Certainty
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Faith, Hope, and Certainty
“Certainty may be quite compatible with being at a loss to
say what one is certain of. Indeed
I seriously doubt if the notion of ‘certainty of,’ or ‘certainty that’ will
take us accurately to the heart of the matter. It seems to me that certainty is at least very much akin to
hope and faith. And I agree with
Gabriel Marcel that it would be a mistake to undertake the interpretation of
hope and of faith under what I will call the aspect of specificity, as if hope
were essentially ‘hope that,’ and faith ‘belief that.’ Likewise, then, of certainty: Perhaps
it too is not a matter of knowledge we can be said to possess.”
Henry Bugbee, The
Inward Morning, (Athens and London: University of Georgia Press, 1999),
pp.36-37.
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I often turn to Peirce not just for technical philosophical matters but also for insights like this one. What sort of people am I interested in surrounding myself with? It is most comfortable to surround myself with people who share my views and who espouse them with the air of certainty. But as Peirce reminds us in "The Fixation of Belief," the great danger there is that in so doing I cut myself off from seeing my own errors and from improving my thinking.
As with so many things worth remembering, it is hard to keep this in mind. We need not just people who think differently from the way we think but also communities that will help us return to those words and ideas that sharpen us and provoke us to thought. This is the challenge of theology and of philosophy, and of liturgies, both sacred and secular - to remind us of what we ought to remember while at the same time challenging us to resist the comfort of resting in what seems sure. As Augustine writes, "Our hearts are restless until they find their rest in thee, O Lord." Until then, until our hearts find rest in the absolute, we should be wary of certainty, which is so often the enemy of learning.
The Comfort of Certainty
"Only once, as far as I remember, in all my lifetime have I experienced the pleasure of praise--not for what it might bring but in itself. That pleasure was beatific; and the praise that conferred it was meant for blame. It was that a critic said of me that I did not seem to be absolutely sure of my conclusions."
--Charles S. Peirce, Collected Papers 1.10. (1897)I often turn to Peirce not just for technical philosophical matters but also for insights like this one. What sort of people am I interested in surrounding myself with? It is most comfortable to surround myself with people who share my views and who espouse them with the air of certainty. But as Peirce reminds us in "The Fixation of Belief," the great danger there is that in so doing I cut myself off from seeing my own errors and from improving my thinking.
As with so many things worth remembering, it is hard to keep this in mind. We need not just people who think differently from the way we think but also communities that will help us return to those words and ideas that sharpen us and provoke us to thought. This is the challenge of theology and of philosophy, and of liturgies, both sacred and secular - to remind us of what we ought to remember while at the same time challenging us to resist the comfort of resting in what seems sure. As Augustine writes, "Our hearts are restless until they find their rest in thee, O Lord." Until then, until our hearts find rest in the absolute, we should be wary of certainty, which is so often the enemy of learning.