Sentiments of Reason and Aspirations of the Soul

I. Introduction

It is a commonplace to remark on the intractability of philosophical and theological disputes; yet generations of advocates return again and again to restate their favored positions, each time hoping to have found some new persuasive argument or consideration. This combination of persistence in the face of dialectical intractability suggests that beneath the weft and warp of carefully crafted arguments there lie deeper differences of intellectual outlook and existential commitment. A few years ago, I engaged in a published exchange with philosopher J. J. C. Smart on the question of the existence of God and allied issues in the book Atheism and Theism .¹ Smart, the brother of the late Ninian (himself a leading figure in religious studies), is one of the best known philosophers of his generation. Early in the book, Smart describes having once been a Christian and, thereafter, mentions more than once his feeling that there is, perhaps, a real mystery in the fact that there is anything at all. Yet he finds the theist explanation of cosmic existence no less mysterious; although he is open to the idea that there are mysteries to be explained, he is not disposed to feel these mysteries call for or admit of religious interpretations and resolutions. For Smart, the only real explanations are scientific ones.

In a perceptive review of Atheism and Theism , Alexander Pruss and Richard Gale discussed various aspects of the detailed dialectic between Smart and me, but ended with a reflection on the broader character of our opposition. They wrote,

What emerges as the most salient feature of the debate is that the ultimate parting of the ways between Haldane and Smart is due to their having rival "sentiments of rationality" in respect of what constitutes a rationally satisfying explanation . . . this clash between their "sentiments of rationality" appears to be an ultimate one in that we do not know any way to mediate it. ... The theist experiences the world as a "thou" and thus finds it natural to seek personal explanations . . . whereas the non-theist experiences it as an impersonal "it."²

This comment echoes, I think, Richard Gale's view, expressed in agreement with William James in Gale's book The Divided Self of William James , that different philosophies appeal to different emotional feelings about things in general.³ Toward the end of that excellent study, Gale also says something about James himself that, I suspect, he thinks to be true of many of us:

What we really want is to be both a Sartrian In-itself that self-sufficingly abides in its total completeness within the present, and a For-itself that is always racing ahead of itself into the future so as to complete itself. In other words, we want to be God. Not surprisingly, this is forever beyond our grasp.⁴

I shall return to this suggestion and to the more general matter of "sentiments of rationality." First, however, because I am going to be discussing immortality and the rationality of the desire for eternity, I want to say something about attitudes to considering the very idea of the soul; then I will set out in brief some arguments for its reality—arguments that I think are unjustly neglected, but that, I am happy to acknowledge, are also somewhat obscure and require detailed analyses that cannot be entered into here.

II. Knowing That and Knowing What

Anyone familiar with ancient, medieval, and early modern philosophy will be aware of the extent to which thinkers in these periods assume we are possessed of immaterial rational souls. There are, of course, quite significant differences in their understanding of the nature of the soul; but that the soul exists and that it can be known to exist are rarely, if ever, doubted.

It is, however, one thing to know something exits, another to be able to demonstrate its existence (from commonly agreed if not exactly indubitable premises), and a third to describe its nature or essence. Writing of the possibility of natural knowledge of God, Aquinas distinguishes two kinds of causal arguments: those in which one reasons...