February 8, 2011.
Belief when you don’t have overwhelming evidence.
Something distinct from knowledge.
E.g. Faith in the goodness of humanity. Faith in the resurrection.
Two opinions: faith is a virtue, faith is intellectually irresponsible
What is the structure of the faith?
Recent interest in Paul:
Had a conversion from a persecutor of Christians. He doesn’t seek historical evidence for it.
After his revelation, he doesn’t go to Jerusalem, he goes into the desert.
He is not seeking prophetic evidence, yet it enables him to act in the world.
The structure of Paul’s faith is interesting. “Response to a call” as opposed to some concrete belief.
The formation of a self in relation to a call/ethical demand.
That call is going to motivate a self to act.
Relevance: there is a motivational deficit in liberal democracy, how to we remedy this?
The interesting part of religion is not whether their supernatural beliefs are true, rather how the call believers to action.
What sort of thing is commitment?
Something that is also touched upon in Existentialist philosophy too.
Moral athiests could deny that they take things on faith.
Critchley thinks ‘evangelical athiests’ (Dawkins/Hitchens).
Faith in reason, that science will work out the truths of the universe without participating.
In Sermon on the Mount, Jesus says to love your enemy and to have infinite forgiveness.
You can think Jesus was entitled to make these demands because he was God.
Alternatively he was just some crazy guy making extreme demands to prick people’s conscience.
Passive nihilism comes out of people being distanced/austerity towards moral commitment.
Reason/rationality cannot be divorced from processes like bureaucracy of modernity. Need faith / commitment to overcome sorts of bad rational processes.
How to choose the right commitment?
E.g. want to avoid becoming committed Nazis.
Commitment + generality/universality (Kantian)
Need practical moral philosophy to popularize something abstract like Kantian morality.
Friendship and Love
These require trust/faith (Othello example)
Friendship: Aristotelian vs Christian views
A liberal society based on reason would require a private/public separation
Anarchism has a variety of alternatives of new forms of order.