Lanterna Rally

Author: Hermann Lotze

Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform

Published: 2016-07-08

Total Pages: 172

ISBN-13: 9781535189194

An excerpt from the INTRODUCTION. § l. If religion were a normal product of the human reason alone, then philosophy would be the sole legitimate organ for determining and interpreting its content. If, on the contrary, it sprung from revelation, then reason alone would not be able, it is true, to have discovered it; but after it were in existence, it would still be necessary to show that its content is the adequate fulfillment for those religious needs which our reason is compelled to cherish, but would not be able of itself to satisfy. Even in this case, therefore, philosophy would have a work to accomplish by way of such authenticating. The assertion that the content of religion is a 'mystery' is not convincing. There can be many facts of religion of such sort that the possibility of their coming to pass may not admit of rational apprehension; and yet we should not without exception take offence at this. But a 'mystery,' the significance of which were not at least susceptible of definition, would be a mere curiosity devoid of all connection with our religious needs, and, on this account, an unworthy object of revelation. Finally, if religion were a morbid product of the human spirit, philosophy, even in that case, would find occupation. It would have to investigate psychologically and historically the conditions of the origin of this delusion, as well as the conditions of avoiding it in the future. The principal object of the following reflections is connected with the first point of view above suggested: that is, we seek to ascertain how much of the content of religion may be discovered, proved, or at least confirmed, agreeably to reason. The two other points of view we subordinate to this. § 2. It is customary to demand faith in contrast with knowledge as the proper organ for the truths of religion. Such an assertion finds its most exact expression in the intimation that, in fact, even scientific cognition always rests ultimately upon 'faith'; that is to say, upon an immediate act of trust in certain absolutely simple and self-evident truths, which are neither in need of any proof, nor capable of it. An important distinction is overlooked in the above-mentioned view. All such ultimate, self-evident propositions, upon which our knowledge is founded, are general judgments, which do not tell us that anything whatever is or takes place, but which only declare what would exist or would have to take place, in case definite conditions occur; or - more concisely - they all merely express certain general rules, which we are obliged to follow in the combination of the content of our ideas. On the contrary, those propositions upon which the most special interest of religion depends,-for example, that God is, that He has created the world, that the soul survives death, etc., - are all of them declarative judgments, which assert a definite, particular fact. With respect to the before-mentioned general propositions, it may be understood that they are capable of being objects of our immediate insight or evidence; for they are nothing but expressions of the forms of activity, in which our reason according to its own nature must be exercised....