Revelation, Rationality, Knowledge & Truth — Page 51
EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY a challenge extremely difficult to meet. There is no one else to help him or guide his steps in the dreary wilderness of existence. Commenting on the episode of Abrahamªs, he explains the presence of angels as a psychic phenomenon. . To him, that Divine revelation which the angels brought to. Abrahams was no more than the anguish of his soul. Wrong as we may consider Sartre's explanation, we must pay homage to his fiery outburst of desperation and vengefulness. This applies far more befittingly to Sartre himself who may have suffered pangs of anguish and exasperation in the emptiness of his Godless philosophy. . Revelation is the anguish of the soul, is indeed a profoundly revealing statement from the vantage point of an atheist if atheists ever admit to possessing souls. Bernard Shaw is close to Sartre, but not quite, when he defines revelation as ‘inner voices' at best, a smart remark of a dramatist lacking the depth and force of Sartre's reflection! All said and done, Sartre fails to distinguish between inspiration and revelation, terms that simply do not exist in his philosophy; what does exist is the agony of soul a tongue of fire that leaps out in occasional outbursts of desperation. No revelation descends from on high, whatever rises, rises from the depth of human frustration. . Hegel (1770-1831) is another agnostic whose interest in denial is not as strong and committed. His philosophy is not directly related to religious issues. Among his outstanding contributions is his attempt to create a bridge between subjectivity and objectivity. . It was he who first presented the dialectical conflict between the ideas of one generation and the ideas of the following generation. This is the well-known Hegelian theory of dialectical struggle between thesis and anti-thesis. . He simply believed in contrariety of ideas. This means that ideas which are contrary to each other, but not 51