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“Our Most Serious Deficiency-Disease”– Reason, Faith and the Rediscovery of Sensibility

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2024

Beáta Tóth
Beáta Tóth*
Affiliation:
Sapientia College of Theology, 1052 Budapest, Piarista Köz 1, Hungary
*
Email: tothbeata@sapientia.hu
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Abstract

The essay addresses the complex cultural historical claim that with modernity the earlier unity of reason and sensibility underwent a dissociation that has important consequences for our current predicament and for our present understanding of the relationship between reason, faith and sensibility. Three case studies (Géza Ottlik, T. S. Eliot and Blaise Pascal) are examined in order to establish the nature of the divide and provide an archaeology (with the help of Pascal) of one of its first conceptualisations as well as of an early attempt to heal the growing fissure between what is termed by Pascal as reason and the heart. The second part examines current thought concerning the need to enlarge the narrow Enlightenment conception of reason and the recent call to re-envision its theological contours. The argument is then made that the same procedure should be applied to the theologically long-neglected domain of human sensibility. Theology is registered as also being accountable for internalising and perpetuating the cultural dissociation due to its failure to preserve the traditional theological contours of affectivity and its naivety in leaving the exploration of this domain entirely to the competence of secular philosophy.

Keywords

ReasonFaithSensibilityBlaise PascalThe Unity of the Mind
Type
Original Articles
Information
New Blackfriars , Volume 90 , Issue 1030 , November 2009 , pp. 718 - 737
Copyright
Copyright © The author 2009. Journal compilation © The Dominican Council 2009

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References

1 Ottlik, Géza, Logbook in A Hungarian Quartet: Four Hungarian Short Novels, transl. by Bátki, John (Budapest: Corvina, 1991), pp. 27–28Google Scholar.

2 Géza Ottlik, Logbook, p. 22.

3 Géza Ottlik, Logbook, p. 22.

4 Eliot, T. S., ‘Catholicism and International Order’, in Essays Ancient and Modern (London: Faber and Faber, 1936), p. 117Google Scholar.

5 Eliot, T. S., The Varieties of Metaphysical Poetry, ed. Schuchard, Ronald (London: Faber and Faber, 1993)Google Scholar.

6 See Tóth, Beáta, “Imagination, Belief and Abstract Thought Within the Orbit of Religious Emotion” in Lemmens, Willem and Herck, Walter Van (eds.), Religious Emotions: Some Philosophical Explorations (Newcastle, Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2008), pp. 176–182.Google Scholar

7 T. S. Eliot, The Varieties of Metaphysical Poetry, p. 220.

8 T. S. Eliot, The Varieties of Metaphysical Poetry, pp. 220–221.

9 Eliot, T. S., ‘The Social Function of Poetry’ in On Poetry and Poets (London: Faber and Faber, 1957, repr. 1971), p. 25Google Scholar.

10 For one such view see Lobb, Edward, T. S. Eliot and the Romantic Critical Tradition (London/Boston: Routlegde and Kegan Paul, 1981)Google Scholar.

Another example: “Eliot's famous doctrine of ‘dissociation of sensibility’ refers to a disjunction between the intellect and the senses, and adumbrates a rather simple-minded and nostalgic view of cultural history”. ‘Sensibility’ in A. Preminger and T. Brogan, F. V. eds., The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics (Princeton: Princeton Univ.Press, 1993), p. 1144Google Scholar.

11 “After Eliot, the term sensibility tended to widen its meaning still further, until the poet's sensibility came to mean little other than ‘the sort of person he is’. But in the 1980s, sensibility has almost disappeared as a critical term, as structuralism and post-structuralism have increasingly directed attention away from the creating subject toward factors inherent in the language and in codes and discursive practices. Sensibility can be said to have lost its centrality as a critical term not because changing theories of the creative process have proposed other terms, but because criticism has turned to look at different problems.”‘Sensibility’ in A. Preminger and T. F. V. Brogan eds., The New Princeton Encyclopedia of Poetry and Poetics, p. 1144.

12 Blaise Pascal, Thoughts, http://etext.virginia.edu/toc/modeng/public/PasThou.html, fr. 277.

13 “I can well conceive a man without hands, feet, head (for it is only experience which teaches us that the head is more necessary than feet). But I cannot conceive man without thought; he would be a stone or a brute.” B. Pascal, Thoughts, fr. 339.

14 “Man is but a reed, the most feeble thing in nature; but he is a thinking reed. The entire universe need not arm itself to crush him. A vapour, a drop of water suffices to kill him. But, if the universe were to crush him, man would still be more noble than that which killed him, because he knows that he dies and the advantage which the universe has over him; the universe knows nothing of this. ” B. Pascal, Thoughts, fr. 347.

15 “Man is obviously made to think. It is his whole dignity and his whole merit; and his whole duty is to think as he ought. Now, the order of thought is to begin with self, and with its Author and its end.” B. Pascal, Thoughts, fr. 146.

16 B. Pascal, Thoughts, fr. 346.

17 Sellier, Philippe, Pascal et Saint Augustin (Paris: Librairie Armand Colin, 1970), p. 110Google Scholar.

18 See esp. fr. 72 (Man's Disproportion) in B. Pascal, Thoughts.

19 “The last proceeding of reason is to recognise that there is an infinity of things which are beyond it. It is but feeble if it does not see so far as to know this. But if natural things are beyond it, what will be said of supernatural?” B. Pascal, Thoughts, fr. 267.

And also: “All the dignity of man consists in thought. Thought is, therefore, by its nature a wonderful and incomparable thing. It must have strange defects to be contemptible. But it has such, so that nothing is more ridiculous. How great it is in its nature! How vile it is in its defects!” B. Pascal, Thoughts, fr. 365.

20 For example fr. 72.

21 “The reason acts slowly, with so many examinations and on so many principles, which must be always present, that at every hour it falls asleep, or wanders, through want of having all its principles present. Feeling does not act thus; it acts in a moment, and is always ready to act. We must then put our faith in feeling; otherwise it will be always vacillating.” B. Pascal, Thoughts fr. 252.

22 I base my account on Sellier's own account and scattered remarks. See Sellier, Philippe, Pascal et Saint Augustin (Paris: Librairie Armand Colin, 1970), pp. 107–139Google Scholar.

23 On the intellectus-ratio distinction in Thomas Aquinas's philosophy see for example O’Reilly, Kevin, Aesthetic Perception: A Thomistic Perspective (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2007), esp. pp. 43–47Google Scholar.

24 B. Pascal, Thoughts fr. 282.

25 B. Pascal, Thoughts fr. 278.

26 Pasqua, Hervé, Blaise Pascal: Penseur de la Grace (Paris: Téqui, 2000), pp. 85–103Google Scholar.

27 Michon, Hélene, L’Ordre du Coeur: Philosophie, Théologie et Mystique dans les Pensées de Pascal (Paris: Honoré Champion, 1996)Google Scholar.

28 Balthasar, Hans Urs von, ‘Pascal’ in The Glory of the Lord: A Theological Aesthetics, Studies in Theological Styles: Lay Styles (San Francisco: Ignatius Press, 1986), vol. III. pp. 172–238Google Scholar.

29 Placide Deseille, author of the entry ‘soul-heart-body’ in the Dictionnaire Critique de Théologie notes that the impoverishment of the biblical richness of the metaphor of the heart can be detected already in Thomas Aquinas's account, which makes it simply the metaphorical seat of the will; although he does not ignore the realities expressed by the biblical notion, he treats them under other concepts (such as intellectus). Deseille also argues that modernity changed the notion even further by seeing it as the exclusive site where doctrine is transposed in the affective mode, but it did not work out a proper Christian framework for the understanding of human emotionality. “Ame-Coeur-Corps” in Lacoste, Jean-Yves (ed.), Dictionnaire Critique de Théologie (Paris: Quadrige/PUF, 2002), pp. 30–31Google Scholar.

30 Griffiths, Paul J. and Hütter, Reinhard, “Introduction”, in Griffiths, Paul J. and Hütter, Reinhard (eds.), Reason and the Reasons of Faith (New York, London: T&T Clark, 2005), pp. 1–23Google Scholar.

31 Charles Taylor, “A Philosopher's Postscript: Engaging the Citadel of Secular Reason’, in Paul J. Griffiths and Reinhard Hütter (eds.), Reason and the Reasons of Faith, pp. 339–353.

32 Bennett Helm, “Love”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2008 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL =<http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2008/entries/love/>.

33 Bennett Helm, ‘Love’, in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.

34 Dixon, Thomas, ‘Theology, Anti-Theology and Atheology: From Christian Passions to Secular Emotions’, Modern Theology 15:3 (1999), pp. 297–330CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Dixon holds: “Our current concept of emotion relies on atheological myths and models drawn not just from brain science, behavioural psychology and physiology, but also from cognitive science, existentialist and Anglo-American philosophy, and from social constructionist thought”. p. 312.

35 For example, in a panoramic survey of the current state of emotion research, Ronald de Sousa notes an interesting development: after a euphoric appraisal of the helpful and cognitive nature of the emotions, philosophers have recently come to recognise their less trustful aspect. Ronald de Sousa, “Emotion”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2008 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = <http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/fall2008/entries/emotion/>.

36 See, for example, Corrigan, John, ‘Cognitions, Universals, and Constructedness: Recent Emotions Research and the Study of Religion’, in Lemmens, Willem and Herck, Walter Van (eds.), Religious Emotions: Some Philosophical Explorations p. 42Google Scholar. John Corrigan, ‘Cognitions, Universals, and Constructedness’, p. 36.

37 In a forthcoming book Eleonore Stump is realising such an approach by bringing Thomas Aquinas's theory of love in conversation with modern secular accounts and offering a theological corrective to their aporias. Eleonore Stump, ‘Chapter Five: The Medieval World: The Nature of Love’, in E. Stump, Wandering in Darkness (Forthcoming from Oxford University Press), On-site PDF, http://stumpep.googlepages.com/onlinepapers

Paul Gondreau too draws attention to the overlooked richness of the Thomistic theory of the emotions and its potential for the metaphysical completion of current models. Gondreau, Paul, The Passions of Christ's Soul in the Theology of Saint Thomas Aquinas (Münster: Aschendorff, 2002), pp. 101–134Google Scholar.

Charles Bernard's study is likewise an attempt to see the theological tradition in the light of modern psychology; however, in my view, it draws too heavily on contemporary secularist emotion science. Bernard, Charles, Théologie Affective (Paris: Cerf, 1984)Google Scholar.

38 Balthasar, Hans Urs von, Love Alone: The Way of Revelation, tr. not named (New York: Herder & Herder, 1969)Google Scholar.

39 Nemes-Nagy, Ágnes, ‘About God, Our most serious deficiency-disease’, in Nemes-Nagy, Ágnes, 51 Poems, transl. by Zollman, Peter, (Budapest: Maecenas, 2007), p. 115Google Scholar.

40 Ágnes Nemes-Nagy, ‘About God’, p. 115.

41 Ágnes Nemes-Nagy, ‘About God’, p. 117.