The Dispute between European Philosophy and Religion Essay -- Research

The Dispute between European Philosophy and Religion Missing Works Cited ABSTRACT: The disputes between philosophy and religion can be avoided and solved not by the contemporary separation of their conclusions but because Socrates-Plato taught us how valid judgments are established. Plato is the founder of "scientific logic", because he discerned the instantaneous relations of similar, different, equal through the intelligibility between ultimate distinctions. This relation, not very accurately called "like" by Socrates, holds too for the intelligence in its relation to the intelligibility of the distinctions of "can" and "must", of which every person is "implicitely" aware, and both "can" and "must" are known as "real possibilites". Final, ultimate distinctions are perceived since they are "evident per-se ". They cannot be doubted by the person which is conscious of itself. These immediate relations are distinguished from relations in which one term is "in the likeness of" the other, which expresses a judgment due to an active comparison, established by man through thinking and through physical actions, placing those relations into the region of time and space. They are the relations of kinship that are in the "likeness of"- (syggenes called in Greek). It will be shown why Aristotles criticism of Plato's use of the word "partaking" has fanned the dispute among the students of Plato, who consider the timeless, eternal reality of distinctions - called ideas by Plato- of highest, ultimate importance. It justifies the validiy of human insights and judgments. This is also not correctly understood by the Christian theologians, who hide behind supernatural revelations and dogmas. Plato did not jutify his metaphysical insights with "... ... able to find it in the Christian religion, in spite of the fact that he often was so close to it. In his "Froehliche Wissenschaaft" - his "Joyful Science"- (23) he sings to Sanctus Janiarius, the Roman god of Beginning, the verses: "Heller stets und stets gesunder, Ever brighter and ever healthier frei im liebevollsten Muss, freely in a loving must preist sie deine Wunder, praises it your wonders schoenster Janiarius". Most beautiful Janiarius It is the insight that clarifies our absolute conditions. It confirms that absolute laws, including the law of love, demand that characteristics and conditions are validly observed. They determine all things in heaven and on earth, and even God uses them for His creative act. It is what the perennial philosophy teaches us, to which we have to return so we will experience the wonders of joy over and over from anew.