Substack latest. Some thoughts on Pierre Bayle.
Reason is infirm in that it cannot establish anything definitively as regards the ultimate questions that most concern us. It cannot even prove that doubting is the way to truth, “that it is certain that we ought to be in doubt.” (Pyrrho entry, Bayle’s Dictionary, tr. Popkin, p. 205) But, pace Pierre Bayle, the merely subjective certitude of faith is no solution either! Recoiling from the labyrinth into which unaided human reason loses itself, Bayle writes:
Bill,
A small question: Is there anywhere in the world one tautological fact?
It depends on what you mean by ‘fact.’ See: https://maverickphilosopher.blog/index.php/2010/01/17/three-senses-of-fact/
Bill, my question would involve definition number one.
1. There are facts-that, i.e., propositions. These are truth-bearers. They needn’t be known or believed, etc.
2. There are facts-of. These are truth-makers.
3. There are facts as known propositions. When people in ordinary English say, ‘That’s a fact!’ they typically mean that such-and-such is the case and known to be the case.
If you mean (1), then of course there are tautological facts, e.g., the proposition expressed by ‘The Earth is the Earth.’
If you mean (2), then no.
If you mean (3), then yes: many tautologies are known to be true.
Bill,
You write:
“I hope you agree with me that there is something utterly mad about torturing and murdering people over such an abstruse matter, one so far removed from any conceivable method of rational settlement.”
I agree with you. I’m reminded of the Genevans, who arrested and imprisoned Michael Servetus, and later had him burned at the stake. Why? The charge was that Servetus denied the doctrines of the Trinity and infant baptism, and that he advocated Modalism.
He was only 42 at the time. He might have had plenty of years to continue thinking about theology, not to mention his contributions to medical science.
I want to recommend a book to you, Elliot, that ties in well with your comment. Louis Bouyer, The Spirit and Forms of Protestantism, Ignatius Press, 2017. It was written in French and first came out in 1954. I don’t expect Fr. Bouyer is much read any more, but he is truly excellent. I am learning a lot from him about Calvinism. He is a Catholic priest but he is very sympathetic to the good in Protestantism.
The Servetus outrage is yet another proof of the need for Athens to keep Jerusalem in line. (It cuts the other way too.)
Thanks, Bill. I’ll put Bouyer’s book on my reading list.
Bill,
Do you think that the book by Fr. Bouyer’s book that you recommended to Elliot would be of interest to me?
Vito
What you are calling “faith”, Aquinas calls the “sensus divinitatis” – a separate sense epistemoligically analagous to sight, smell, sensus abstractus, etc.
Nomenclature aside, it is NOT subjective, any more than are our senses of the Good, the True, and the Beautiful are subjective.
Assuming the stipulation of the Divine Sense, then the proposition that “God exists” is no more “subjective” than the propositions:
1) ℵ₀ is the smallest infinite cardinal number;
2) When my son was born, I was ecstatic; and
3) Intentionally destroying a child in the womb is murder.
Saying, “I can’t prove that God exists using the faculty of reason, so, therefore, I should withhold belief as to His existence”, is like saying “I can’t hear the color red, so, therefore, I should withhold belief as to the existence of the color red.”
I will stipulate that the deliverances of all of our senses are “unproveable”.
But I will reassert my position that those deliverances are nonetheless capable of being the bases of epistemological certainty for us all.