tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6668594987436792920.post7243403215405839783..comments2023-07-05T08:17:21.505-04:00Comments on Getting to the Point: Rejecting the False Dichotomy of Love and TruthFr. Denis Lemieuxhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/01049723287624178155noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6668594987436792920.post-75168736674155098962014-01-25T11:11:12.202-05:002014-01-25T11:11:12.202-05:00For some reason Blogger is not allowing me to repl...For some reason Blogger is not allowing me to reply directly to comments (grrr). Neil, the Pope is not ascribing the view to Wittgenstein that love is mere ephemeral emotion. If you read LF carefully here, he gives a good (albeit brief) account of W's position, then goes on to describe the popular notion of love as emotion.<br />I think Wittgenstein can and should be critiqued on this point, though. Not least because you, as most people do, end up saying things like "Wittgenstein, if I understand him correctly..." - the man's philosophy does seem a bit incoherent and unintelligible, which is truly not a point in his favor. And is it really true that the object of our love is utterly incommunicable, like a beetle in a box? I think that is a strange position to take - after all, if Bob is madly in love with Stacey, we cannot feel his feelings for her, but he can tell us all about her (at length, if we let him, that chatterbox!) and have no end of details about how wonderful she is. All of which may be true. It still doesn't make us feel what he feels (nor would he be pleased if it did) but we sure do learn a lot about Stacey.Fr. Denis Lemieuxhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/01049723287624178155noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6668594987436792920.post-34400252452610286582014-01-23T18:38:23.944-05:002014-01-23T18:38:23.944-05:00This is a great teaching from lumen fidei, but I t...This is a great teaching from lumen fidei, but I think the Pope is being unfair to poor old Wittgenstein. if I understand him correctly, when he compared faith to falling in love he did not mean that faith was an ephemeral emotion. Wittgenstein was in his later work was primarily concerned with combating the sort of philosophical skepticism represented by positivism. To do this he examined language, its limits and how we use it. So I think his point about faith was more about the incommunicability of the personal relationship with God rather than the impossibility of talking about religion at all. His famous beetle-in-a-box is closely related. The idea, briefly, is that everyone has a "beetle" in a little box, but no one can look into anyone else's box, so what does the word "beetle" really mean? If you listen to someone talk about his or her latest romantic partner, you get something of the same phenomenon (Okay, she's pretty, but come on...). Evangelization is the same way. I can tell you about God, but I can't give you an experience of God. That is why Jesus has come to dwell amongst us, to live with each person in the innmost heart. And no, we can't look into one another's boxes.Neil Pattersonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/06447274994087291780noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6668594987436792920.post-37594024712634919952014-01-09T17:19:15.876-05:002014-01-09T17:19:15.876-05:00"Love is not opposed to truth or in some othe..."Love is not opposed to truth or in some other category than truth. Love seeks truth, both the truth of the beloved and the truth for the beloved. It is love, in other words, that unites the true and the good in a contemplation of the beautiful.<br /> All of this is miles away from where we started and where we need to get back to...."<br />Hello again Father Denis. I have one quibble with the first sentence of your second paragraph that I have quoted. I disagree with the 'miles away' description of the above quoted beautiful paragraph vis a vis 'the Church's ongoing proclamation of hard and unwelcome truths and dogmas in the modern world.' I think you have put your finger on the very air we need to breathe in making that proclamation. May the Lord always bless you in your ministry.<br /><br />Blaise (anonymous 1 from yesterday, and no longer anonymous I suppose)<br />Blaisenoreply@blogger.com