Introduction to "From a Logical Point of View"

THERE IS SOMETHING NOVEL in this issue of Logos--something quite possibly unique. Our new feature "From a Logical Point of View" presents a passage from a distinguished writer on an important topic along with rigorous analyses by philosophers with a gift for limpid prose. The topics will range widely. Medical ethics is at the fore in this inaugural offering; art in the Church, the limits of scientific explanation, and sex for the purpose of pleasure will be discussed in upcoming installments. Our commentators will highlight the argument that most intrigues them in the chosen text, evaluate the truth of that argument's premises, and comment on the degree of support they think the premises give the conclusion. You may well be surprised to find philosophers making transparent sense on matters of great importance.

What is the point of this unusual feature?

To begin with, "From a Logical Point of View" celebrates reason. We celebrate reason not because it helps us build ploughs and cottages, systems of law and morality, moon rockets and microscopes, though of course it does all these things. Rather, we celebrate reason because it is the best of the natural guides we have to truth. As John Paul II wrote in Fides et Ratio, "the autonomy which philosophy enjoys is rooted in the fact that reason is by its nature oriented to truth and is equipped moreover with the means necessary to arrive at that truth." ¹ No one can make a case for the superiority of some rival claimant without demonstrating the contested point: cases require reason. Reason is a guide to truth, and God is truth: reason is a guide to God. Thus the Church speaks of the light of reason and the right use of philosophy as the greatest of the natural helps that God has given us; the Church assures us that philosophy "paves and guards" the way to faith and to God. ² Through regular presentations of "From a Logical Point of View" we hope to lay a few bricks in the pavement.

"From a Logical Point of View" also celebrates community, which braces and encourages reason and philosophy (there's a symbiosis: among the best of the things that reason helps us build is community). We celebrate community by offering multiple commentators' perspectives on the texts we feature, and presenting each commentator in dialogue with a text, with another author. Philosophy has always been a communal activity. Nowhere is this more evident than in the work of Socrates, heralded as perhaps the first of the really great philosophers. Why is he so honored? Disciples speak of his unshakable conviction that the unexamined life is not worth living, his consummate skill as intellectual midwife, and the unity of his life and thought. Community was essential to the germination and blossoming of each one of these attributes. Socrates examined his life through constant, unremitting dialogue with others. The offspring he delivered as intellectual midwife were conceived by others: he conducted his philosophical conversations by mining his companions' opinions. And the unity of life and thought that his manner of death displayed rested on a steadfast allegiance to the city and its decrees. Despite his radical critique of the lives and thoughts of the masses and of his society's norms, Socrates was fundamentally devoted to the commonweal. So were his most famous disciple and the most famous student of his most famous disciple, who grace the cover of this issue of Logos. As progenitors of the long succession of Western philosophers, Socrates and Plato and Aristotle are models for us; they remind us that philosophy is barren if it is solitary. We who seek wisdom must work in philosophical community.

The text on which we focus in this initial installment of "From...