Merleau-Ponty and Wittgenstein escape the opposition between science and faith supported on the alienating absolutism of an obtuse radicalism
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.25247/P1982-999X.2023.v23n3.p97-113Keywords:
beliefs, reason, Merleau-Ponty, Wittgenstein, absolute stanceAbstract
This article aims to address the conflicting relationship between science and faith, with a view to showing the impossibility of invalidating both the field of science and the field of faith. With this, the thesis is defended that to invalidate means to assume an absolutist stance whose main characteristic is the alienating subjection derived from an obtuse radicalism, that is, radical positions make individuals alienated by becoming subject in a closure. To this end, the elaborations of Maurice Merleau-Ponty are based mainly on his doctoral thesis Phénoménologie de la Perception (1945). Throughout the article, some notes from his other works are collected with the aim of illustrating a legitimizing stance regarding the importance of openness to incompleteness, concerning science, as well as religion. Finally, it deals with Ludwig Wittgenstein's theorization in Lectures and Conversations on Aesthetics, Psychology and Religious Belief (1967), approaching his fideistic conception of belief in God not from the perspective of factual, rational and/or empirical beliefs, but viewed for him, as a way of seeing the world and positioning himself in it. The parallel between the aforementioned authors serves to corroborate the thesis that it is unfeasible to think about science and faith from an essentially Cartesian perspective, but, above all, to highlight the impossibility of explaining faith scientifically, or to nullify its importance in the human path, in addition to to recognize the value of science for the evolution of humanity.
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