Essay on "Concept of Faith"

Essay 5 pages (1881 words) Sources: 5

[EXCERPT] . . . .

Faith

When Hans-Georg Gadamer argues that "the concept of faith, however, is uniquely suspended between a truth claim that lags behind knowing and a certainty that knowing lags behind," he is simultaneously making an ideological and epistemological claim, one that can, with a little effort, be refuted as illegitimate. This is because Gadamer proposes to regard faith a special category of human thought and proposition, when in reality it is merely belief in something without evidence to justify that belief. Through his particular formulation of faith, Gadamer attempts to imbue faith with a kind of epistemological legitimacy that disappears upon closer inspection. In particular, by considering Gadamer's claim alongside David Hume's consideration of miracles in his book an Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, it will become clear that Gadamer's claims about faith cannot hold up under scrutiny, and that faith is illegitimate as regards truth claims or a path to knowledge.

Before considering Gadamer's claims in regards to Hume, it will first be necessary to discuss precisely what Gadamer means when he argues that "the concept of faith, however, is uniquely suspended between a truth claim that lags behind knowing and a certainty that knowing lags behind." One may begin by taking note of the particular linear constructions he makes. He suggests that in this formulation, the progression is usually from truth claim, to knowing, to certainty, and immediately one may take exception with his formulation, because he is effectively mixing categories in such a way that his insertion of faith into this formula is in some ways meaningless. In effect, Gadamer has mixed two different modes of progression into a single unbroken line, and faith becomes the artificial conjunction unifying these two different modes.

On the one hand, Godamer is talking about the process of determining the validity of a truth claim. A truth claim progresses to knowing in the sense that one makes a truth claim, and then, having determined its veracity, "knows" whether or not its true, in the sense that all available evidence points one way or the other. On the other hand, Gadamer is talking about a different kind of progression between knowing and certainty, because in this regard certainty represents a kind of end-goal of knowing, in that the latter only ever asymptotically approaches the former due to the limits of human perception and cognition. Thus, the first pair represents a discrete process of activity with a beginning and an end, whereas the second pair represents an ongoing process of epistemological development. A truth claim lags behind knowing because a claim must be made prior to determining its veracity, such that one moves from truth claim to knowing, but knowing lags behind certainty in the sense that knowing is eternally pointing towards certainty without ever reaching it. Therefore, Godamer is essentially combining a diachronic process with a synchronic one while pretending that there are no differences between the two.

As one can see, Gadamer's construction is problematic even before he inserts faith into it, and when he does, he essentially inserts it into the place of knowing while nevertheless claiming that it is "uniquely suspended" in this space. This is a problem because as mentioned above, Gadamer's construction is nonsensical, in that his mixing of two different modes of progression renders the final formulation unintelligible. Nevertheless, one can at least attempt to describe what Godamer might have been intending with this construction, if only because it is clear that he has something to say about faith, even if he does so in a fundamentally flawed way. Godamer seems to suggest that faith is simultaneously a truth claim and a certainty, even though the former indicates an absence of evidence (as a truth claim prior to knowing the veracity of that claim is merely that: a truth claim without evidence either way), and the latter is literally unattainable, even if for all intents and purposes individuals are colloquially "certain" about a number of things.

At this point one must address the underlying ideological content of Gadamer's argument, namely the assumption that faith is a special category of belief above and beyond belief in something without evidence. His use of the word faith forces one to consider that he is talking about faith in a specifically religious context, if only because faith is generally reserved for this context (and not applied to, for instance, a mentally ill individual's claims that he or she has the unique ability to access other dimensions, even though there is not a fundamental difference between faith and these sorts of claims). Interestingly, while Godamer particular choice of language leads one to believe that he grants some worth to the concept of faith (particularly his use of the phrase "uniquely suspended"), his formulation is ultimately a roundabout way of saying that faith is merely a certainty of something that one has no evidence to support, because it is simultaneously akin to a truth claim and a certainty, without any of the evidence or reasoning that is generally demanded by knowing. Put another way, one may actually agree with the accuracy of Gadamer's statement in general, inasmuch as he is merely saying that faith is the unfounded belief in something, but disagree with the notion that the concept of faith is "uniquely suspended" in this regard, because as hinted at above, faith is merely the specific term for unfounded belief when it comes in the form of religious or metaphysical claims

From here one may continue on to argue that in light of Gadamer's statement, it is illegitimate to have faith in anything, so long as one cares about whether or not what he or she believes is true. This is not a trivial qualification, because as the history of religious development has shown, there are quite a few people who ultimately have little concern whether or not what they believe is true, so long as it serves their needs, whether they be emotional, social, political, or otherwise. One would hope, at least, the philosopher is interested in whether or not what he or she believes is true, but even this cannot be taken as a given. Thus, to reiterate, faith, as outlined by Godamer, is an illegitimate position to take so long as one is concerned with the veracity of one's beliefs. To better understand why, one may examine David Hume's consideration of miracles in his book an Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, because this consideration includes important observations for anyone concerned with determining the epistemological legitimacy of faith.

Hume notes that experience is "our only guide in reasoning concerning matters of fact," and furthermore, "that this guide is not altogether infallible, but in some cases is apt to lead us into errors," such that "in our reasonings concerning matter of fact, there are all imaginable degress of assurance, from the highest certainty to the lowest species of moral evidence" (Hume 81-82). This is a fairly straightforward account of the benefits and limits of experience as a means of establishing truth, but it leads to what is perhaps the most important statement in the whole chapter: "a wise man, therefore, proportions his belief to the evidence" (Hume 82). This is an unassailable standard for determining truth, because it centralizes the only legitimate justification one can have for belief (evidence) while noting that different truth claims require different amounts and qualities of evidence depending on their relative likelihood based on past experience. This standard manages to use to the benefits of prior experience as a guide to matters of fact while including self-correcting mechanism for those instances in which prior experience is insufficient or even incorrect, and as such it is the ideal standard by which to investigate Gadamer's conception of faith. While here Hume is using it to suggest that "testimonial evidence is in principle insufficient to justify belief in the occurrence of a miracle," it can also be applied to Gadamer's formulation of faith (Larmer 326).

If, as discussed above, faith is a truth claim held as a certainty without any of the evidence that would constitute actual knowing, one can consider its legitimacy according to Hume's standard, because it is specifically designed to account for claims that seem to contradict the implicit evidence provided by prior experience. Because faith is, by Gadamer's definition, a truth claim and a certainty without the kind of evidence inherent in knowing, this means it flies in the face of experiential evidence, and thus, as an extraordinary claim, it demands extraordinary evidence. However, because, according to Godamer, faith is suspended between a truth claim and certainty without any actually knowing, it attempts to deny the responsibility of providing evidence for its legitimacy. In a sense, faith attempts a kind of performative legitimacy, whereby it seeks to attain and perpetuate certainty in a claim not because this claim is validated by any legitimate form of knowing, but rather because it merely itself as a special category of certainty that does not need evidence, merely by virtue of its… READ MORE

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