Tuesday, March 6, 2012

Worldview: A Clear View

Truth and Knowing Part 2


"The prevelent view today in academic circles at least tends to place philosophical opinions and religious beliefs on the side of taste rather than on teh side of truth.  This has not always been regnant view, nor is it necessarily the correct one."

Mortimer Adler

In the age of Enlightenment, reason was something that was based soley on the knowledge and beliefs of each individual.  Immanuel Kant greatly influenced the idea of reason being man's knowledge.  He lived from 1724 to 1804, and argued that man makes himself into the person that he is to become.  Another man who influenced this era of thinking was George W.F. Hegel. He lived from 1770-1831, and  was a german philosopher who is famous for developing a way of arriving at a truth, also known as Hegel's Dialectic.  Hegel made a huge impact on truth.  He argued that instead of truth being fixed and set, it is constantly evolving and changing.  Francis Schaeffer made the statement...

"one cannot understand modern man in philosophy, in the other disciplines, in morals, in political thought , without understanding that Hegel has won".

In this statement he meant that all of modern philosophy has been dictated by the beliefs set forth by Hegel.  In modern philosophy, people are constantly being asked what is truth?  Before Hegel, this question was not very prevelent.  People were pretty content to believe that God and the Bible were the absolute, standard truth.  After Hegel introduced his philosophy, things started to change. 

Soren Kierkegaard lived from 1813 until 1855, and proclaimed his own belief that truth is discovered through reason.  His philosophy was that truth was based upon the individual. Each person was responsible for developing his own truth.  He developed what was called the leap of faith, meaning that people should discard "rational thinking", and be "non-rational" in their beliefs.  He argued that people shouldn't always follow what makes sense.

Through each of these philosophical changes, four different views of the Bible has been established.  These include...

The Bible is ACCEPTED as the Word of God

The Bible is NOT the Word of God

The Bible BECOMES the Word of God

The Bible MAY  become the Word of God

All of these beliefs worked to challenge the thinking of people all over the world. These questions reinforced the question that had been asked over and over again... "What can we really know and by what means".  As time continued to move on, man came up with some answers...

trust in reason
put faith in science and progress
be optimistic about the type of world humans can create

Sadly, these three answers greatly define the world for a lot of people.

The whole transition of thinking during this time worked to establish the Postmodern Era, or the period in which we as humans live today, as a result of thinking and beliefs started and established years ago.  Post-modern thinkers believe that there are ways of knowing the anwers to questions like emotions and intuitions.  Post-modernism has greatly affected the education world- a world in which a lot of students believe that truth is relative, and is something to be decided by each individual person.  The same thing with morality.  Each person must decide what is right and moral, because what is moral for one person isn't for another. 

The questions
How do we know?

and

What can we know?

affect the way that we answer other difficult questions.  They influence the way that we think about morality, and what is right and wrong.  When we answer these questions, we can discover in a whole new way what is fair and appropriate in the world around us.

Thanks for reading!

Most of these ideas are taken from the book A Clear View, by Keith Ogorek.

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