Spirituality and rationality
A. Voin
In today's world there is
much talk about the spirit, the loss of spirituality of Western
civilization as a major cause of global crisis of modern mankind, the need for
the revival of spirituality. Representatives of religion claim that the
cause of the loss of spirituality is the secularization of Western society, which
took place in the Modern
Times in connection with the development of rational science.
At
the same time they identify spirituality as a purely religious spirituality. They are joined by a number of modern philosophers.
Take, for example, wrote by the Templeton Prize winner of 2007, Charles
Taylor:
«We have somehow to break down the barriers between
our contemporary culture of science and disciplined academic study (what the
Germans
gather in the term "Wissenschaft") on one hand, and the
domain of spirit, on the other. The divorce of natural science and religion has
been damaging to both; but it is equally true that the culture of the
humanities and social sciences has often been surprisingly blind and deaf to
the spiritual ».
(From his speech when he received his award Templeton.)
There are calls to establish contact, to
build bridges, find common ground between science and religion, between
different religions, confessions and ideologies, but on appeal it is not going.
However, significant progress in this direction are ascribed to the said
Charles Taylor and a group of philosophers, close to him,
such as A. Maklntayer, etc. (This is the progress in this direction Taylor
awarded Templeton Prize). But, paying tribute to the good intentions
of Taylor and his colleagues, I believe that their work is based on false
premise and therefore can not lead them to the desired result.
In his work «Overcoming Epistemology»
(Philosophical Arguments, Harvard University Press, 1995) Charles Taylor writes
that the main cause of discord between the modern humanities, philosophy, in particular, and
spirituality is the fact that the secular philosphy of Modern Times is dominated by a
epistemology or theory of cognition, based on the
achievements of natural science. And the way
to a revival of spirituality he sees in overcoming the domination of
epistemology in modern philosophy (“Overcoming
Epistemology”).
I agree with Taylor that real modern epistemology up to the present day as a basis secularized
philosophy, across a variety of specific theories and trends in it, helped to
expel the spirit of this philosophy and other humanities, and in such a way helped to non-spirituality of
contemporary Western society. But I do not agree that the way to a revival of
spirituality is through deprivation epistemology of its basic role in philosophy. The sad
part of epistemology in exile from spirituality in Western society is not
connected with the fact that it is the foundation of secular philosophy, but with the fact that, despite the huge number of
directions in it, none of
them could not still give the correct answer
to the question of how relate our knowledge
(scientific, especially) with the reality described by it. That is, there was not still a correct epistemology. But rejectionion the epistemology of its basic role in the
philosophy leads us, as I said, to the result opposite to that sought by
Taylor. Because the common language between members of different religions,
ideologies, traditions, etc., finally between science and religion, only
epistemology can give. Only starting from
the correct idea about how our knowledge relate to the reality described by it
(including the spiritual reality), we can formulate
a method of justifying the true knowledge, whether scientific theory or
spiritual teachings. This method and only he can serve the common language that
will allow supporters of different natural scientific theories, theories of
humanitarian or religious doctrines
agree on which theory or doctrine is true, and which - confusing.
This method was developed by natural science in the process of its
development and in it he more or less successfully applied. It is through this
method representatives of natural sciencis have a common language, and sooner or
later agree by the entire
international community to accept some hypothesis as true,
proven theory, and another hypothesis be
rejected. But among scientists of humanities and the representatives of
religion this method is still not known. So they have no common language and,
despite endless calls to find a common language between different denominations
of Christianity and with representatives of another religions (like Islam,
Judaism, etc.), the number of denominations and sects multiplied exponentially,
and the gap in their understanding of the Christ’s Teaching (despite the fact that all
acknowledge that God is one and the truth is one) grows to infinity. The
situation is similar in philosophy, psychology and other humanities, but there instead of
confessions - the endless and continue to multiply number of schools and
directions, between which there is no common language, and there is no real dialogue.
In this situation, what good is that, Taylor
believes that the understanding of the teachings of Jesus Christ by the Catholic Church is incorrect and opposes to it the understanding of new churches, Methodist,
in particular. He does not have a tool to convince the Catholics and
representatives of many other denominations. Some mistakes of the past, such as
the Inquisition, holy wars, etc. the Catholic Church
recognized without the aid of
We return to the epistemology and its
negative impact so far on spirituality. The question is, why natural science have developed a general
method
of substantiation of its theories, have a common
language and thus have made significant progress and lead to tangible results,
and epistemology, which claims to generalize the experience of natural science and its method, could not endure
this method in the humanitarian sphere, has not led to a common language in
her, and even assisted in the initial expulsion of the spirit of it? The fact
that a general method of substantiation, worked out by the natural sciences, was
not yet presented explicitly and existed only at the level of stereotype
thinking of scientists
naturalists. For them it was enough (and then - for the time being, it is now
not). But for the transfer of this method in the humanitarian sphere, it was
necessary to provide this method explicitly. This is the task of epistemology, but it it still
did not manage. Moreover, in modern epistemology dominated position is seized by schools, of the post positivists
especially (Quine, Kuhn, Feyerabend, Popper,
Lakatos and others), relativized scientific
cognition, denying, in particular, that it contains, in principle, a general immutable method of justification of
theories. In addition to the rejection of a general method of substantiation modern epistemology has given a simplified
understanding of rational knowledge, not left a place for spirit. This explains its role in the lack
of spirituality of modern Western society and accepted today in it and in the world in general opposition of the
spiritual and rational.
In my philosophy, which I call neorationalism
or spiritual rationalism, I developed
my own theory of cognition (epistemology),
contrasting it to all pre-existing. (“Neorationalism”, Kiev, 1992, Part 1). Based on this
theory I have described (introduced
explicitly) the general method of substantiation of scientific theories, constracted by the natural sciences during their
development (Articles in Философские Исследования, 2000-2002, and on the Internet,
for example www.philprob.narod.ru). I also showed the possibility of applying
this method in the humanitarian field (with appropriate adaptation), in
particular in the analysis of Marxism, the current state of bioethics, the
Judeo-Christian teachings, etc., and demonstrated that the use of many papers (“Побритие бороды Карла Маркса или научен ли научный коммунизм", Kiev, 1997; "Bioethics or the optimal Ethics”, the Internet, "От Моисея до постмодернизма. Движение идеи", Kiev, 1999, etc.).