Faith, Rationality and the Passions

Faith, Rationality and the Passions presents a fresh and original examination of the relation of religious faith, philosophical rationality and the passions. Contributions see leading scholars refute the widely-held belief that religious Enlightenment forced passion and reason apart.

• Leading Philosophical experts offer new research on the relation of faith, reason and the passions in classic and Enlightenment figures
• Overturns the widely-held presumption that the Enlightenment was responsible for creating a gulf between reason and passion
• Presents original and innovative research on the importance of the late-19th century creation of the category of ‘emotion’, and its striking difference from classic ideas of passion
• Brings together secular science and philosophy of emotion with philosophical theology to seek a new integration of belief, emotion and reason

Introduction: Faith, Rationality, and the Passions 1

SARAH COAKLEY

1 Reason, Faith, and Meaning 13
CHARLES TAYLOR

2 The Invention of Fanaticism 29
WILLIAM T. CAVANAUGH

3 The Late Arrival of Language: Word, Nature, and the Divine in Plato’s Cratylus 41
CATHERINE PICKSTOCK

4 Evagrius Ponticus and the Eastern Monastic Tradition on the Intellect and the Passions 67
COLUMBA STEWART, O.S.B.

5 Tears and Weeping: An Augustinian View 81
PAUL J. GRIFFITHS

6 The Non-Aristotelian Character of Aquinas’s Ethics: Aquinas on the Passions 91
ELEONORE STUMP

7 Skeptical Detachment or Loving Submission to the Good? Reason, Faith, and the Passions in Descartes 107
JOHN COTTINGHAM

8 Hume Versus Kant: Faith, Reason, and Feeling 117
JOHN MILBANK

9 Kant, the Passions, and the Structure of Moral Motivation 139
JOHN HARE

10 “The Monstrous Centaur”? Joseph De Maistre on Reason, Passion, and Violence 157
DOUGLAS HEDLEY

11 Kierkegaard on Faith, Reason, and Passion 169
MEROLD WESTPHAL

12 Revolting Passions 181
THOMAS DIXON

13 Wittgenstein on Faith, Rationality, and the Passions 197
STEPHEN MULHALL

14 Psychology and the Rationality of Emotion 209
GERALD L. CLORE

15 The Neuroscience of Emotion and Reasoning in Social Contexts: Implications for Moral Theology 223
MICHAEL L. SPEZIO

16 Intellectual Emotions and Religious Emotions 241
PETER GOLDIE

Postscript: What (if Anything) can the Sciences Tell Philosophy and Theology about Faith, Rationality, and the Passions? 251
SARAH COAKLEY

Index 257

"Essays creatively experiment with understanding the relationships among faith, rationality, and emotion... the volume encourages intriguing perspectives on 'the passions', showing that engaging the emotions does not necessarily lead to destruction of reason or distortion of religious rationality."
—Mara Brecht, The Heythorp Journal LVIII (2017), pp. 816-860

Sarah Coakley is Norris-Hulse Professor of Divinity at the University of Cambridge, and was previously Mallinckrodt Professor of Divinity at Harvard Divinity School. She is a systematic theologian and philosopher of religion with wide interdisciplinary interests. Her previous publications include Powers and Submissions: Spirituality, Philosophy and Gender (Wiley-Blackwell, 2002), Re-Thinking Gregory of Nyssa (editor, Wiley-Blackwell, 2003), Pain and Its Transformations: The Interface of Biology and Culture (co-edited with Kay Shelemay, 2007) and Re-Thinking Dinoysius the Areopagite (co-edited, with Charles Stang, Wiley-Blackwell, 2009). Faith, Rationality and the Passions presents a fresh examination of the relation of religious faith, philosophical rationality and the passions, by bringing together the insights of leading scholars in philosophy, theology, history of science, psychology and neuroscience. The book re-examines some notable pre-modern accounts of the relation of passion, reason and faith, and from there goes on to overturn the widely-held presumption that it was the Enlightenment that was responsible for creating a gulf between reason and passion. Contributors reveal that the later creation of a stereotype of “Enlightenment reason” obscured the manifold differences and riches of thinking in a period in which ‘passions’ and ‘affections’ were viewed as significant, positive forces with which reason had to do, and ‘emotions’ were yet to be invented.

Presenting innovative research on several fronts, the book argues that the separation between reason and passion is more truly the effect of the invention of the category of ‘emotion’ in the latter part of the 19th century, and contributions outline its striking difference from classic ideas of passion. In formulating this new approach, the book brings together the work of contemporary philosophers, theologians and scientists who creatively collaborate in their efforts to seek a new integration of belief, reason and ‘emotion’.