Reason, faith and translation

Part 3 · Interpreting traditions, questioning authority

What happens to an argument when readers carry it into another language, or approach it with different beliefs about human life and God? Translating and commenting both involve choices about meaning, and those choices are part of the philosophical work this module examines.

Plotinus and Augustine reopen questions about unity, soul, time and will. A lesson on translation in ninth-century Baghdad then leads into debates about whether anything must exist, how causes produce their effects and what we can say about God, and the module ends with Aquinas on reason, faith and nature. The next module returns to Asian histories that overlap in time with these debates; later modules take up questions of interpretation and authority in other settings.

Time, place and approach. These late antique and medieval readings follow connections between Greek philosophy and Christian, Muslim and Jewish debates in several languages, a selection from a much larger medieval world. Translation can transform what it carries, and encounters between reason and religious inquiry appear elsewhere in the course as well.

After these lessons

• Explain why translating or commenting on a work can involve a philosophical choice.
• Distinguish an argument about necessity or causation from a claim accepted on religious authority.
• Explain what a proposed way of speaking about God allows us to say, and where it sets limits.

Useful preparation

Plato on knowledge and Aristotle on explanation are useful background, and you can return to either lesson when its ideas come up again. You can also begin here: each reading introduces what you need to follow it.

• Review: Knowledge, appearance and education
• Review: What counts as explaining something?