Revelation, Rationality, Knowledge & Truth — Page 49
EUROPEAN PHILOSOPHY rationality. It could be adhered to only if one withdraws into the shell of obstinate rejection of reason. The moment the tortoise dares to stick his neck out, his head would be plucked by rationality, waiting for just such an opportunity. . Yet Kierkegaard believed that he could keep both his. Christianity and reason simultaneously. Perhaps he knew how to have his cake and eat it too!. Berkeley and Hegel remained consistently adamant that reason must be given preference over sensory experience. God to them was mainly a description invented to fill a void for a logical gap. Thus the debate continued to rage among the believing European philosophers and the non-believing ones. It raged on, until its fire was extinguished by burning itself out. All that was left, were the ashes of faith in caskets of agnosticism and atheism. . As for the believing Jewish philosophers, their strategy was much less vulnerable. They believed in the historicity of their faith. The victorious past of Judaism over its Gentile antagonists was sufficient for them to keep their cinders alive. To debate the issue between faith on the one side and reason on the other, was just irrelevant. . Among the atheists, Nietzsche, Sartre, Merleau-Ponty,. Camus and Marx were a category in themselves. None believed in generalizations. As such, it was not possible for them to universalize subjectivity. The subjective experience of each person has a uniqueness about it which cannot be exactly shared by others. . We believe that here it is important to devote a subsection to Marxism. However much we may differ with this philosophy, it cannot be denied that it has universally earned for itself a permanent place which will always be treated with respect by an enormously large number of people all over the world. 49