Discourse on Method<\/em>, it will even free us from illness and aging.<\/p>\n\n\n\nCan you see the connection with our contemporary culture and our obsession with looking forever youthful, or our exaltation of doing and performing over being and relating? Today, the transhumanist movement seductively offers us the dream of Descartes: we can seize the power to transcend our very mortality by means of technological modifications to our humanity. Terrifying.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I began studying philosophy thirty years ago, and am grateful for many wise professors, not so much for the information they communicated as the shared pursuit of wisdom in a respectful and playful environment. For most of them, philosophy was a way of being, not a collection of ideas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In 1998, just as I was beginning my graduate courses in philosophy, John Paul II published his encyclical letter Fides et Ratio<\/em> (\u201cFaith and Reason\u201d). He called for a renewal of philosophy as a shared quest for wisdom and meaning. Human beings, he said, are philosophers (\u201clovers of wisdom\u201d) by our very nature. We are curious. We desire to seek and to find, only to discover that there is still more to discover.<\/p>\n\n\n\nGenuine pursuit of wisdom, John Paul says, begins not with doubt but with childlike wonder. Nor is it an isolated \u201cI\u201d who thinks, but a \u201cwe.\u201d The quest for wisdom is always a communal experience. Socrates did not seclude himself in a dark room; he walked the streets of Athens with other wisdom seekers and engaged in meaningful dialogue. Their pursuit of wisdom was a shared effort, trusting in the complementary gifts offered by community, in which the whole is always greater than the sum of its parts.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I remember feeling frustrated reading the Dialogues<\/em> of Plato (which always feature his mentor Socrates dialoguing with others on a particular theme). Just when I thought I was getting the point, Socrates would disprove it, and begin exploring a new line of inquiry. Over time, he and his students would gain some real insights, but the conversation would result more questions than answers. I found that frustrating. In my own way, I was much like Descartes, harboring a felt need for clear and distinct ideas. I didn\u2019t like the uncomfortable feeling of not knowing, the patient waiting for wisdom to emerge.<\/p>\n\n\n\nI even felt a clenching inside when I read John Paul II\u2019s insistence on \u201cthe primacy of the inquiry\u201d \u2013 that it is more important to keep seeking wisdom that to feel like you have arrived. At the time, I was keenly interested in apologetics. I felt a certain satisfaction in having clear and distinct answers to those who would dare attack my Catholic faith. I was only beginning to realize the reality that God is always greater, that he is always infinitely beyond my limited insight. Life provided plenty of painful opportunities to keep learning humility.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the last decade, I\u2019ve become much more trauma-informed. I still see the 1500\u2019s and 1600\u2019s through the lens of revolutionary philosophical ideas, many of which caused harm. But now I appreciate how much Europe was experiencing a collective trauma response. It was an era that boiled with contempt and violence \u2013 from the polemical divisions of Protestants and Catholics to the ongoing wars with the Turks to the resurgence of slavery and human exploitation in newly discovered lands. When we feel threatened, we gravitate to black-and-white thinking. Then, like Bacon and Descartes, we demand clear and distinct ideas. We are not okay with abiding in a messy in-between. Like Bacon and Descartes, we seize strategies that allow us to feel in control. We refuse to tolerate any experience of powerlessness. In those centuries, many Europeans (by no means all) felt entitled to power and privilege at expense of slaves or indigenous peoples. These days, many Americans (by no means all) feel entitled to live in \u201cthe greatest nation on earth,\u201d with little regard for the status of immigrants or impoverished regions of the earth that serve our interests. Deep down, we know that our comfortable and privileged lives come at a cost to others, but we choose to ignore the signs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Sadly, there are many Christians who style themselves as \u201cconservative\u201d or \u201ctraditional\u201d without realizing how very modern their political and philosophical views are. Such is the rotten fruit of fear-mongering and the seduction of worldly power. It becomes black-and-white and \u201cus versus them.\u201d Too many times, such attitudes have allowed the rise of dictators.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
When we find ourselves demanding certainty and clarity, we might become curious and ask why it must be so. There are so many different kinds of certainty: the clarity offered by mathematics, yes, but also the certainty of feeling loved and cherished, the security of belonging to a stable community in which everyone matters, or the shared delight in amazing art or music. Perhaps you have experienced what the poet T.S. Eliot describes: \u201c\u2026music heard so deeply \/ that it is not heard at all, \/ but\u00a0you are the music \/ while the music\u00a0lasts.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The human experience is so amazing when we open ourselves to it \u2013 all the more so when we learn to trust each other and open ourselves to the mysteries of life with childlike wonder. It can be tempting to grasp at power and control during times of duress. Then it becomes easy to loathe \u201cthose people\u201d and view them with suspicion and contempt. The cost of that kind of \u201cfreedom\u201d is perpetual hypervigilance. No, thank you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I refuse to succumb to that seduction. Jesus is the great \u201cI AM.\u201d Therefore, our restless and racing thoughts can be at peace. He holds us all securely in the Father\u2019s love. He delights in every human being, image bearers that we are. He is grieved by all our contempt for each other, but not worried. He is the unconquerable Lamb, once slain, and forever risen. The peace of Christ is not a clear and distinct idea. It’s the fruit of an abiding relationship.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cI think, therefore I am.\u201d This is another quote we all heard as children. Ren\u00e9 Descartes (1597-1650), like Francis Bacon, represents a new era in the West, one which winds up exalting mathematical precision and technological dominance over receptivity, relationships, and human integration. Many a college philosophy class begins by reading Descartes\u2019 Meditations on First … <\/p>\n
Continue reading “Descartes’ Demand for Clarity”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2039,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[65,64,62,61,55,54,59,63],"tags":[579,649,165,650,630,648,653,280,652,629,651,105,47,628,251],"class_list":["post-2038","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-beauty","category-goodness","category-philosophy","category-reception","category-scripture","category-spirituality","category-theology","category-truth","tag-certainty","tag-clarity","tag-community","tag-contempt","tag-descartes","tag-doubt","tag-fides-et-ratio","tag-john-paul-ii","tag-metaphysics","tag-modernity","tag-philosophy","tag-receptivity","tag-relationships","tag-trauma-response","tag-wisdom"],"aioseo_notices":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"http:\/\/www.abideinlove.com\/wp\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/08\/descartes.png","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.abideinlove.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2038","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.abideinlove.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.abideinlove.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.abideinlove.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.abideinlove.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2038"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/www.abideinlove.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2038\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2040,"href":"http:\/\/www.abideinlove.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2038\/revisions\/2040"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.abideinlove.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2039"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.abideinlove.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2038"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.abideinlove.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2038"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.abideinlove.com\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2038"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}