Rationality as Virtue and the Rationality of Faith

Modern philosophy has been preoccupied with proving the possibility of knowing God and the possibility of knowing more generally. This preoccupation stems however from a particular way of conceiving knowledge which requires correspondence between thought and reality that is difficult to reconcile with the way in which human understanding evolves. Drawing on her recent book, Rationality as Virtue, Schumacher calls attention to the role that a rightly ordered will—a commitment to seeking the truth—played in anchoring or affirming the ‘objectivity’ of pre-modern accounts of knowledge. Such accounts situated the pursuit of knowledge within a larger moral context in which it is instrumental to the individual human effort to contribute to the common good. In this talk, Schumacher will explain the role that belief in a transcendent—or faith—plays in helping to facilitate that effort, or rationality, and the sense in which it is consequently ‘rational’.

Recording here