Motus Mentis

Our friend Bill Vallicella explores the tension — which he believes is a fruitful one — between Athens and Jerusalem.

Why is such a tension — an essential feature of Christianity, with its mysteries and paradoxes, that is conspicuously absent in Islam — fruitful?

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.

Eric Hoffer told us that such tension, though sometimes difficult to bear, is nevertheless essential for our becoming fully human, because these tidal forces “stretch men’s souls”:

It is the stretched soul that makes music, and souls are stretched by the pull of opposites””opposite bents, tastes, yearnings. Where there is no polarity””where energies flow smoothly in one direction””there will be much doing but no music.

Amen to that, say I.

Read Bill’s post here.