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E.R. Dodds was an Irish Classicist of the last century most famous for his superb "The Greeks and the Irrational" and "Pagan and Christian in an Age of Anxiety". The below is from his essay "Euripides the Irrationalist". I do think he captures here the essence of the Socratic tradition and much that came out of it. My question to posters here is how compatible do they believe the below is with Christianity.
"The philosophy makes three affirmations:
First that reason is the sole and suffient instrument of truth- as against views which assign that function to sense-perception, or to faith, or something called "intuition", or deny any sufficient instrument exists at all.
From this it follows, secondly, that reality must be such that it can be understood by reason; and this implies that the structure of reality must be in itself in some sense rational.
Lastly, in such a universe values as well as facts will be rational; the highest Good will be either rational thought or something closely akin to it. Hence the tendency of rationalism is to say that moral, like intellectual, error can arise only from a failure to use the reason we posssess; and when it does arise it must, like intellectual error, be curable through an intellectual process.
These are what I shall call the three affirmations of rationalism; reason as the instrument of truth; as the essential character of reality; as the means to personal redemption."
"The philosophy makes three affirmations:
First that reason is the sole and suffient instrument of truth- as against views which assign that function to sense-perception, or to faith, or something called "intuition", or deny any sufficient instrument exists at all.
From this it follows, secondly, that reality must be such that it can be understood by reason; and this implies that the structure of reality must be in itself in some sense rational.
Lastly, in such a universe values as well as facts will be rational; the highest Good will be either rational thought or something closely akin to it. Hence the tendency of rationalism is to say that moral, like intellectual, error can arise only from a failure to use the reason we posssess; and when it does arise it must, like intellectual error, be curable through an intellectual process.
These are what I shall call the three affirmations of rationalism; reason as the instrument of truth; as the essential character of reality; as the means to personal redemption."