Rational Faith? An interesting quote...

[waxwing]

"The other does not exist: this is rational faith, the incurable belief of human reason. Identity = reality, as if, in the end, everything must necessarily and absolutely be one and the same. But the other refuses to disappear; it subsists, it persists; it is the hard bone on which reason breaks its teeth. Abel Martin, with a poetic faith as human as rational faith, believed in the other, in "the essential Heterogeneity of being," in what might be called the incurable otherness from which oneness must always suffer."

- Antonio Machado


Any thoughts?

[Geoff]

It is a little dense to understand. Am I reading it right that faith in the unknown must exist to set the boundaries of the human experience, and at any one time the human world ends at the beginning of irrational faith?

It's a little hard going (at least at midnight, anyway)

-Geoff

[garak]

I don't really get it.

[Claverhouse]

"The other does not exist: this is rational faith, the incurable belief of human reason. Identity = reality, as if, in the end, everything must necessarily and absolutely be one and the same. But the other refuses to disappear; it subsists, it persists; it is the hard bone on which reason breaks its teeth. Abel Martin, with a poetic faith as human as rational faith, believed in the other, in "the essential Heterogeneity of being," in what might be called the incurable otherness from which oneness must always suffer."

- Antonio Machado


Any thoughts?
I'm guessing that he means that it is near impossible to understand that anything outside oneself and one's experience either exists or can exist; and it is only be reaching beyond this to a concept of that which exists other to oneself, taught by experience and the facts presented ( possibly falsely ) by one's senses, that one can comprehend existence. After all, anything beyond the Monad is infinite ( if you can have more than one of anything you can have an unlimited number ). One is basically so consumed by the necessary outlooking from self/identity that that which is other has to force itself through faith alone.

Or something; since this seems entirely isolated from context, I might have read it entirely wrongly.


Next question: Is God A Solipsist ?



Claverhouse :ph34r:

[waxwing]

If this is isolated (poor thing), it was isolated by Octavio Paz and friends. I have not read the original work by Machado, but this quote stands alone as the opening to Paz’s work, “The Labyrinth of Solitude.” That is part of the reason it interested me. Somebody thought it was important enough to introduce an entire major work.

My best idea at the moment:

Machado starts off by suggesting (in suspect) that “the other does not exist.” What is “the other?” Rational faith, which he defines as “the incurable belief of human reason.” So, by use of the word “of” he seems to be suggesting that this rational faith is somehow an outgrowth of human reason.

With the word “but,” he definitely seems to switch gears. “The other” (rational faith) cannot actually disappear or cease to exist (“It subsists, it persists”). Interesting how we’ve got three “…ist” words so far: exist, subsist, and persist. Shades of meaning seem important.

Next: “It is the hard bone on which reason breaks its teeth.” Seems to be one of the key parts of the quote. Perhaps he is suggesting that rational faith is at the core of anything we flesh out, anything we try to reason out, rationalize, or believe in. The two parts together (rational + faith) seem be key, but also seem to raise questions as to how one gets from one to the other; how does on combine the two in a natural way (ie natural outgrowth)?

“Poetic faith as human as rational faith”….Abel Martin believed in the other. Perhaps he is saying that despite Martin’s “poetic faith” (something that may be mistaken for incompatible with “rational faith”) he still believed in “the other,” which must be “rational faith,” but here newly defined as:

“…the essential heterogeneity of being”
“the incurable otherness from which oneness must always suffer.”

So, it seems that Machado is suggesting that being (being human, believing, reasoning, even being poetic) is characterized by heterogeneity. We cannot take away “otherness” (contributing factors, multifacetedness of...)to the point of lining up reason to clash with belief, or rational thought to conflict with human reason. If rational faith is sort of a product of reason and “poetic faith as human as rational faith,” then we can assert that rational faith does, in fact, exist, persist, and subsist. The question that comes to mind right now though is how these potentially separate entities can actually coexist.

[euterpenc]

Well it seems like a problem of opposites (which I noticed comes up very often if you pay attention). How can you have one without the other? or one without two? You can't have differences without things to be different. Maybe I'm being too shallow but that's what it seems like to me.

[ApeTheDog]

Yeah, my thoughts are pretty much the same as Cleaverhouses.

He talks about the difference between rational faith and poetic faith. Rational faith is only knowing what you know. If someone else says they know something, and you don't see it that way, you don't believe it. And there's poetic faith, which sadly I don't understand that well, as it's not explained much in the text, but I'm guessing it's just about the opposite - that the other person says they know something, you believe that it is so without needing proof, since it is only by accumulating as many viewpoints as possible that you'll truly understand. The heterogenity of being. I assume he means by that that all ones knowledge must consist of pieces of oneself and pîeces of others, intermixed.