January 30, 2020
Modernity elevated pure, abstract reasoning as the only way to know about reality. Since reason has disillusioned everything else, modernity has also become disillusioned with reason. The superiority of reason over superstitious myths was seen by postmodernists as just another myth to be exposed.
Postmodernists were right to see that the dictates of reason are not completely divorced from our lives, self-images, and desires, but are colored by the stories we tell about ourselves. But it was therefore a mistake to conclude that reason is inherently dubious.
That is, human life is indeed imbued with an intelligible narrative form, and we can tell true stories about ourselves that reflect the actual narrative form of our lives and history as a whole. It’s from. Reason can serve to explain the story of creation. In the first place, it was a mistake to think that it would be possible to seal it away in the laboratory.
It’s time to go back to seeing our lives and history itself as a real, comprehensible story. mythology
in line logo It is both as an important way of understanding truth and as the words dissolve into a silent contemplation of the One who spoke before the story began.
This is the conclusion of a three-part interview with poet and philosopher James Matthew Wilson about his book Vision of the Soul: Truth, Goodness, and Beauty in the Western Tradition.
content
[2:52] Reclaiming the role of storytelling in the perception of truth. Modern attempts to separate reason from story
[12:33] How Plato used stories, not just as examples, to advance his arguments and arrive at overarching truths that reason could only reach partially and inefficiently.
[20:55] Stories as the form and meaning of human life
[24:47] Modern times have abandoned stories as a means to truth.
logo I’m inconvenient without it mythology
[30:42] Descartes reduced reason to a tool for controlling the world.
[33:45] Jordan Peterson Campbell Jung’s classic approach as a “poor man’s metaphysics”
[38:29] logo as gross mythology
[41:45] Doubts about the rationality of postmodernism conditioned by narratives
[44:05] The highest form of intellectual life is silent prayer, not scholarship or analysis.
[49:10] Philosophy as a way of life. Invention of “intellectual” as a noun
[53:10] Practical points: pray, reflect, play
link
https://www.amazon.com/Vision-Soul Goodness-Western-Tradition/dp/0813229286
james matthew wilson https://www.jamesmatthewwilson.com/
JMW Twitter https://twitter.com/JMWSPT
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