Virtues of Critical and Moderate Rationalism in Religious Beliefs’ System

Document Type : Research Paper

Author

Associate Professor of Philosophy Department, Kharazmi University, Tehran, Iran

Abstract

Critical and moderate rationalism is a suitable approach instead of two fideism and extreme rationalism, since it tries to avoid their disadvantages and has its own merits. When we say it is a moderate approach, it means that it does not exaggerate about reason's ability for recognizing and assessing religious beliefs, but accepts that it has some epistemological and ontological limitations. Critical virtue of our approach means that the reason criticizes itself, and through avoiding dogmatism, and continual self - assessing can access to a new attainment of the truth. This approach, both, emphasizes on reason’s ability as the base, axis, criterion and instrument of getting and evaluation of religious beliefs’ system, and on ontological and epistemological priority of reason over revelation and transmitted teachings, so that giving authority into religious texts and primarily and universal recognizing of fundamental teachings of religion are depended on the reason. This approach has also a modest tendency to the reason’s limitations, that is, it confirms one can't know and assess all hidden realms and aspects of religion. Critical and moderate rationalism, in addition, pays more attention to the necessity and importance of self-assessing, continual evaluation, plurality and diversity of rationality, coherency of religious beliefs’ system, plurality of religion’s language and aspects, and their plural rationality. In this paper, meanwhile studying different understandings regarding critical and moderate rationalism, it is explained and analyzed its plural virtues by paying attention to the reason’s abilities and restrictions, in order to defend its merits and rationality.

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References

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Journal of Philosophical Investigations
Volume 16, Issue 39 - Serial Number 39
Special Issue: Philosophy of Education (In Persian)
September 2022
Pages 350-364

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