The Catholicity of Reason

by D. C. Schindler

Overview

An original argument for the recovery of a robust notion of reason and truth in response to modern rationalism and postmodern skepticism

The Catholicity of Reason explains the "grandeur of reason," the recollection of which Benedict XVI has presented as one of the primary tasks in Christian engagement with the contemporary world.

While postmodern thinkers -- religious and secular alike -- have generally sought to respond to the hubris of Western thought by humbling our presumptuous claims to knowledge, D. C. Schindler shows in this book that only a robust confidence in reason can allow us to remain genuinely open both to God and to the deep mystery of things. Drawing from both contemporary and classical theologians and philosophers, Schindler explores the basic philosophical questions concerning truth, knowledge, and being -- and proposes a new model for thinking about the relationship between faith and reason.

The reflections brought together in this book bring forth a dramatic conception of human knowing that both strengthens our trust in reason and opens our mind in faith.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781467439183
Publisher:	Eerdmans, William B. Publishing Company
Publication date:	08/11/2013
Series:	Ressourcement: Retrieval and Renewal in Catholic Thought (RRRCT)
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	384
File size:	3 MB

About the Author

D. C. Schindler is associate professor of philosophy at Villanova University. His books include Plato's Critique of Impure Reason: On Truth and Goodness in the Republic.

Table of Contents

Preface x

Acknowledgments xiii

Abbreviations xiv

Introduction

1 Reason as Catholic 3

Wholly Ecstatic 4

Ignorance and Presumption 22

Part 1 Truth and Knowledge

2 Surprised by Truth: The Drama of Reason in Fundamental Theology 35

Immanence and Reason's Other 39

A Dramatic Conception 44

The Gift of Understanding and the Leap of Reason 53

3 The Primacy of Beauty, the Centrality of Goodness, and the Ultimacy of Truth 58

Circular Logic 63

Beauty as Plot Thickener 69

Analogia veritatis 80

4 Does Love Trump Reason? Toward a Nonpossessive Concept of Knowledge 85

Which Comes First, Intellect or Will? 85

Aquinas on the Circle of the Acts of the Soul in Its Relation to Being 90

Balthasar on the Gestalt in the Chcumincession of the Transcendentals 103

Love as Absolute 113

Part 2 Causality

5 The Iconoclasm of the Intellect in Early Modernity 119

Feeding the Imagination 119

Body as Image 120

Cause as Force 129

6 Historical Intelligibility: On Creation and Causality 137

Ontological and Dynamic Causality 139

The Interweave of the Causes 145

The Unraveling of Intelligibility 148

Substantial Meaning 153

7 Giving Cause to Wonder 163

Preliminary Reflections 167

Heidegger: Time for Wonder 169

Causality and Superficiality 179

The End of Wonder? 189

Response to Heidegger 195

Dionysius on the "Cause of All Things" 203

Knowledge and Wonder 219

Wonder as Ultimate 226

Part 3 God and Reason

8 The Problem of the Problem of Ontotheology 231

Heidegger: Freeing God from Being 234

Hegel: The Rational Reception of Revelation 238

False Modesty and Unholy Zeal 246

A Recovery of Metaphysics 254

9 Discovering What Has Already Been Given: On a Recent Defense of Thomistic Natural Theology 262

An Apology for Natural Knowledge of God 264

Restricting God and Reason 272

10 Philosophy and Theology 305

Essential Features of Each Discipline 311

A Possible Model 321

Bibliography 334

Index 346

Editorial Reviews

Catholic Books Review
"A fascinating treatment of the operations of reason. . . . Readers will find incredible depth in Schindler's engagement with the Western philosophical tradition as well as phenomenal force and nuance in his arguments."

Francesca Murphy
-- University of Notre Dame
"Ressourcement and modern Augustinian philosophical theology have been called on their apparent 'fideism' Schindler's response is a resounding philosophical 'Come at me, bro!' The Catholicity of Reason is the most stimulating text in philosophy of religion to appear for many years. . . . It's the 'must read' book of 2013."

Montague Brown
-- St. Anselm College
"D. C. Schindler celebrates and brilliantly defends the life that is reason, a life threatened by reason's claim to be autonomous and equally by reason's claim to be limited. . . . Against the reduction of reason to its discursive operations characteristic of the Enlightenment, Schindler insists on the infinitely rich activity of reason in pursuit of the trinity of the irreducibly distinct but always interrelated objects of reason -- truth, goodness, and beauty. . . . The only thing more important than the catholicity of reason by which it strives to encompass all truth, goodness, and beauty is the Catholicity of reason -- the great gift of divine revelation, which never restricts reason nor distorts human nature but, on the contrary, makes reason ever more reasonable and the human person ever more human."

Oliva Blanchette
-- Boston College
"Schindler goes a long way toward restoring the metaphysical scope of reason. . . . Much of the discussion in this exploration of the catholicity of both reason and being takes place at the hinge where philosophy and theology join hands. . . . Anyone interested in all such questions of catholicity and analogy both in reason and in being will find much to take into consideration here."

Catholic Library World
"Extremely well written and researched."

Living Church
"One of the most comprehensive, intelligent, disciplined, and compelling discussions of the relation between faith and reason that we have had in a long while. . . . This may be the best book yet from this young and very prolific Catholic philosopher."

From the Publisher