By muraiki
I don’t think he’s being overly pedantic — these kinds of things are difficult to talk about because we bring different definitions to the table. I tried to use “rational” in the context of the original article, which perhaps I failed to do so. The interviewer notes the contemporary critique of Enlightenment rationality, which Saul seems to share. So when I critique this kind of rationality, I mean a type of faculty that is in a different category from emotions and faith, that is separated from Saul’s description of the other faculties of humanity.
I think Eli and I are caught in what Wittgenstein might call a “language game.” We seem to be using the same word but we’re really meaning two different things. It’d be like if I thought basketball was a game involving kicking a ball into a net (soccer) and Eli thought it was a game involving throwing a ball into a net (basketball). While in that case we do have one objective definition of basketball, we don’t necessarily have one universally accepted definition for “rationality.”
I’m kind of reaching my limit here in terms of knowledge of philosophy, but I think that Eli and I don’t actually disagree, I’ve just perhaps framed my descriptions using two contradictory definitions of rationality: that of the Enlightenment idea of rational (which I critique) vs St. Maximos the Confessor’s idea of rational (which I advocate). I think that Eli is arguing from a Kantian sense, in terms of actions being rational up to a subjective idea of an ultimate good. Luckily for us, I’ve found a paper that discusses these three topics and will hopefully clear up the miscommunication we’ve had: http://www.academia.edu/10973797/A_Byzantine_Critique_of_Enl…
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muraiki comments on "The End of Rationalism: An Interview with John Ralston Saul (2001)"
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