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Open inquiry12 min4 historical perspectives

How far can reason speak about faith?

Use a concept-only proof, miracle testimony, and a command that conflicts with ethics to compare proof, testimony, revelation, and practice.

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  1. 11077–1078Anselm — Faith seeking understanding and an argument for existence

    Anselm of Canterbury · Proslogion

    Does the concept of the greatest conceivable being entail that it exists in reality as well as thought?

    The Proslogion argues from “that than which nothing greater can be conceived” within a prayerful project of faith seeking understanding.

    Source and exact locator

    The text is a Korean-English summary of the source, not a direct quotation.

    • Saint Anselm

      Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

      Locator: §2.1 Faith Seeking Understanding; §3 The Proslogion

      Open source

    Debate continues over whether the reasoning illicitly defines something into existence, offers a modal argument for necessary being, or functions primarily as meditation.

    Source and exact locator

    The text is a Korean-English summary of the source, not a direct quotation.

    • Saint Anselm

      Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

      Locator: §3.1–§3.5, reconstructions and objections

      Open source
    1. The Proslogion turns conceptual reflection within faith into a public argument.

      Around 1077–1078

  2. 2Around 1095Al-Ghazālī — Critiquing unproved necessity, not philosophy wholesale

    Abū Ḥāmid al-Ghazālī · The Incoherence of the Philosophers

    Does observed regularity prove necessary causation, or does that add a stronger metaphysical assumption?

    The Incoherence argues that twenty teachings associated with al-Fārābī and Avicenna have not been demonstratively established, treating three as especially grave religious errors.

    Source and exact locator

    The text is a Korean-English summary of the source, not a direct quotation.

    • al-Ghazali

      Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

      Locator: §3 The Incoherence of the Philosophers

      Open source

    Al-Ghazālī does not reject logic, demonstration, or natural inquiry wholesale; the seventeenth discussion targets the inference from observed conjunction to necessary causation.

    Source and exact locator

    The text is a Korean-English summary of the source, not a direct quotation.

    • al-Ghazali

      Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

      Locator: §3, seventeenth discussion; §4 The Revival of the Religious Sciences

      Open source
    1. The Incoherence reframes a conflict between revelation and reason as a question about what has actually been demonstrated.

      Around 1095

  3. 31748–1779Hume — Weighing miracle testimony and arguments from design

    David Hume · Enquiry X and Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion

    How strong must testimony be when weighed against the chance that the report is mistaken and the chance that a regularity of nature has failed?

    Enquiry X asks us to weigh evidence that testimony is false against evidence, grounded in experience, that a law of nature has been violated.

    Source and exact locator

    The text is a Korean-English summary of the source, not a direct quotation.

    • Hume on Religion

      Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

      Locator: §3 Miracles

      Open source

    The Dialogues tests how little the analogy from worldly order to a designer can establish about the nature and number of its cause.

    Source and exact locator

    The text is a Korean-English summary of the source, not a direct quotation.

    • Hume on Religion

      Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

      Locator: §4 The Design Argument

      Open source
    1. The posthumous Dialogues tests design arguments through several competing voices.

      1779

  4. 41843Kierkegaard — Faith as a paradox not reducible to ethics

    Søren Kierkegaard · Fear and Trembling

    If Abraham's action cannot be explained by universal ethics, is faith a higher justification or a publicly unverifiable danger?

    The pseudonymous Johannes de silentio presents Abraham as a paradox between universal ethics and an absolute relation to God.

    Source and exact locator

    The text is a Korean-English summary of the source, not a direct quotation.

    • Søren Kierkegaard

      Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

      Locator: §3 Aesthetics and §4 Ethics; discussion of Fear and Trembling

      Open source

    Because the pseudonym repeatedly says he cannot understand faith, treating his admiration and ‘teleological suspension of the ethical’ as Kierkegaard's direct doctrine erases the authorial strategy.

    Source and exact locator

    The text is a Korean-English summary of the source, not a direct quotation.

    • Søren Kierkegaard

      Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

      Locator: §2 Kierkegaard’s Aesthetics of Authorship; §4 Ethics

      Open source
    1. Published pseudonymously in Copenhagen, Fear and Trembling presents faith as an unresolved ethical paradox.

      1843 · Copenhagen · 출판