Philosophical Backgrounds – Key Bullet Notes

Pre-Cartesian Integration of Theology & Philosophy

  • In medieval thought, theology viewed as “queen of the sciences”; every discipline connected back to God.
  • Philosophers (e.g., Bonaventure 1221-1274) grounded epistemology in divine illumination—without God, no knowledge possible.

Descartes’s Methodological Shift

  • Goal: secure indubitable foundation against skepticism.
  • Method: systematic doubt—question everything until only the undeniable remains.
  • Certainty found in cogito: I think, therefore I am ⇒ self-consciousness becomes starting point.
  • Criterion of truth: ideas that are “clear & distinct.”
  • God re-introduced after the self, merely to guarantee veridical perception.
  • Result: Philosophy moves from theocentric to anthropocentric focus.

Rationalism vs. Empiricism

  • Rationalism (Descartes, Spinoza 1632-1677, Leibniz 1646-1716)
    • Truth primarily via intellect & deduction; innate/innate ideas; math-like certainty; non-contradiction deemed proof of existence.
  • Empiricism (Locke 1632-1704, Berkeley 1685-1753, Hume 1711-1776)
    • All ideas originate in sense experience; “nothing in mind not first in senses.”

Kant’s Copernican Revolution

  • Combines rationalism & empiricism; mind active, not passive.
  • Introduces a priori “categories” (e.g., causality) that organize percepts.
  • Distinguishes two realms:
    • Phenomenal: appearances; knowable because categories apply.
    • Noumenal: things-in-themselves (God, soul, world-as-whole) ⇒ not objects of knowledge.
  • Epistemology: knowledge =\text{concepts (a priori)} + \text{percepts (empirical)}.

Effects on Perception

  • No direct, unmediated access to external world; we know only “the thing-for-us.”
  • Sensory organs and mental categories jointly risk distortion.

Effects on Metaphysics & Religion

  • Traditional metaphysics (God, immortality, cosmology) rendered unknowable.
  • God becomes postulate of practical reason (morality), not of theoretical reason.
  • Distinction between knowledge vs. faith: “deny knowledge to make room for faith.”

Modernity: Core Convictions (Descartes → Kant)

  • Autonomy of the self: the conscious subject is starting point.
  • Knowledge requires proof: demonstrability is prerequisite for “knowing.”
  • Religion reduced to morality: God invoked mainly for ethical order.

Implications for Contemporary Theology

  • The shift to self-centred epistemology and the relegation of God to the noumenal set the stage for later theological responses (e.g., Schleiermacher, death-of-God movement).