Maverick Philosopher: Strictly Philosophical

Anthony Flood on Philosophy as Misosophy

(Written 23 June 2013)

I wrote an entry on the main sorts of motive that might lead one who takes religion seriously to take up the  study of philosophy.  I distinguished five main motives: the apologetic, the critical, the debunking, the transcensive, and the substitutional.  But there is also the move away from philosophy to religion and its motives. One motive is the suspicion that philosophy is a snare and a delusion, a blind alley; there is the sense that it cannot be what its noble name suggests, namely, the love of wisdom, and that he who seeks wisdom must forsake Athens for Jerusalem.  There is the sense that philosophy is, in truth, misosophy, the hatred of wisdom.  This is an ancient theme, that of the irreconcilable antagonism between religion and philosophy, one traceable back to Tertullian at least. (See Étienne Gilson, Reason and Revelation in the Middle Ages, Charles Scribners, 1938, Chapter One.)

Anthony Flood has been an off-and-on correspondent of mine since the early days of the blogosphere: I believe we first made contact in 2004.  I admire him because he "studies everything" as per my masthead motto, "Study everything, join nothing."  As far as I can judge from my eremitic outpost, Tony is a genuine truth-seeker, a restless quester who has canvassed many, many  positions with an open mind and a willingness to admit errors and change his positions. (The man was at one time a research assistant for Herbert Aptheker!)  Better a perpetual seeker than a premature finder.  Here below we are ever on the way: in statu viae. 

Tony's views have changed over the years I have known him and it is his present (2013) attitude toward philosophy that  I wish to examine here.  In particular, I will evaluate his claim that philosophy is misosophy.  Is this right?  Or is it rather the case that religion when opposed to philosophy is misology, the hatred of reason?  Is philosophy misosophy or is religion misology?  That is  a stark, if somewhat inaccurate, was of defining the problematic. I will quote liberally from Tony's position statement and then comment.

The position I've come to has been percolating in my mind for years.  It intruded upon my thinking intermittently, but until recently I was unable to remove certain obstacles to my assent. [. . .] The critique of philosophy worked out by   Gregory L. Bahnsen . . .  however, has at last won my allegiance . . . 

[. . .]

The gist of Bahnsen’s critique is that philosophy as it has been practiced is virtually at enmity with Christ, who is the Wisdom of God (1 Cor 1:24).  To the degree that it is op-posed to Christ, to that degree it is misosophy, the hatred rather than the love of wisdom.  For the Christian, wisdom is not an abstract virtue, but a divine person.  To pretend indifference to Christ is pretend indifference to the only Wisdom worth having; to hate Christ is to hate wisdom, that is, to hate him in whom all the treasures of wisdom are hid (Col 2:3); and to hate wisdom is to love death (Prov 8:36). Christians may continue to use “philosophy” and its cognates, but they reserve the right to qualify that usage.  Between the philosopher and the misosopher, covenant keeper and covenant breaker, there is antithesis.

Tony hasn't given us the "gist" of Bahnsen's critique but the conclusion at which he arrives; the gist of the critique would have to contain a summary of the reasons for the conclusion.  Setting that quibble aside, I move to a substantive point.  While it is true that for a Christian Christ is the source of all wisdom and therefore, in a sense, wisdom itself, saying this is consistent with maintaining that philosophy is the love of wisdom.  The philosopher qua philosopher seeks wisdom using his unaided reason, unaided, that is, by the data of revelation.  It is not that the philosopher qua philosopher rejects the data of revelation or the very idea that there could be such a thing as divine revelation; it is rather that he makes no use of it qua philosopher.  (To save keystrokes I won't keep repeating the qualification 'qua philosopher' but it remains in force.)  To borrow a term from Edmund Husserl, the philosopher 'brackets' revelation.  I see nothing in the nature of philosophy to prevent a philosopher from arriving at the conclusion that wisdom is ultimately a person.  So my first question to Tony would be: Why must philosophy be opposed to wisdom when wisdom is taken to be a divine person?

Admittedly, philosophy cannot bring us to Wisdom in its fullness, especially if wisdom is a divine person, but it hardly follows that it cannot serve as a propaedeutic to a participation in this Wisdom.  Here is a crude analogy.  The menu is not the meal.  But the menu is not opposed to the meal.  The menu provides access to the meal via verbal description, the very same meal that one goes on to eat.  It is not as if there are two meals, the meal of the menu writer and the meal of the eater.  There is exactly one meal accessed in two ways, the first obviously inferior to the second. (If you don't get the analogy, forget it.)

There is an important point of terminology that we need to discuss.  Tony claims that Christians have the right to use 'philosophy' in their way as meaning the love of Christ.  (After all, if wisdom is Christ, then the love of wisdom is the love of Christ.)  I deny this right.  'Philosophy' means what it means and that is to be discerned from the practice of the great philosophers beginning with the ancient Greeks.  To know what philosophy is one reads Plato, for starters, and not just for starters.  Philosophy is what is done in those dialogues and what has arisen by way of commentary on and critique of what was done in those famous discussions.  "Philosophy is Plato and Plato philosophy." (Emerson)  I characterize philosophy here.  My characterization begins with this sentence: "Philosophy is not fundamentally a set of views but an activity whereby a questing individual, driven by a need to know the truth, applies discursive reason to the data of life in an attempt to arrive at the ultimate truth about them." 

The Christian, therefore, is not free to use 'philosophy' and cognates in an idiosyncratic way.  Or rather he is free to do so but if he does he causes confusion and makes communication difficult if not impossible.  'Philosophy' does not and cannot mean 'love of Christ.' This is not to say that one cannot move beyond philosophy to Christian faith.  One can, and perhaps one should.  But nothing is to be gained by tampering with the established sense of 'philosophy.' 

Tony writes, "Between the philosopher and the misosopher, covenant keeper and covenant breaker, there is antithesis."  I object to this sentence because of the misuse of the word 'philosopher.'  Tony has decided that the philosopher, in his sense, is a lover of Christ, and that a philosopher (in the proper sense) is a misosopher and thus a hater of Christ.  But he has no right to hijack the terminology, nor, as regards the substantive question, has he shown that philosophy is opposed to Christian wisdom.

Autonomy versus Heteronomy/Theonomy

We now come to the crux of the matter: the tension between the autonomy of finite reason and the heteronomy of obedient faith.  This is, in essence, the tension between Athens and Jerusalem.  Whether this tension is an opposition or contradiction, as Tertullian thought, and as Tony seems to think, remains to be seen, and cannot be assumed at the outset. (I set aside the tension between Athens and Benares, the discussion of which does not belong here, even though that too is a tension between philosophy and a kind of religion.)  Finite reason, reason as we find it within ourselves, presumes to judge heaven and earth and everything in between; it would play "the spectator of all time and existence," to borrow a beautiful line from Plato's Republic.  But it must be admitted that the results have been meager.  Has even one substantive philosophical question been resolved to the satisfaction of all competent practitioners in two and one half millennia?  No.  What we have instead are endless controversies and the strife of systems.  Magnificent in aspiration, philosophy is miserable in execution.   Philosophy has proven impotent to provide us with the knowledge we seek, the knowledge of ultimates, and in particular salvific knowledge, knowledge that caters not merely to our theoretical needs but to our deepest existential ones as well, knowledge that does not merely inform us, but transforms us.

To make up for the infirmity of finite reason we must look elsewhere to a source of succor lying beyond the human horizon.  And so reason, while remaining within the sphere of immanence and autonomy, raises the question of the possibility of revelation, the possibility of an irruption into the sphere of immanence from beyond the human-all-too-human.  The possibility is entertained that the true nomos is theonomos, and that what at first appears as heteronomy is in reality theonomy.  The possibility is entertained that the prideful intellect must fall silent and humbly submit to God's Word.

But at this juncture we encounter what Josiah Royce calls the religious paradox or

The Paradox of Revelation. Suppose someone claims to have received a divine communication regarding the divine will, the divine plan, the need for salvation, the way to salvation, or any related matter. This person can be asked, "By what marks do you personally distinguish a divine revelation from any other sort of report?" (Josiah Royce, The Sources of Religious Insight, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1912, pp. 22-23)

How is a putative revelation authenticated? By what marks or criteria do we recognize it as genuine? The identifying marks must be in the believer's mind prior to his acceptance of the revelation as valid. For it is by testing the putative revelation against these marks that the believer determines that it is genuine. One needs "a prior acquaintance with the nature and marks and, so to speak, signature of the divine will." (p. 25)

But how can a creature who needs saving lay claim to this prior acquaintance with the marks of genuine revelation? The paradox in a nutshell is that it seems that only revelation could provide one with what one needs to be able to authenticate a report as revelation.  Royce:

Faith, and the passive and mysterious intuitions of the devout, seem to depend on first admitting that we are naturally blind and helpless and ignorant, and worthless to know, of ourselves, any saving truth; and upon nevertheless insisting that we are quite capable of one very lofty type of knowledge -- that we are capable, namely, of knowing God's voice when we hear it, of distinguishing a divine revelation from all other reports, of being sure, despite all our worthless ignorance, that the divine higher life which  seems to speak to us in our moments of intuition is what it  declares itself to be. If, then, there is a pride of intellect, does there not seem to be an equal pride of faith, an equal pretentiousness involved in undertaking to judge that certain of our least articulate intuitions are infallible? Surely here is a genuine problem, and it is a problem for the reason. (103)

Is it a genuine problem or not? Can the church's teaching authority be invoked to solve the problem? Suppose a point of doctrine regarding salvation and the means thereto is being articulated at a church council. The fathers in attendance debate among themselves, arrive at a result, and claim that it is inspired and certified by the Holy Spirit. But by what marks do they authenticate a putative deliverance of the Holy Spirit as a genuine deliverance? How do they know that the Holy Spirit is inspiring them and not something else such as their own subconscious desire for a certain result?  This is exactly Royce's problem.

The problem, then, is this.  Reason is weak and philosophy, whose engine is unaided reason,  cannot deliver the goods.  The salvific wisdom we seek it cannot supply.  It remains an interminable and inconclusive seeking, but never a finding; it remains forever the (erothetic) love of wisdom, not its possession.  So we look beyond philosophy to the data of revelation.  But how do we authenticate such data?  How do we distinguish pseudo-revelation from the genuine article?  By what marks is it known?  We are thrown back upon our infirm reasoning powers to sort this out.

So, while confessing in all humility the infirmity of reason, we have no option but to rely on it as we do when, by its means, we come to admit the infirmity of reason.  Though weak, reason is strong enough to acquire a genuine insight into its own weakness and limitations  and the need for supplementation ab extra.  But this supplementation by revelation cannot go untested.  Tony may be right that we need to "repent" and submit our wills to God's, but what that will is has to be discerned, and there is no way around the fact that it is up to us to do the discerning using the God-given equipment we possess, as infirm as it may be. 

But let's hear what Flood has to say:

From 1969, when I first began to read philosophy (as it is commonly called), I had very rarely questioned the presumption of autonomy exhibited by my models in that field, whereby the human mind posits itself as the final judge of what is real, true, and good.  I did not question that presumptive stance even when the provisional conclusions I arrived at were professedly Christian-theistic and therefore incompatible with it.  The way I approached “God” did not ethically comport with wanting God.  I played it safe, hedged my bets, looking for nothing more than a piece of metaphysical furniture to complete the interior design of my latest philosophical mansion. The irony of this discrepancy was lost on me, at least until recently.

What Tony seems to be saying here is that when we approach God via philosophy, i.e., via finite discursive reason, relying only on those evidences that can be validated from within the sphere of immanence, eschewing any such exogenic input as the data of revelation, what we arrive at is not the true God, but 'God,' a mere furnishing in the mansion of immanence, a mansion that is perhaps better compared to a doghouse.  Tony thus seems to be sounding a very old theme, that of the opposition of the God of the philosophers to the the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob.  I myself do not accept this opposition for reasons I supply in Pascal and Buber on the God of the Philosophers. 

To revert to the crude analogy presented above, there are not two meals, the meal of the menu-writer and the meal of the eater.  One and the same meal is 'accessed' in two different ways, via description and via 'ingestion.' What the menu-writer describes, assuming the accuracy of the description,  is not something that exists only in his mind, a bit of mental furniture, but something that exists in reality.  Similarly, when the philosopher speaks of God , he is not speaking of something that exists only in his mind, but of something that exists in reality.  But let's hear some more from Tony:

As I now see it, that loss was not innocent and my present insight is wholly of grace. Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom (Prov 9:10), however, not something tacked on at the end of one’s system.  (Part V of Whitehead’s Process and Reality comes to mind.  So does Chapter XIX of Lonergan’s Insight.)

Human beings, Christian and non-Christian alike, do know things.  They do reason.  They do calculate, induct, deduce, plan, accuse, exonerate, interpret.  They do write histories, novels, and plays. They do compose symphonies and conduct experiments.  They do creatively improvise on canvas, in the sculpture studio, and on the band stand.  But their attempts to account for these facts apart from their dependence upon God have been marvelous failures, for they cannot secure the experience-transcending universal claims on which they rely when they engage in any of those activities.  They ought to acknowledge the laws of logic, the uniformity of nature, moral absolutes as gifts of God.  Unless God grants them the spirit of repentance, however, this they will not do, for it is offensive to their posture of autonomy.  But they pay a price for this posture in the coin of rank foolishness.

Ironically, such a critique of philosophy is what one would predict professing Christian philosophers to produce, informed as they are by their awareness of the covenantal relationship they bear to God. Historically, however, what comes under the label “Christian philosophy” is compromised.  Christian philosophers have generally given their blessing to pretenses of neutrality and autonomy, content to conjecture how far the human mind can go under its own steam before grabbing the supernatural rope to take them the rest of the way.  

They can give that blessing, however, only by suppressing awareness (that they otherwise happily acknowledge) that the human being is a created, covenant-bound bearer of the image of God.  That is, Christian philosophers join their enemies in “testing” the hypothesis that Christian theism is at least as “reasonable” as anything else on offer in the marketplace of ideas.  As though any inference at all could be reasonable if Christian theism were not antecedently true.  As though an impersonal matrix of possibility were Lord of all.  I understand why Christianity’s opponents “load” the argument against Christian theism.  But why do Christians follow them? 

In this last paragraph, Tony raises a couple of fascinating questions.  One is whether (to put it in my own way) the necessary truth of the laws of logic presupposes the existence of God.  There are those who have argued such a thing, but, if Tony is right, why bother?  If Jerusalem supplies all the needs of man, who needs Athens?  If reason cannot be relied upon to bring us to any truth at all, then it cannot be relied upon to show that logic presupposes God.  The other question concerns the relation between the modal framework, standardly articulated in terms of 'possible worlds,' and God.  Analytic theists standardly maintain that God exists in all possible worlds.  Does such talk subject God to the modal framework, thereby compromising the divine sovereignty?  Is God lord of all, including the modal framework, or is God subject to the modal framework?  Or neither?

These questions cannot be pursued here, but one comment is in order, and an obvious one it is:  Tony seems merely to beg the question against his opponents.  For example, he just assumes that Athens and Jerusalem are irreconcilably antagonistic  and that the whole truth resides in Jerusalem.  He is free to make these assumptions of course.  No one is compelled to remain within philosophy's smoky rooms.  The door is unlocked and one is free to pass through it.  But then one should not attempt to explain or justify one's exit.  For any such attempt will entangle on in the very thing one is trying to get away from.

Addendum (13 November 2018) 

Re-reading and re-evaluating five years later I find that I still object to Flood's linguistic recommendation that 'philosophy' be used to refer to the love of Christ. Granted, philosophy is the love of wisdom and the pursuit of wisdom. But it is the pursuit of wisdom by means of  reason unaided by divine revelation.  The italicized phrase is an essential ingredient in any adequate definition of 'philosophy.' It may well be the case that Wisdom is incarnate in the person of Christ; but that this is so cannot be known by the philosopher qua philosopher.  It is a revealed truth if it is a truth.

Furthermore, a philosopher does not hate wisdom if he finds that he cannot, qua philosopher, accept the Christian revelation.  Such a philosopher simply does not acknowledge Christ as the ultimate wisdom.  It is therefore wrong to call him a misosopher and philosophy, properly and traditionally understood, misosophy.

But what I have just written leaves untouched the fundamental problem of how to reconcile the autonomy of reason with the heteronomy of obedient faith. Some will say that they cannot be reconciled, that one must opt for one or the other, for the Athenian life of autonomous reason with its demands for evidence and justification, or for the Hierosolymic life of heteronomous faith and obedient love.

Flood above opts for the latter.  But what could motivate this free opting?  Don't the claims of revealed religion need to be examined and assessed?  Given a plurality of putative revelations, how decide which is the true revelation?  Must not reason play a role here?  On the other hand, reason is weak and unavailing. The conclusions of the philosophers are inconclusive. Great minds have tried to put philosophy on the path of strict science, but without success.  

I don't know what the solution is.  But a mere opting for one 'city' or the other strikes me as no solution at all.  So I still think I was right when I wrote:

Tony seems merely to beg the question against his opponents.  For example, he just assumes that Athens and Jerusalem are irreconcilably antagonistic  and that the whole truth resides in Jerusalem.  

My Relation to Catholicism

Written 8 October 2011; minor revisions 13 September 2018.

.......................................

This from a graduate student in philosophy who describes himself as a theologically conservative Protestant who is toying with the idea of 'swimming the Tiber':

In a recent post  you say this: ""Study everything, join nothing" means that one ought to beware of institutions and organizations with their tendency toward self-corruption and the corruption of their members. (The Catholic  Church is a good recent example.)"

Until I read this comment, I, for some reason, was under the impression that you were a Catholic.  I was wondering if you would be willing to elaborate on this comment, say more about your take on the Catholic Church, direct me to a post in which you say more about these  issues, or direct me to some literature on this topic that you think  would be useful.

This request allows me to clarify my relation to Catholicism.  I am a cradle Catholic brought up by a pious mother and an indifferent father. She made sure that I attended the parochial school from the first grade on.  Those were the pre-Vatican II  days before the rot set in, when being Catholic was something rather more definite than it  is now.  Many with my kind of upbringing were unfazed by their religious training, went along to get along, but then sloughed  off the training and the trappings as soon as they could. 

For a religion to take root in a person, the person must have a religious nature or predisposition to begin with.  Only some have it, just as only some have a philosophical predisposition. Having the former predisposition is a necessary but not sufficient condition of a religion's taking firm root.  Another necessary condition is that the person have some religious and/or mystical experiences.  Without the predisposition and the experiences, religion, especially a religion as rich in dogmatic articulation as Roman Catholicism, and as stringent in its moral demands, will be exceedingly hard to credit and take seriously in the face of the countervailing influences from nature (particularly the nature in one's own loins) and society with its worldly values. 

For some Catholics of my Boomer generation, the extreme cognitive dissonance between the teachings of the Church and the 'teachings' and attitudes of the world, in particular the world of the '60s, led to radical questioning.  For example, we were taught that all sins against the 6th and 9th Commandments were mortal and that premarital and extramarital sex  even in those forms that fell shy of intercourse were wrong.  The 'teachings' of the world and the surrounding culture were of course quite the opposite.  For many brought up Catholic, this was not much of a problem: the cognitive dissonance was quickly relieved by simply dropping the religion or else watering it down into some form of namby-pamby humanism.  For others like myself who had the religious predisposition and the somewhat confirmatory religious/mystical experiences, the problem of cognitive dissonance was very painful and not easily solved.

And, having not only a religious, but also a philosophical predisposition, it was natural to turn to philosophy as a means of sorting things out and relieving the tension between the doctrines and practices that had been the center of my life and the source of existential meaning, on the one hand,  and the extramural wide world of sex, drugs, rock and roll, and the secular values of 'making it' and getting ahead, on the other.  The sex bit was just one issue.  The fundamental problem I faced was whether any of what I was brought up to believe, of what I internalized and took with utmost seriousness, was true. 

I am blessed or cursed with an analytic mind and a serious disposition. For such a person words mean things and truth matters.  As salutary as belief is, it is only true beliefs that can be credited.  This brings me to a fundamental theme of this weblog, namely, the tension between Athens and Jerusalem. I see this as a fruitful tension, and I see the absence of anything like it the Islamic world as part of the explanation of that world's inanition.

It is a fruitful tension in the West but also in those few individuals who are citizens of both 'cities,' those few who harbor within them both the religious and the philosophical predisposition.  It is a tension that cannot be resolved by elimination of one or the other of the 'cities.' But why is it fruitful?

The philosopher and the religionist need each other's virtues. The philosopher needs reverence to temper his analytic probing and humility to mitigate the arrogance of his high-flying inquiry and over-confident reliance on his magnificent yet paltry powers of thought. The religionist needs skepticism to limit his gullibility, logical rigor to discipline his tendency toward blind fideism, and balanced dialectic to chasten his disposition to fanaticism.

So am I a Catholic or not?  Well, I am certainly a Catholic by upbringing, so I am a Catholic in what we could call a cultural or sociological sense.  But it is very difficult for a philosopher to be a naive adherent of any religion, especially a religion as deeply encrusted with dogma as Roman Catholicism.  He will inevitably be led to 'sophisticate' his adherence, and to the extent that he does this he will wander off into what are called 'heresies.'  He will find it impossible not to ask questions.  His craving for clarity and certainty will cause him to ask whether key doctrines are even intelligible, let alone true.  Just what are we believing when we believe that there is one God in three divine persons?  What does it even mean? Just what are we believing when we believe that there once walked on the earth a man who was fully human but also fully divine? How is it possible?

I distance myself both from the anti-Catholic polemicists and the pro-Catholic apologists.  Polemics and apologetics are two sides of the same coin, the coin of  ideology.  'Ideology' is not a pejorative term in my mouth.  An ideology is a set of beliefs oriented toward action, and act we must.  So believe we must, in something or other.  Human action is not a mechanical response to stimuli but free action guided by beliefs. Religions are ideologies in this sense: action-guiding systems of belief.  But philosophy-as-inquiry is not ideological, although a particular product of such inquiry, a philosophy, might well be.  For more on this, see Philosophy, Religion, and the Philosophy of Religion: Four Theses.

I am skeptical of organizations and institutions despite the fact that we cannot do without them.  The truth is something too large and magnificent to be 'institutionalized.'  The notion that it is the sole possession of one church, the 'true' church, is a  claim hard to credit especially in light of the fact that different churches claim to be the true one.  Also dubious is the notion that extra ecclesiam salus non est, that outside the church there is no salvation.  And note that different churches will claim to be the one outside of which there is no salvation.  That should give one pause.  If it doesn't, then I suggest that one is  insufficiently critical, insufficiently concerned with truth, and too much concerned with one's own doxastic security.  Why does one need a church at all?  And why this one?  Why not Eastern Orthodoxy or some denomination of  Protestantism? These are questions whose formulation and answering must needs be 'extra-ecclesial.' 

Now if you are a philosopher this is all just more grist for the mill, along with all the things that Catholic apologists will say in defense of their faith.  They will say that their church is the true church because it was founded by Jesus Christ (who is God) and has existed continuously from its founding under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit whose inspiration guarantees the correctness of its teachings on faith and morals. 

They will tell me that a church is necessary to correct the errors of private opinions.  Now it must be frankly admitted that thinking for oneself, treading the independent path, and playing the maverick can just as easily lead one into error as into truth.  If thinking for oneself were the royal road to truth, then all who think for themselves would agree on what the truth is.   They don't.  But let us not forget that that church dogmas often reflect the private opinions of the dominant characters at the councils.  The common opinion is just the private opinion that won the day.  You say Augustine was   inspired by the Holy Spirit?  That is a claim you are making.  How validate it?  Why don't the Protestants agree with you?  Why don't the Eastern Orthodox agree with you?

This only scratches the surface, but one cannot spend the whole day blogging.  

Solubility Skepticism, Religion, and Reason

Written 7 May 2014

R. C.  writes,

There is much depth in your short post on religion and reason from 6 May. Here are two points I often ponder about this topic:

First, I appreciate the difficulty of solving philosophical problems, but I wonder about the claim that they are insoluble (I suppose “insoluble” means “insoluble by humans alone”). If the problems are beyond mere human knowledge, how could we know this? One may inductively suspect insolubility by reflecting upon his experience of practicing philosophy, but how could he know the unknowable? If we can’t solve philosophical problems by philosophizing, then it seems we can’t conclude insolubility by philosophizing because this very conclusion would be a philosophical conclusion.

BV:  I hold that the central problems of philosophy are most of them genuine, some of them humanly important, but all of them insoluble.  And you are right, by 'insoluble' I mean insoluble by us or by beings of a similar cognitive architecture, ectypal intellects in Kant's jargon. Furthermore, pace Nicholas Rescher, I don't count a 'solution' that is relative to some set of background assumptions and cognitive values as a solution.  Of course there are solutions in this sense.  Nominalists solve the problem of univerals in one way, realists in another, conceptualists in a third, etc. But those are merely intramural solutions.  What is wanted are solutions acceptable to all, solutions that hold outside the walls of self-reinforcing enclaves of the like-minded.

You ask a very important question:  How could one know that the central philosophical problems are insoluble?  You yourself supplied the clue:  by induction from philosophical experience.  The best and the brightest have been at this game for thousands of years but not one single problem has been solved during this period, solved to the satisfaction of all competent practitioners. Everything is up for grabs, even the most elementary and picayune topics.  Take a look at what is going one as we speak in the thread on logical form.  Philosophers can't even agree on the most basic concepts of deductive logic.  There is controversy everywhere.  This is a plain fact.

The strife of systems and the ubiquity and longevity of controversy need explaining and I offer the insolubility thesis as the best explanation.  Why haven't the problems been solved?  Because they are insoluble.  I agree with Benson Mates on this point.  Of course, the following is an invalid argument form:  Such-and-such has hitherto not been accomplished; ergo, such-and-such will never be accomplished.  But then every inductive argument is invalid.  Some inductive arguments, however, do quite reasonably support their conclusions.  

But you can and should press your objection.  If I maintain that the problems of philosophy are insoluble, then, given that the metaphilosophical problem of whether or not philosophical problems are soluble is itself a philosophical problem,  it follows that the metaphilosophical problem is insoluble.  Is this a difficult for my position?  Not obviously.  I simply 'bite the bullet' as they say.  I accept that the meta problem is also insoluble.

In fact, the insolubility of the meta problem is further evidence of my thesis.

In other words, I am not dogmatizing.  I am not claiming to know with certainty that the problems of philosophy are insoluble.  I am not claiming to have solved the meta problem.  I am merely claiming that the insolubility thesis is very reasonably maintained.  Not every truth is such that we can know it to be true.  With some truths the most we can expect here below is reasonable belief.

Compare God and the soul.  I do not claim to know with certainty whether either exists.  I claim merely that it it is reasonable to affirm both.  

Second, I agree that it’s wise to intelligently practice religion and mysticism -- which, by the way, rules out superstition and group-think! Take religion: religious practice does not exclude reason, as Mates’ quote implies. It is a false dilemma to say “One can seek truth either by reason or religion, but not both.” Why not both? If I try to lift a stone and realize I can’t manage alone, this would not entail that I can or should stop lifting. If a stronger person assists me, and I trust his assistance, I can still lift. He may request my help. He may even require that I give it my all, and I may grow from the effort. Likewise, intelligent religion requires reason.

Consider Christianity: The biblical conception of faith is “trust based on good reasons”. This point is clear in passages such as Hebrews 11:1 and 1 Peter 3:15. In the Gospels, Jesus himself reasons and encourages others to do the same. Christian faith calls for the whole self: heart, mind, soul, and strength.  

I’d be interested in your thoughts on reason and intelligent religion.

BV: I basically agree with you.  Reason in the end must confess its own infirmity.  It cannot deliver on its promises. The truth-seeker must explore other avenues.  Religion is one, mysticism is another. 

From Religion to Philosophy: A Typology of Motives for Making the Move

People come to philosophy from various 'places.'  Some come from religion, others from mathematics and the natural sciences, still others from literature and the arts.  There are other termini a quis as well.  In this post I am concerned only with the move from religion to philosophy.  What are the main types of reasons for those who are concerned with religion to take up the serious study of philosophy?  I count five main types of motive.

1. The Apologetic Motive.  Some look to philosophy for apologetic tools.  Their concern is to clarify and defend the tenets of their religious faith, tenets they do not question, or do not question in the main, against those who do question them, or even attack them.  For someone whose central motive is apologetic, the aim is not to seek a truth they do not possess, but to articulate and defend a truth, the "deposit of faith," that they already possess, if not in fullness, at least in outline.

2. The Critical Motive.  Someone who is animated by the Critical Motive seeks to understand religion and evaluate its claim to truth, while taking it seriously.  To criticize is not to oppose, but to sift, evaluate, assay, separate the true from the false, the reasonable from the unreasonable.  The critic is not out to defend or attack but to understand and evaluate.  Open to the claims of religion, his question is: But is it true?

3. The Debunking Motive.  If the apologist presupposes the truth of his religion, or some religion, the debunker presupposes the falsehood of a particular religion or of every religion.  He takes the doctrines and institutions of religion seriously as things worth attacking, exposing, debunking, unmasking, refuting.

The apologist, the critic, and the debunker all take religion seriously as something worth defending, worth evaluating, or worth attacking using the tools of philosophy.  For all three, philosophy is a tool, not an end in itself. 

The apologist moves to philosophy without leaving religion. If he succeeds in defending his faith with the weapons of philosophy, well and good; if he fails, it doesn't really matter.  He has all the essential truth he needs from his religion.  His inability to mount an intellectually respectable defense of it is a secondary matter.

The critic moves to philosophy with the option of leaving religion behind.  Whether or not he leaves it behind depends on the outcome of his critique.  Neither staying nor leaving is a foregone cnclusion.

The debunker either never had a living faith, or else he had one but lost it.  As a debunker, his decision has been made and his Rubicon crossed: religion is buncombe from start to finish, dangerous buncombe that needs to be unmasked and opposed. Strictly speaking, only the debunker who once had a living faith moves from it to philosophy.  You cannot move away from a place where you never were.

4. The Transcensive Motive.  The transcender aims to find in philosophy something that completes and transcends religion while preserving its truth.  One way to flesh this out would be in Hegelian terms: religion and philosophy both aim to express the Absolute, but only philosophy does so adequately.  Religion is an inadequate 'pictorial' (vortstellende) representation of the Absolute.  On this sort of approach all that is good in religion is aufgehoben in philosophy, simultaneously cancelled and preserved, roughly in the way the bud is both cancelled and preserved in the flower.

5. The Substitutional Motive.  The substitutionalist aims to find in philosophy a substitute for religion.  Religion, when taken seriously, makes a total claim on its adherents' higher energies.  A person who, for any reason, becomes disenchanted with religion, but is not prepared to allow himself to degenerate to the level of the worldling, may look to invest his energies elsewhere in some other lofty pursuit.  Some will turn to social or political activism.  And of course there are other termini ad quos on the road from religion. The substitutionalist abandons religion for philosophy.  In  a sense, philosophy becomes his religion.  It is in her precincts that he seeks his highest meaning and an outlet for his noblest impulses.

Some Questions

A. What is my motive?  (2).  Certainly not (1):  I seem to be constitutionally incapable of taking the religion of my upbringing , or any religion, as simply true without examination.  I can't suppress the questions that naturally arise.  We have it on high authority that "The unexamined life is not worth living."  That examination, of course, extends to everything, including religion, and indeed also to this very examining.  Note  that I am not appealing to the authority of Socrates/Plato since their authority can be validated rationally and autonomously.

Certainly not (3): I am not a debunker.  Not (4) or (5) either.  Hegel is right: both religion and philosophy treat of the Absolute.  Hegel is wrong, however, in thinking that religion is somehow completed by or culminates in philosophy.  I incline to the view that Athens and Jersualem are at odds with each other, that there is a tension between them, indeed a fruitful, productive tension, one that accounts in part for the vitality of the West as over against the inanition of the Islamic world.  To put it starkly, it it is the tension between the autonomy of reason and the heteronomy of obedient faith (cf. Leo Strauss).  Jerusalem is not a suburb of Athens.

Nor do I aim to substitute philosophy for religion.  Philosophy, with its "bloodless ballet of categories," is not my religion.  Man does not live by the discursive intellect alone.

My view is that there are four main paths to the Absolute, philosophy, religion, mysticism, and morality.  They are separate and somehow all must be trod.  No one of them has proprietary rights in the Absolute.  How integrate them?  Integration may not be possible here below.  The best we can do is tack back and forth among them.  So we think, we pray, we meditate and we live under the aegis of moral demands taken as absolute.

This theme is developed in Philosophy, Religion, Mysticism, and Wisdom. 

B. Have I left any types of motive out?