What's in a medal?

In explaining facts connected with the human spirit, we must not make fewer assumptions than are required to explain them... [nor must we] make more assumptions than are needed to explain the facts

Last weekend, I was given an old, battered medal on a chain, the front of which had a

portrait labeled as "Antonio Rosmini" and the back reading "ADORARE TACERE GODERE"*.

Now, my Latin is a little rusty, but I figure I'm out of luck on all three goals listed, here. I'm not much on faith, I'm really bad when it comes to holding my tongue (many of my friends and all my enemies will agree to that), and, well, one can only hope to please one's superiors. I haven't gone out of my way to do much on that, either.

But at least I figured that the dude on the pendant was some famous Catholic (who else does medals with people on the front and latin phrases on the back? she reasoned).

Not being a good Catholic, I had no clue as to the identity of this fellow on the medal, or his order. Still, my curiosity got the better of me, so I read up on him. The guy was pretty cool. He took a lot of flak from Jesuits around him, but he stuck by his guns, declaring that the Enlightenment wasn't all it was cracked up to be:

For him, the Enlightenment, with its sensistic, subjectivist attitude and devotion to the act of reasoning, rather than to the light of reason, degenerates inevitably into a hotchpotch of negation and ignorance, leading to radical corruption in ethics, and every other branch of philosophical endeavour.

Now, I don't know if anybody else has picked up on this trend in scholarly pursuits, but it seems to me, in many instructional settings, the process is more important than the result. Having a dad who is a retired physics professor, I can safely say that those who really care believe that the result is -- at the very least -- equally important. Understanding why and how a car moves is nice, but if you can't actually make it go, you have nothing but useless data (something with which my own head is apparently filled).

But I digress.

The point at issue, therefore, in the case of religion, is not that Christians, or Buddhists, or Muslims, or any other religious persons, are necessarily hampered by their beliefs, but whether these beliefs are true, and to what extent they are true. It is not sufficient to state simply that only persons who are devoid of any belief are capable of philosophising freely. Rather

total freedom is a necessary condition of the truth of faith. If faith were considered divine although in conflict with reason, it would impose an impossible obligation and totally inhibit our reasoning activity. We would be unable to give our assent to either reason or faith, and would thus remain deprived of truth.

It is not the case, Rosmini would affirm, that only non-believers have the capacity to enter the world of philosophical enquiry.

Rosmini seems to have been a man after my own heart -- and mind.


*"To worship, to be silent, to please"


Update: photos added high noon, 12 May, 2006