Autor: Murray, John

Buch: The Problem of God: Yesterday and Today

Titel: The Problem of God: Yesterday and Today

Stichwort: Mittelalter; drei Wurzeln des Atheismus; Grund 1; Problem Gottes als philosophisches Problem

Kurzinhalt: In the Middle Ages, three great intellectual events took place that were decisive for the history of atheism.

Textausschnitt: 87a The basic problem, I take it, is to account for the genesis of the will to atheism characteristic of l'esprit laique and of the modern age-the will to understand the world, or to make a living in it, without God. Here we confront a lengthy task in intellectual, cultural, and religious history. I must be content to point to the importance of one complex factor-I mean the medieval achievement. In the Middle Ages, three great intellectual events took place that were decisive for the history of atheism. (Fs)

87b The first medieval event was the transposition of the problem of God into a problem for the philosophical intelligence, a formally metaphysical, gnoseological, and linguistic problem. For the first time in history the quadriform problem was squarely put to human reason. This was a daring thing to do. The exposure of the problem of God to rational inquiry was an invitation to betrayal of the tradition of reason. In the medieval period, the tradition of reason was considered a tradition of both faith and reason, within which the will to rational understanding harmonized with, and was sustained by, the will to Christian faith. Within the tradition so understood, therefore, reason refused to betray itself by running to atheist conclusions. The betrayal occurred when modernity chose to divorce the universes of faith and reason; in this choice, the modern will to atheism manifested itself. It was by this choice that the way was opened to the atheist conclusions of modern philosophy. This is the first aspect of the story; the second is closely related to it. (Fs)