2002, 176 pp, $19.95 (pbk), ISBN 0262582163.

Reviewed by Fred Dallmayr, University of Notre Dame

This is a time to take stock, especially for intellectuals on the (traditional) Left. The end of the Cold War and the demise of the Soviet Union have brought to the fore two major conflicting tendencies: on the one hand, the upsurge of religious faith in many parts of the world, sometimes in the guise of a dogmatic fundamentalism; on the other hand, the triumphant rise of liberalism—now in the form of capitalist neo-liberalism—as a corollary of globalization. These developments have a peculiar bearing on the Frankfurt School, which by now spans at least two generations. While many members of the first generation were sympathetic to religion (though not to any kind of dogmatism) in the form of a subdued Jewish messianism, the basic initial impulse of the School—as an “Institute of Social Research”—was the critical analysis of late capitalism and bourgeois-liberal society. These tendencies were nearly reversed during the second generation. Under the guidance of Jürgen Habermas, “critical theory” showed little or no interest in religious faith, preferring instead to champion a purely rational discourse (inspired in part by neo-Kantianism and linguistic philosophy). At the same time, again under Habermas’s influence, critical theory has steadily moved closer to political liberalism, to the point that the distinction from Rawlsian proceduralism sometimes appears as a mere nuance. Small wonder that many observers have detected a gulf separating the two generations. Eduardo Mendieta, the editor of this collection, seeks to counteract and correct this perception. In his view (p.2, p.12), the second generation of the Frankfurt School has “without equivocation” continued the agenda of the first. With regard to religion, a central thesis of his introduction is that Habermas’s work “is not correctly characterized by the image of a temporal rupture between an early positive and a later negative appraisal of the role of religion.”

The essays collected in Religion and Rationality are meant to “constitute evidence” (p.14) of Mendieta’s claim of undisrupted continuity. As it happens, several of the selected essays date from the earlier period of Habermas’s career—prior to his full “linguistic turn” to discourse theory—when he was still relatively close to first generation thinkers; and while chapters taken from a later period—including a recent interview with Mendieta—mitigate the harsher connotations of “temporal rupture”, they can hardly be said to provide evidence of a smooth continuity. The impression of discontinuity is confirmed even by Mendieta’s own (otherwise informative) “Introduction” to the volume. Here one finds first of all a sensitive discussion of the religious leanings of the first generation, especially of its “Jewish utopian messianism”—in which Mendieta detects four main ingredients (p.4): restorative-anamnetic, utopian, apocalyptic, and messianic. Aspects of this outlook are illustrated in the writings of Bloch, Benjamin, Horkheimer, and Adorno. In the case of Horkheimer, reference is made (p.5, p.7) to his appeal to “an entirely Other ( ein ganz Anderes ),” his yearning for something “wholly other” and “absolutely unrepresentable” through which the injustices of history could be redeemed. Similar motifs are found in the writings of Adorno (p.8-9), especially in his treatment of the otherness of the Other as “irreplaceable and unrepresentable singularity,” and his refusal to accept “the assimilation of the singular into the concept” (without dismissing concepts as such). Mendieta also quotes Adorno’s statement: “If religion is accepted for the sake of something other than its own truth content, then it undermines itself,” and his addendum (in Negative Dialectics ) that attempts to capture the Other immanently always put otherness “in jeopardy.” What was common to most first-generation thinkers was the assumption (p.11) that religion remains a reservoir “of humanity’s most deeply felt injustices and yearned for dreams of reconciliation.”

Seen against this background, the following discussion devoted to Habermas gives the impression of a sea-change—despite Mendieta’s assurance (p.11) that the notion of an anti-religious bias is “misleading.” Rather than explicating this assurance, the Introduction turns to Habermas’s pronounced social-scientific endeavors, especially his embrace of a mode of “functionalism” (inspired by Parsons and Luhmann) and his elaboration of evolutionary models of social and individual development. In large part, as Mendieta observes (p.14), these endeavors were prompted by “dissatisfaction” with the first generation’s treatment of rationality, and especially its refusal to take seriously Weber’s thesis of progressive societal “rationalization,” secularization and disenchantment. Borrowing from Weber and functionalists, Habermas at this point developed a comprehensive theory of social life, comprising “system” and “lifeworld” dimensions and moving through the stages of archaic, primitive, traditional, and modern societies. From a social-scientific vantage, religion fulfills basically an immanent societal “function” whose meaning changes over time. Habermas comes close to this view in his statement (p.18) that “the idea of God is transformed [ aufgehoben ] into the concept of a Logos that determines the community of believers and the real life-context of a self-emancipating society” and in the notion that “God is the name for the substance that gives coherence, unity, and thickness to the life-world.” Mendieta also elaborates on Habermas’s “linguistic turn,” especially his formulation of a “discourse morality” and a “universal pragmatics” of speech acts (totalizing all modes of linguistic interaction). Crucial in this context is the thesis of the progressive “linguistification of the sacred,” the latter seen as the “catalyst of modernity.” Religion at this point remains relevant (only) to the extent that it can be translated or assimilated into discursive language. Illustrative here are Habermas’s assertion (in The Theory of Communicative Action ) that “the aura of rapture and terror that emanates from the sacred, the spellbinding power of the holy, is sublimated into the binding/bonding force of criticizable validity claims,” and his parallel statement that “only a morality, set communicatively aflow and developed into a discourse ethics, can replace the authority of the sacred” (p.24).

At the end of this overview, Mendieta reaffirms his conviction of continuity, stating (p.24) that, while “certainly a secularist,” Habermas is by no means an “anti-religion philosophe .” The point here, however, is not being for or against religion, but whether there are sufficient antennae to respect the difference, and respective integrity, of reason and faith, discursive validity and redemptive hope. In a functionalist (or quasi-functionalist) systems theory assigning a place or role to everything under the sun, where can there still be room for the “wholly other” and “absolutely unrepresentable” invoked by Horkheimer? Likewise, in a theory of universal pragmatics comprehending all possible speech acts, where can there still be room for any language beside that of discursive validity claims? Moreover, in a conception of linguistic intersubjectivity construed (with Mead) as “ego-alter-ego” relation, is there still a loophole left for the Other as “irreplaceable and unrepresentable singularity” in Adorno’s sense? As Mendieta points out (p.12), Habermas repeatedly acknowledges the debt owed by Enlightenment and modernity to the Judeo-Christian legacy. But this can be read as a simple developmental scheme. Here the “linguistification” thesis needs to be pondered. Does the thesis mean that, before discourse theory, religion or the sacred lacked language and was “speechless” (p.28)? But then how were its teachings transmitted? Or does the thesis mean that, in modernity, religion will be sublimated or absorbed without a remainder into discursive rationality? In this connection, how is one to read Habermas’s statement (in Postmetaphysical Thinking ): “As long as no better words for what religion can say are found in the medium of rational discourse, it [communicative reason] will even coexist abstemiously with the former”? Does this leave to religion only the options of absorption (in rationality) or exclusion? Does faith always have to “accommodate itself” (p.150) and bend to modern reason, and never the other way around? But how does this respect their differential integrity? More specifically, given the fact that “universal” pragmatics is necessarily timeless, holding good at all times and places, how can it allow for the distinct temporality of salvation history and the redemptive hope for a messianic future animating the early Frankfurt School?

Limitations of space do not permit a detailed review of all the essays assembled in the volume. For present purposes, I restrict myself to a few brief comments. Readers interested in Jewish thought may find most appealing the first and the last of the selected essays, where Habermas displays his more sensitive-empathetic qualities. The first is titled “The German Idealism of the Jewish Philosophers” and ranges broadly (and insightfully) from Buber and Rosenzweig via Cohen and the Marburg School to Cassirer, Bloch, and Benjamin. The last deals with Habermas’s friend Gershom Scholem and his search for “the other of history in history” (a search focused on Isaak Luria, Sabbatai Sevi, and the kabbalistic tradition). As distinguished from this amicable treatment, the other chapters tend to accentuate more the tensional/conflictual nexus between reason and faith or Athens and Jerusalem. Thus, an essay “On the Difficulty of Saying No” illustrates, in Mendieta’s words (p.25), the “relationship between rationalization and mythological or religious world-views, in which the latter must submit to the transformative criticism enacted by the former.” Another chapter, “Transcendence from Within, Transcendence in this World”, goes back to a conference held in Chicago on “Habermas and Public Theology” (in 1988). There, responding to theologians and non-theologians, and defending “methodical atheism” as the only acceptable option for “postmetaphysical” philosophy, Habermas asserts among other things (p.76) that “whoever puts forth a truth claim today must, nevertheless, translate experiences that have their home in religious discourse into the language of a scientific expert culture” (or at least into the language of discourse theory). He also questions (p.81) whether the “ superadditum ” of religion is required if we “endeavor to act according to moral commands.” Another essay, “Israel or Athens”, deals with the Judeo-Christian theology of Johannes Baptist Metz, and especially with the latter’s notions of “anamnesis” and a “polycentric world church.” There, while appreciating some of Metz’s leanings, Habermas comes to the defense of Athens, arguing (p.133, p.136) that “profane reason must remain skeptical about the mystical causality of a recollection inspired by the history of salvation” and that “the idea of a polycentric church depends in turn on insights of the European Enlightenment and its political philosophy.”

Perhaps the distance separating Habermas from the first generation of Frankfurt thinkers is most clearly illustrated in an essay devoted to the work of Michael Theunissen, “Communicative Freedom and Negative Theology.” As it happens, Theunissen’s writings—under Christian auspices and with a focus on Hegel transformed by Kierkegaard—recapture in many ways the Jewish religious aspirations of that first generation. As Habermas acknowledges (p.113), Theunissen maintains trust in “an eschatological turning of the world” and tries to show philosophically “why profane hope must be anchored in eschatological hope.” To buttress this view, Theunissen transforms Hegelian subjectivity into a Kierkegaardian “unrepresentable singularity,” and Hegel’s lateral conception of intersubjectivity into a much more open-ended, vertical relation to radical otherness. In Habermas’s words (p.116), “he is convinced that every interpersonal relation is embedded in a relation to the radically Other, which precedes the relation to the concrete Other” and “embodies an absolute freedom”—a conception that “can be traced back to elements of Jewish and Protestant mysticism.” In this perspective, God as the “radically Other” is present in human history “in the form of a promise, the ‘anticipatory’ present of a fulfilled future” which alone can redeem human suffering and despair. Countering this outlook, Habermas brings to bear a battery of considerations: first of all the “anthropological fact” (p.122) of human self-maintenance (despite despair); and secondly the Kantian notion of . priori conditions of possibility (saying that “the mode of successfully being a self can only be employed in a hypothetical way in the transcendental clarification of its conditions of possibility”—on which basis “faith could only be justified in functional terms”). Finally, the essay chides Theunissen for ignoring the basic tenets of formal or universal pragmatics, which “all subjects must accept insofar as they orient their action towards validity claims at all” and which alone “can provide the normative basis for a critical theory of society” (p.118). Regarding Theunissen’s trust in “a transcendence irrupting into history” and his attempt to provide arguments supporting this trust, Habermas concludes (p.123): “I am unable to accept these reasons.”

My task here is not to arbitrate between Athens and Jerusalem or to judge the respective merits of rational-philosophical and religious-theological arguments. My point here was simply to cast doubt on Mendieta’s claim of a smooth, uninterrupted continuity between the two generations of the Frankfurt School. This doubt is further reinforced by developments in another arena for which Habermas has shown little sympathy: French philosophy, especially in its deconstructive variant. As it seems to me, many of the motifs of the first generation—appeals to eschatology and a “radically Other”—have resurfaced in recent decades in the writings of French Jewish and Christian thinkers, from Levinas to Derrida and Marion. Habermas’s essays make no reference to Levinas, and his comments on Derrida are almost uniformly dismissive. Have motifs of the first generation thus emigrated from Frankfurt into new terrains? Whatever the answer here may be, the concern is that other issues may likewise have traveled elsewhere. I mentioned at the beginning the progressive accommodation of “critical theory” to American liberalism—a trend acquiring ominous portents under the auspices of a globalized neo-liberalism. To Habermas’s credit, there are passages in Mendieta’s book showing awareness of these portents, as when, in the essay on Metz (p.30), he castigates “the barbaric reverse side of its own mirror” which Western Enlightenment has ignored for too long and which has encouraged the rise of “the stifling power of a capitalistic world civilization, which assimilates alien cultures and abandons its own traditions to oblivion.” However, in the later interview with Mendieta, we learn (p.153) that the current state of the world is really “without any clearly recogniziable alternative” and that “there is no reasonable exit-option left to us from a capitalist world society today.” Although deploring the “unjust distribution of good fortune in the world,” redress for this situation belongs for Habermas to politics and economics, “not in the cupboard of morality, let alone moral theory” (p.166). As he reiterates, the “burning issue of a just global order” is basically a “political” (that is, a tactical or strategic) problem, and “not a question for moral theory” or discourse ethics. Does this mean that the poor and marginalized populations of the Third and Fourth World can no loner expect intellectual and ethical support for their plight from Frankfurt? In this case, the rupture between the two generations would indeed seem unbridgeable.

The rationality of faith and the benefits of religion

• Published: 13 January 2017
• Volume 81 , pages 213–227, ( 2017 )

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Religions don’t simply make claims about the world; they also offer existential resources, resources for dealing with basic human problems, such as the need for meaning, love, identity, and personal growth. For instance, a Buddhist’s resources for addressing these existential needs are different than a Christian’s. Now, imagine someone who is agnostic but who is deciding whether to put faith in religion A or religion B. Suppose she thinks A and B are evidentially on par, but she regards A as offering much more by way of existential resources. Is it epistemically rational for her to put her faith in A rather than B on this basis? It is natural to answer No. After all, what do the existential resources of a religion have to do with its truth? However, I argue that this attitude is mistaken. My thesis is that the extent to which it is good for a certain religion to be true is relevant to the epistemic (rather than merely pragmatic) rationality of faith in that religion. This is plausible, I’ll argue, on the correct account of the nature of faith, including the ways that emotion and desire can figure into faith and contribute to its epistemic rationality.

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Faith and Reason: an Alternative Gandhian Understanding

Desiderata for rational, non-doxastic faith.

Faith, Philosophy and the Elemental

http://islamicpamphlets.com/why-islam-the-beauty-and-benefits-of-islam .

From a speech at Prestonwood Baptist Church in Plano, TX, November 18, 2010.

It is hard to define ‘religion’, but Yandell ( 1990 ) does a pretty good job: “a conceptual system that provides an interpretation of the world and the place of human beings in it, that rests on that interpretation an account of how life should be lived … and that expresses this interpretation in a set of practices”; quoted in Audi ( 2008 , p. 93). This is at least a useful heuristic (even though it would include some forms of atheism as a religion).

What I’m defending here is reminiscent of Pascal’s wager, as well as James ( 1897 ). However, the major difference is that Pascal’s wager doesn’t seem to have much to do with epistemic rationality, and it isn’t clear whether James’ view does either. In a similar vein, Rota ( 2016 ) and Williams ( 2011 ) argue that the value of a religion for human life can provide non-epistemic reasons that may combine with epistemic reasons to make faith all-things-considered rational. In contrast, my view is that the value of a religion can itself provide epistemic reason to have faith. What I’m defending here is also reminiscent of moral arguments for the existence of God according to which theistic faith provides moral benefits (Adams 1995 ; Zagzebski 1984 ). But don’t confuse my view with these either. My view is strictly concerned with the extent to which such moral and pragmatic benefits can themselves make it epistemically rational to have faith. In this sense, my view more closely resembles Pace ( 2010 ), although Pace claims that moral-pragmatic considerations are relevant to the epistemic rationality of belief , while I am interested in faith, which may or may not require belief. Finally, Audi ( 2011 , p. 67), notes briefly that the epistemic status of faith’s evaluative component partly determines the epistemic status of faith itself. I take myself to be offering a full-fledged account of this claim.

Of course, some have already made important progress here, such as Adams ( 1999 ), Flanagan ( 2011 ), Roberts ( 2007 ), Stump ( 2010 ), and Williams ( 2011 ).

Many endorse the claim that faith requires positive evaluation of the faith object. See Howard-Snyder ( 2013 , p. 360), who offers illustrative passages from Adams ( 1995 ), Alston ( 1996 ), and Audi ( 2008 ), all of whom endorse some evaluative condition on faith. For an account that rejects the evaluative condition on faith, see Dougherty ( 2014 ).

Of course, some metaethical non-cognitivists deny that we have evaluative beliefs to begin with. Nevertheless, other non-cognitivists allow that we have evaluative beliefs, and such non-cognitivists tend to adopt a minimalism or quasi-realism that would equally allow that evaluative beliefs are epistemically assessable.

Some philosophers, such as Solomon ( 1976 ), hold that emotions are evaluative beliefs. But we should reject this view because we can have emotions that conflict with our evaluative beliefs, as when you fear the rodent you believe to be harmless. Now, you might respond that in all such cases what we have are two conflicting evaluative beliefs. But that seems to attribute way too much irrationality to such cases.

See Green ( 1992 ) and Marks ( 1982 ) for the view that emotions are reducible to belief-desire couplings. For criticism see Griffiths ( 1997 , Ch. 2), and Deonna and Teroni ( 2012 , Ch. 3).

By ‘pragmatic rationality’ I mean rationality in light of the goal of maximizing pragmatic benefits. Something like ‘prudential’ or ‘economic’ rationality might have done just as well.

This conception of the epistemic goal is sometimes invoked in the faith literature, as in McKaughan ( 2016 , Sect. V). Of course, not everyone holds this view of the epistemic goal. There is a recent movement claiming that the epistemic goal is towards understanding rather than true belief (e.g., Kvanvig 2003 ). Would this imply that the epistemic rationality of faith hangs on whether faith deepens or in some way improves understanding, casting a new light on the old adage of “faith seeking understanding”? This is extremely interesting but I cannot discuss it further here.

I do not assume here that direct, perceptual evidence is always better than testimony. The point is rather that it is better to veridically perceive p than to hallucinate not-p, even if in both cases one has a true belief that-p or even knows that-p. Thanks to Duncan Pritchard and an anonymous referee for discussion on this issue.

This view of the epistemic goal also helps with the old problem of how some false scientific theories better approximate the truth than other false theories do. Representational success is, after all, a degreed notion, like accuracy , while truth is, most think, strictly binary.

This case might tempt certain counterexamples. Note, however, that for my purposes I am not, and need not be, offering a sufficient condition for a state’s being assessable for epistemic rationality.

For the view that emotions are evaluative beliefs, judgments, or some cognitive state in the vicinity, see Foot ( 1978a , 1978b ), Greenspan ( 1988 ), Helm ( 2001 ), Kenny ( 1963 ), Lazarus ( 1991 ), Lyons ( 1980 ), Neu ( 1977 ), Nussbaum ( 2001 ), and Solomon ( 1976 ). For the view that emotions are evaluative perceptions or perception-like states with evaluative content, see Dancy ( 2014 ), Döring ( 2003 ), McDowell ( 1979 , 1985 ), Prinz ( 2004 ), Roberts ( 2003 ), and Tappolet ( 2012 ). For the view that emotions are sui generis experiences with evaluative content, see Johnston ( 2002 ), Mendelovici ( 2014 ), and Tye ( 2008 ). For recent criticism of the thesis that emotions have evaluative representational content, see Deonna and Teroni ( 2012 ).

But for an alternative explanation, see Deonna and Teroni ( 2014 ).

I’m not claiming that any state that is representational is thereby assessable for epistemic rationality. For instance, it is typically held that visual states are representational but not assessable for epistemic rationality (for an exception, see Siegel 2017 ). The representational content of emotion is just part of the explanation as to why it can be assessed for epistemic rationality.

I’m just assuming justification is not factive (contra Littlejohn 2014 ).

It’s worth contrasting this with Wainwright ( 1995 ), who articulates a different account of how emotions or desires are relevant to the rationality of (Christian) faith. He argues that certain affective or conative dispositions are required in order to properly assess the epistemic reasons one has for theistic belief. In contrast, I am arguing that affective or conative states can themselves be epistemically rational, and so directly contribute to the epistemic status of the faith they constitute.

See Williams ( 2011 , Ch. 1), for more sustained discussion of what our existential needs are (albeit from a Christian point of view).

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What Is Rationalism in Philosophy? Essay

Definition of rationalism, promoters and philosophical outcomes, personal understanding of rationalism, works cited.

Rationalism is a philosophical domain ththe at amplifies the importance and prominence of reason in deduction and eventual acquisition of knowledge. It majors on the inherent humathe n capacity and ability to deduce truth based on intellectual capabilities and prowess (Cottingham 6). There are various variations in rationalism, that border on moderate philosophical inclinations to extreme philosophical standpoints.

The moderate philosophical inclination anchors on the role of reason in the acquisition of knowledge. The extreme standpointthe posits the relevance of reason as the sole gateway to the acquisition of knowledge. Rationalism has numerous similarities with Socratic philosophical approach that anchors on a rational interpretation of events and happenings that manifest in daily human interactions (Cottingham 12).

In recent times, there have been several scholarly undertakings that sought to rekindle the classical understanding of rationalism as a philosophical domain that deciphers reasoning as an integral component in the acquisition of knowledge. However, there should be a clear distinction between other related concepts such as rationality and rationalization (Cottingham 14).

Rationalism is a concept that has an immeasurable influence on various domains of society. For instance, its impact and impression on politics are evident and well documented. About rationalism, political undertakings should adopt a rational approach that amplifies the essence of reason in deduction of political philosophies.

Rationalism introduces correlation between philosophy and mathematical procedures that seek to integrate both aspects into the process of deducing philosophical knowledge and ideas. Consequently, this domain manifests as continental rationalism due to its prevalence and application in continental institutions of learning across Europe (Cottingham 17).

There is connection between empiricism and rationalism regarding their philosophical outlook and interpretation of issues that affect humanity. The basic assumption in empiricism is that acquisition of knowledge materializes through numerous experiences that people encounter in daily undertakings (Cottingham 22).

The fundamental difference in these philosophical inclinations regards the argument as to the source of knowledge in a social context. Supporters of rationalism contend that basic mathematical concepts such as geometry play an instrumental role in deduction of knowledge in society.

In the history of rationalism, there are certain events and personalities who played an integral role in the promotion and propagation of its philosophical inclination. Such historical features heralded a new dawn for rationalism because they contributed immensely in the development of the philosophical body of knowledge that is rationalism (Zecha 31).

Their views and articulations continue to influence the contemporary understanding of rationalism and its relation to other philosophical concepts. Through their efforts, modern philosophical scholars contextualize the essence and rationale of reason in deduction and acquisition of knowledge in society.

One such scholar is René Descartes, who argued that eternal philosophical concepts alone have an impact on the relevance of reason in the acquisition of knowledge (Zecha 34). He supported this position by alluding to dreams as part of human experience.

According to Descartes, dreams have no empirical value about the acquisition of knowledge. He rightly argued that dreams are illusionary and therefore cannot qualify as credible sources of human knowledge. Descartes researched extensively on nature and source of fundamental truths (Zecha 35). He developed a criterion for deduction of truth and essence of truth regarding the reality of human existence.

Another key contributor to the field of rationalism is Baruch Spinoza, whose philosophical ideologies revolved around systems and logic in deduction and acquisition of knowledge (Nelson 12). Through his philosophical exploits, Spinoza attempted to seek answers to various areas of concern with regard to human existence.

He further exploited the reality of the existence of God. He argued that the existence of God is an empirical philosophical concept that only exists in human thought processes. His philosophical ideas continue to stir heated discourse among modern scholars who seek to unravel the essence of his complex ideas. His geometrical deduction of ideas still holds relevance in the academic arena (Nelson 15).

Gottfried Leibniz also made an immeasurable contribution to the development and propagation of rationalism. He contested the Cartesian dualism and argued against the reality of the world as articulated in other disciplines. He particularly contributed to the development of rationalism through monads theory, which was a reaction to the ideas of his contemporaries (Nelson 23).

The theory derives a correlation between the influence of living and non-living things in deduction and acquisition of knowledge. Through his scholarly exploits, he derived methods and procedural undertakings that sought to establish factors of causation in different contexts (Nelson 24).

In my opinion, rationalism is an area of study that offers immense value for knowledge and other processes that determine its acquisition. It majors on the inherent human capacity and ability to deduce truth based on intellectual capabilities and prowess. There are various variations to rationalism, that border on moderate philosophical inclinations to extreme philosophical standpoints.

The moderate philosophical inclination anchors on the role of reason in the acquisition of knowledge. I believe that rationalism offers a real opportunity for individuals to understand and interpret various activities that take place in the modern world. This philosophical domain assists individuals to make sense of various activities that manifest in human interactions.

Cottingham, John. Rationalism . Newyork: Thoemmes Press, 2010. Print.

Nelson, Alan. A Companion to Rationalism . London: John Wiley & Sons, 2012. Print.

Zecha, Gerhard. Critical Rationalism and Educational Discourse . London: Rodopi, 2011. Print.

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How do essay writing services work?

In the modern world, any company is trying to modernize its services. And services for writing scientific papers are no exception. Therefore, now it is very easy to order work and does not take time:

• First, you need to choose a good site that you can trust. Read their privacy policies, guarantees, payment methods and of course reviews. It will be a big plus that examples of work are presented on the online platform.
• Next, you need to contact a manager who will answer all the necessary questions and advise on the terms of cooperation. He will tell you about the acceptable writing deadlines, provide information about the author, and calculate the price of the essay.
• After that, you sign the contract and during the indicated days stay in touch with the employee of the company.
• Then you receive the file, read it attentively and transfer a certain amount to the company's bank card. After payment, the client downloads the document to his computer and can write a review and suggestions.

On the site Essayswriting, you get guarantees, thanks to which you will be confident and get rid of the excitement. The client can ask any questions about the writing and express special preferences.