Abstract:
What does the affective-cognitive dimension of being human entails?
Many contemporary scholars from theological (especially religious
experience) perspectives as well as from evolutionary biological (especially
neuroscientific) perspectives have made exciting inroads in the on-going
anthropological discourses on this very dimension of being human. My
article partially makes work of their respective contributions. For the
former theological perspective I will utilize Pascal and Stoker. For the latter
neuroscientific perspective I will concentrate on LeDoux and Damasio. I
call my contribution an evolutionary-theological re-conceptualisation of
religious experience for which I make use of Pascal’s famous words from
his Pensées (1670) “The heart has its reasons which reason does not know”
and “(i)t is the heart which experiences God and not the reason”. Therefore
the title: With reasons of the heart before God. Such a formulation however
immediately raises the question: Does such an emphasis on the “heart” reintroduce
irrationality into the scientific scholarly dialogue? The answer is
clear: Yes, it does. It is argued that it should be re-introduced constructively
into contemporary science-theology discourses in order – on the one hand
– to critically address the very accusation, and – on the other hand – to
present us with a far richer, deeper understanding of personhood. From
the constructive integration of the two perspectives, namely the theological
and neuroscientific the words of Pascal is finally re-formulated from an
evolutionary-theological perspective and qualified in which emotion is
presented as the embodiment of the logic of survival.
Description:
Paper that was read at 15th European Society for Studies in Science and Theology
Conference, Do Emotions Shape the World?, Assisi, Italy 30 April – 4 May 2014 has
been re-worked for publication as article.
