January 30, 2020
Modernity has elevated pure, abstract reasoning as the only way to know about reality. Modernity has become disillusioned with reason for the same reason that it has disillusioned everything else. The superiority of reason over superstitious myths was seen by postmodernists as another myth to be exposed.
Postmodernists were right to see that the dictates of reason were not completely separated from our lives, self-image, and desires, but were colored by the stories we told about ourselves. But they were wrong to conclude that the reasons were inherently dubious.
That’s because human life is intelligible and truly steeped in narrative form, allowing us to tell true stories about ourselves that reflect the actual narrative form of our lives and history as a whole. Reason can serve as the gloss of the creation story. The mistake was thinking it could be sealed in the lab in the first place.
It’s time to return to looking at our lives and history itself. mythology
beside logo It transcends both as an essential way of understanding truth and as words dissolve in the quiet contemplation of the person who told the story before it begins.
This is the conclusion of a three-part interview with poet-philosopher James Matthew Wilson about his book Vision of the Soul: Truth, Goodness, and Beauty in the Western Tradition.
content
[2:52] Recovering the role of storytelling in the perception of truth. Modern attempts to separate reason from story
[12:33] How Plato used stories as examples, but also to advance his argument and obtain an overarching truth that reason reaches only partially and inefficiently.
[20:55] Stories as the form and meaning of human life
[24:47] The modern abandonment of narrative as a means to truth.
logo I’m lame without it mythology
[30:42] Descartes’ reduction of reason becomes a tool for gaining mastery around the world
[33:45] Jordan Peterson Campell – Jean Jung’s typical approach “The Metaphysics of the Poor Man”
[38:29] logo like gross mythology
[41:45] Postmodernist suspicions of reason conditioned by narrative
[44:05] The highest form of intellectual life is not scholarship or analysis, but quiet prayer
[49:10] Philosophy as a way of life. Invention of “intellectual” as a noun
[53:10] Practical takeaways: 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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