tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5846671056195917287.post3966668940515385190..comments2024-03-12T00:51:27.766-04:00Comments on Ground Motive: Reformational Reason Revisitedadmin1http://www.blogger.com/profile/16479743334126277132noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5846671056195917287.post-84509610786877100292016-03-22T22:21:05.107-04:002016-03-22T22:21:05.107-04:00Nevertheless, none of this inspired me to think of...Nevertheless, none of this inspired me to think of it in terms of a different philosophical ethos. Until….. Working on my response to Lambert many issues rose to the surface and I couldn’t begin to deal with all of them or even the most important ones. But in the background and against the background I just briefly described, as I wrote stuff was happening to the relation of philosophy to truth. And only at the end, where you found it now, did things crystallize: how about philosophy done in love being just one of the voices in the choir? I like your contemplation on all the many sides of making that voice a real contribution to the choir and all of that sounds like music in my ear. I remember from my choir days that to be part of the single voice you needed to hear, as you sang, the voices next to you. 2/2Henk Hartnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5846671056195917287.post-5107264419631851902016-03-22T22:20:20.631-04:002016-03-22T22:20:20.631-04:00Bob, you wonder whether the end of my blog is rela...Bob, you wonder whether the end of my blog is related to mystery. That did at one time enter the picture, but that’s much more recent than other origins. When Calvinist Jim O and Lutheran Wingren dialogued in what may have been ICS’s first Christianity and Learning event, I remember that now as a going back and forth between persuasions of the Biblical rightness of the two positions. Very generous and open. But still. Then in 1977 there was a “tripartite” social science conference at ICS, with Calvin and the VU as participants, during which at one point I walked to the blackboard to draw a model of Dooyeweerd’s modal order and law-subject relation. I made some critical remarks and as result wiped part of the model off the board. At that point Bernie Zylstra jumped to his feet, straightened his back, and said, clearly and decisively: “Hart, do you realize this is God’s creation order you’re talking about?” That was the point in time at which something awoke in me. I realized in a flash that being a reformational thinker could not mean being on the way to "getting it right.” That didn’t come out of the blue, because I had been struggling with that issue already. But Bernie’s remark crystallized something for me. In class at that time we had been discussing the manuscript for Understanding Our World and on the basis of that Bob Rogers advised me to read Rorty, because he saw parallels. That’s 40 years ago. During that time, as you observe, I had my discussions with Nielsen, but I also became better acquainted with your reading of church fathers and medieval philosophers, turning them into siblings in the faith. In addition, I “discovered” mystery and embraced it. Some of that is present in my exaugural. Ten years ago I began writing down for myself how I related to mystery. Here are some lines:<br /><br />We are unique among creatures. All things have their limits, ourselves included. What's peculiar about us is that we know these limits as limits and we are aware that there is "more." We are limited, we know we are limited, and we sense “transcendence” beyond those limits. We do not and cannot know everything, but we at least suspect that our human boundaries are not also the boundaries of what is real. Some philosophers have referred to the limits of our experience and what lies beyond them as the boundary area of experience. In that area we encounter issues that compel us to decipher their meaning, though in doing so we are strained beyond our limits. We need an orientation to these issues to live meaningfully, but they are beyond our reach. The questions they raise have no definite answers, as there are to: what is the population of Tokyo? When we contemplate good and evil, life and death, guilt and redemption, origin and destiny, life beyond death, or suffering we come up short. Their reality is unavoidable on this side of the boundary and ineffable on the other side. They confront us with a mystery that defies us unless we could somehow make contact with what is beyond our reach. Our straining renders us constitutionally restless. Our limits create an anxiety in our very being that calls for resolution. In order to live our lives with some measure of confidence and assurance we need to be blessed by the mystery. 1/2Henk Hartnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-5846671056195917287.post-21227633111727313432016-03-22T17:48:40.560-04:002016-03-22T17:48:40.560-04:00I am wondering Henk whether this irenic ethos that...I am wondering Henk whether this irenic ethos that you end your piece meditating on flows from a recognition of the mystery of existence as inexorable context for all our thinking. Life is so wondrously complex that our most expansive concepts are not big enough or sophisticated enough to envelop the realities they engage and point to. But as mysterious as existence is it is also shared. And that communio means that we can ask of a fellow thinker about her thought what in the universe that I talk about in my way is she referring to when she uses the concepts, words and sentences that she does. In other words, we can and should struggle to think alongside each other, even and especially when we say things to each other that are hard for us to receive given how we each talk and think about the world. I have reasons for speaking and thinking as I do. So do others whom I am minded to take issue with. The point is what to do with difference. Is it a mark of shame, of a failure that must be ascribed to the one thinker or another? Or is it an opportunity for mutual enrichment, even in and through stubborn disagreement. If I think of your long dialogue with Kai Nielson, Henk, I think of the ways your mutual respect and friendship grew out of your profound disagreement around the relationship of philosophical thought to "the religious" and religion. It was, as such, an instance of the latter scenario. What is odd is how often profound disagreement can function as a context for the growth of friendship and the love appropriate to it whereas disagreements that are far less profound rupture relations between thinkers who seem natural partners in thought to any third party. <br /><br />In short, I like your irenic take on philosophy in this piece. I agree its wisdom can point to Lambert's own philosophical practice for support. Of course, it all depends on how "Hegelian" the nature of Lambert's "use" of interlocutors is in thinking through problem "x" or "y". If their only role in his thinking is as set up for his own positive proposals (which I think unlikely) as opposed to positive sources for (particularly in and through the frisson of their conceptual juxtaposition) his own philosophical discoveries (which I think far more likely), then, the "ecumenicity" you are seeing would seem rather a mask. But since I think of Lambert's encounter with thinkers with whom he disagrees as generative and his posture one of authentic gratitude, the "ecumenicity" you see seems far more likely to be real, and your confirmation of the ethos it entails, well, worth the price of admission. Indeed it is an ethos I have spent my 24 years at ICS fostering in my own way with the Fathers and Mothers of the Church and their medieval successors as my interlocutors. And at bottom such an ethos suggests that difference not be arranged in the first instance in the form of an affirmation and its negation such that the one position must be true and the other false. Rather, one should assume that it is far more likely that there is a sense (yet to be discovered) that both positions serve to place us in the truth, for the world is a site of disclosure, aching to tell us secrets which in turn proffer, when received, blessings. Such has been my own puny experience all the years of my academic career. The thought itinerary you ask us to traverse in this piece is a wonderful case in point, prompting in me a hearty "amen". So may it be!bob sweetmanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/02020964276816359915noreply@blogger.com