Athens, Jerusalem, and Karl Jaspers

I stand astride both cities, with a foot in each.  But I favor one leg . . . .

Or to change the metaphor:  I do not look down upon the cities from above as from an Olympian standpoint but sight from the perspective of one of the cities, Athens, towards the other, Jerusalem.

So while I attempt a syn-optic view, my syn-optics cannot quite shake off the perspectivism of all finite optics.  My intellectual honesty demands recognition of this fact. 

In the last paragraph of the preface to the book that bears the slightly inaccurate English title Philosophical Faith and Revelation, Karl Jaspers explains why he entitled his book Der Philosophische Glaube Angesichts der Offenbarung and not Der Philosophische Glaube und Offenbarung.  Jaspers remarks that und (and) would be inappropriate because it would suggest that he was laying claim to a superior standpoint outside both philosophy and revelation, a standpoint that Jaspers does not claim to occupy.  He speaks from the side of philosophy while being touched, struck, affected (betroffen) by  the claims of revelation.  Thus his philosophical faith is in the face of (angesichts) revelation, elaborated in confrontation with it.  And so his philosophical optics are situated and perspectival, not synoptic or panoptic.

 

It seems we have only four options assuming that an Hegelian panoptical God's eye view is unavailable to us, a view which would somehow synthesize philosophy and religion:

1. Deny the tension by eliminating Athens in favor of Jersualem in the manner of an irrationalist like Lev Shestov.
2. Deny the tension by eliminating Jerusalem in favor Athens.
3. Live the tension as a philosopher who takes seriously the claims and demands of revelation.
4. Live the tension as a religionist who take seriously the claims and demands of philosophy.

(1) and (2) are nonstarters.  So we are left with the difficult choice between (3) and (4).