Categories: All - love - reason - nature - soul

by Medizin Wissen 4 years ago

234

Rationality

The text explores the distinction between reason and emotion in the pursuit of understanding deeper truths. It suggests that while reason is a crucial tool for navigating the material world, it is limited in its capacity to grasp the essence of higher concepts such as nature, the soul, love, and God.

Rationality

Rationality

Quotes

"To know more, one must feel less, and vice versa… Nature, the soul, love, and God, one recognizes through the heart, and not through the reason. Were we spirits, we could dwell in that region of ideas over which our souls hover, seeking the solution. But we are earth-born beings, and can only guess at the Idea — not grasp it by all sides at once. The guide for our intelligences through the temporary illusion into the innermost centre of the soul is called Reason. Now, Reason is a material capacity, while the soul or spirit lives on the thoughts which are whispered by the heart. Thought is born in the soul. Reason is a tool, a machine, which is driven by the spiritual fire. When human reason … penetrates into the domain of knowledge, it works independently of the feeling, and consequently of the heart."

[emphasis from original not conserved in this copy]

Dostoyevsky, Fyodor (Ed.) (1961): Letters of Fyodor Michailovitch Dostoevsky to his family and friends. New York: Horizon Press.
Nature, the soul, love, and God, one recognizes through the heart, and not through the reason… Reason is a tool, a machine, which is driven by the spiritual fire.