Rite and ReasonCompeting philosophies need to talk to each other without trading insults, suggests Cardinal Daly
We live, thank God, in an age of science; but the extraordinary successes of science carry with them the danger of thinking that only science is verifiable knowledge, that scientific proof is the only kind of proof that is conclusive, and indeed that science is the only kind of rational knowledge. Outside of science, it is claimed, there is only irrational belief, including religion and various other kinds of superstition.
The French philosopher Maurice Merleau-Ponty said that the philosophical mission of the 20th century is to "explain the irrational" and to "integrate it into an enlarged reason".
One could equally speak of mystery, the mystery involved in existing, in knowing, and in recognising moral values.
The "mystery" is not "the irrational", for it is a precondition of all that we can know or say. It is, once more, the French and German traditions in philosophy which have stressed the element of "mystery" involved in all knowing and in all experience: mystery is the presence within all experience of an "I" and a "being" which are not describable in empirical terms.
There is in all knowing and in all reasoning a number of "givens", or "taken for granteds" - such as the "I" who knows and reasons, and the "being" which is known and reasoned about and spoken about. These "givens" and "taken for granteds" are not irrational, for they are the very stuff of reasoning and of the rational. These are the subject matter of the reasoning which we call metaphysics.
It is clear that the various traditions in philosophy - especially the British and the French - have largely worked in sealed-off compartments, with little contact and little mutual understanding of one another.
Philosophical traditions, different ways of doing philosophy, obviously have some merit, but they carry the risk of becoming self-serving. They can become closed to other ways of doing philosophy, other insights and other influences.
There is great need for dialogue between the various national or linguistic traditions in philosophy: for example, between the British and the French tradition.
These have largely ignored one another, each regarding the other as doing something which, whatever it may be, is not philosophy.
Something similar is true of the British and German traditions in philosophy; and, though to a lesser extent, it is true also of the two English-language traditions, namely the British and the North American. Multilateral dialogue could benefit all the participants and would certainly benefit philosophy itself.
We in Ireland might learn something we need to learn about dialogue itself. We might learn, to start with, that genuine dialogue is based on a shared search for truth, which must be presumed to be equally sincere on both sides; and we must learn that dialogue has no room whatever for the trading of insults or for imputations of moral turpitude or mental defectiveness against one's partners in dialogue.
Authentic dialogue has zero tolerance for setting up caricatures of our opponent's position and demolishing it - and then claiming one has disproved that position. Unfortunately such insults and imputations and caricatures have marred some of our domestic debates on philosophical, ethical and religious issues up to now.
If there are any such in what I myself have written, I am truly contrite, and late in the day though it be for me, I firmly promise amendment.
•Cardinal Daly celebrates his 90th birthday today. This is an extract from a talk he gave at the launch of his book Philosophical Papers (Four Courts Press) in Dublin last March