…as canonical literature, you’re left with this question of value again. Why these books and not those books? How do we decide?
And the answer is: we can’t individually. But the same process of selection mediated by individual choice happens within the literary tradition.
Conversation
And so one way of determining which books are most worthy of attention, which is to say which most reflect this aggregated process of selection, is to look at patterns of influence. And then you get back to the Bible
As for how the Bible is a precondition for the idea of truth…
1
3
…you have to get into what idea, or sequence of ideas, Peterson thinks the Bible most reflects at a mythological level. The idea of the logos is at the core here.
I don’t have enough of a sense of the history to give a strong defense — currently reading Tom holland’s Dominion…
1
4
…to get a better sense of it.
But I think there’s a strong case to be made that the one reason enlightenment rationalism undermined its own foundations, and (in the long run) why it has started to sputter, is that its own account of its success was flawed — specifically its…
1
6
…self-conception as being uncoupled from a kind of value structure. Or, as I’ve put it elsewhere, losing the sense that it is nested within meaning-making rather than a clean break from it.
As for whether that value structure is importantly Christian…surely in part? But not…
2
6
this relates to our conversation about the enlightenment philosophers having more wisdom than they were explicitly theorizing, and part of that being a consequence of a religious heritage/orientation.
1
5
Cool… without context I don’t know for sure what JBP is saying, but— Christianity and (Greek-derived) rationalism have fairly similar conceptions of truth and belief (which are not common in other cultures). Straight-up rationalism fails because as he says it is purpose-free, ->
1
7
whereas a synthesis of the two brings purpose in from religion. The Enlightenment wasn’t just “let’s find all the true facts about everything and decide to believe them” it was about making a better world. Which it did.
1
7
Right! And then losing this sense that science is necessarily both purpose-laden and deferential (both arguably religious attitudes) has consequences all the way down to the micro scale
2
1
7
Nice connection! You have a remarkable talent for that. (Also, you have a better grasp on what I have written than I do! I mostly can’t remember any of it.)
1
7
don’t worry that’s what writing is for. you gotta get the thoughts out of your head to make space for other thoughts