Sublime

The only reply that I can imagine to this difficulty is one which is perhaps logically unassailable, but is not very plausible. It would, I think, be given by Kant, whose ethical system is very similar to that of the Stoics. True, he might say, there is nothing good but the good will, but the will is good when it is directed to certain ends, that,

Reason is a crucial and irreplaceable way to help us weigh competing beliefs. But it is impossible to claim that we should believe only what is proven and that therefore, since religion can’t be proven, we shouldn’t embrace it. All of us have things we believe—including things we would sacrifice and even die for—that cannot be proven. We believe th

Modern philosophy, however, has retained, for the most part, an individualistic and subjective character. This is very marked in Descartes, who builds up all knowledge from the certainty of his own existence, and accepts clearness and distinctness (both subjective) as criteria of truth.

Rather, unless we are absolutely forced to deny it, we should assume that when Paul appears to be laying down first principles about God's future judgment, he is laying down first principles about God's future judgment.

So reason and proof must start with faith in reason and belief in some particular concept of proof. However, there is even more faith involved in ordinary rationality than that. Twentieth-century thinkers such as Martin Heidegger, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, Ludwig Wittgenstein have argued that all reasoning is based on prior faith commitments to which

more than human virtue is needed to save a man, and that he only praises justice who is incapable of injustice.