{"id":10277,"date":"2011-10-13T12:10:42","date_gmt":"2011-10-13T12:10:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2011\/10\/13\/athens-jerusalem-and-karl-jaspers\/"},"modified":"2011-10-13T12:10:42","modified_gmt":"2011-10-13T12:10:42","slug":"athens-jerusalem-and-karl-jaspers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2011\/10\/13\/athens-jerusalem-and-karl-jaspers\/","title":{"rendered":"Athens, Jerusalem, and Karl Jaspers"},"content":{"rendered":"

I stand astride both cities, with a foot in each.  But I favor one leg . . . .<\/span><\/p>\n

Or to change the metaphor:  I do not look down upon the cities from above as from an Olympian standpoint but sight from the perspective of one of the cities, Athens, towards the other, Jerusalem.<\/span><\/p>\n

So while I attempt a syn-optic view, my syn-optics cannot quite shake off the perspectivism of all finite optics.  My intellectual honesty demands recognition of this fact. <\/span><\/p>\n

\"Jaspers\"<\/a>In the last paragraph of the preface to the book that bears the slightly inaccurate English title Philosophical Faith and Revelation<\/em>, Karl Jaspers explains why he entitled his book Der Philosophische Glaube Angesichts der Offenbarung<\/em> and not Der Philosophische Glaube und Offenbarung<\/em>.  Jaspers remarks that und<\/em> (and) would be inappropriate because it would suggest that he was laying claim to a superior standpoint outside both philosophy and revelation, a standpoint that Jaspers does not claim to occupy.  He speaks from the side of philosophy while being touched, struck, affected (betroffen<\/em>) by  the claims of revelation.  Thus his philosophical faith is in the face of (angesichts<\/em>) revelation, elaborated in confrontation with it.  And so his philosophical optics are situated and perspectival, not synoptic or panoptic.<\/span><\/p>\n

 <\/span><\/p>\n

It seems we have only four options assuming that an Hegelian panoptical God's eye view is unavailable to us, a view which would somehow synthesize philosophy and religion:<\/span><\/p>\n

1. Deny the tension by eliminating Athens in favor of Jersualem in the manner of an irrationalist like Lev Shestov.<\/span>
2. Deny the tension by eliminating Jerusalem in favor Athens.<\/span>
3. Live the tension as a philosopher who takes seriously the claims and demands of revelation.<\/span>
4. Live the tension as a religionist who take seriously the claims and demands of philosophy.<\/span><\/p>\n

(1) and (2) are nonstarters.  So we are left with the difficult choice between (3) and (4).<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I stand astride both cities, with a foot in each.  But I favor one leg . . . . Or to change the metaphor:  I do not look down upon the cities from above as from an Olympian standpoint but sight from the perspective of one of the cities, Athens, towards the other, Jerusalem. So … Continue reading “Athens, Jerusalem, and Karl Jaspers”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[331],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10277","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-athens-and-jerusalem"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10277","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=10277"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10277\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=10277"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=10277"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=10277"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}