Peter Kreeft argues that Western intellectual history can be seen as a ping-pong match between head and heart (reason and will), eventually deteriorating (or hardening) into logic and feeling/sentiment/emotion. I've tried to capture his argument in this image. On the left is the "head/reason/ ratio-logic" stream, and on the right is the "heart/will/feeling-emotion" stream. I've tried to use cooler colors to represent the periods tending toward the "head" stream, and warmer colors to represent the periods tending toward the "heart" stream. The closer a period is to the center of the page, the more balanced it is between the poles of head and heart. The further to the left it is, the more it tends toward the head; the further right it is, the more it tends toward the heart. Following this diagram is an explanation of the "ping-pong" theory.
Peter Kreeft's Ten Periods of Human History
Head -------------------------------------------------------Heart
{--------1) Myth ------ }
{ ---------2) Axial period--------------}
Reason understood as
"Ratio &a Intellectus" |
Will
3) Hellenism 4) Hebraism
+
JESUS CHRIST:
Logos + Son of David
5) Medieval Christian Synthesis
6) Renaissance
7) Reformation
Reason as
"Ratio"
8) Enlightenment
8) Enlightenment
will understood as "Feeling"
9) Romanticism
10)
Postmodernism ………………………………………………..........................10) Postmodernism
Adapted from Peter Kreeft’s Back to Virtue
(San Francisco: Ignatius,
1992) pp. 47-56
1. Myth
time of the pagans, poets: Homer,
Hesiod
myth
attempts to explain origins of things; but are not meant to be rational or
moral.
2. Axial Period: 6th century, B.C.
Period of great ferment; men were
beginning to become aware of their powers and
Responsibilities
3. Hellenism
Classical Greek and Roman philosophers
pursue TRUTH
The
truth they search most for is the truth about virtue/goodness
Emphasize
centrality of intellect,
theory (HEAD)
Head
judges heart “Live according to reason.”
>virtue
is a matter of knowledge: if we know what is good, we will do it
vice
is a matter of ignorance: we do wrong
out of ignorance
4. Hebraism
The Judeo-Christian stream; prophets
pursuing the GOOD
Introduce
two critical categories of human existence:
sin and faith
Emphasize
centrality of will,
choice, action (HEART)
Faith
comes first, then virtue, then knowledge.
Just
knowing what is good is no guarantee that we will do it.
Heart
judges head. “Above all else, guard your heart; it is the wellspring of life” (Proverbs 4:23)
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
5. @ 500-1500: Medieval Christian Synthesis (Basic Christian Theism)
managed to find a way of combining
Hellenism and Hebraism
head and heart
intellect and will
faith and reason
“a
profound reinterpretation of Greek
philosophy and morality.”
The
apex of philosophical realism, which holds that there is a real external world
that can be known;
Human beings created below God, angels; above
animals, plants
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
6. 16th century: Renaissance
an attempt to return to Hellenism,
getting rid of medieval scholastic philosophy and theology;
a return to the intellect exclusively, "Man
the measure of all things." Nominalism spurs the
Scientific Revolution, and further fuels reason.
7. 17th century: Reformation
an attempt to return to Hebraism, to
simpler pre-medieval NT Christianity:
getting
rid of Greek rationalism, Roman legalism; return to the will
Nominalism becomes the default metaphysic of the west; views God as pure Will. The Reformers
Nominalism becomes the default metaphysic of the west; views God as pure Will. The Reformers
are influenced by this idea of God and declare "sola fides." Thus human beings
can only obey Him; they cannot understand Him. Faith eclipses reason.
8. 18th century : The
Enlightenment /Deism
reaction against reformation faith;
scientism and rationalism as replacements triumph of head
over heart, but this head is trimmed down,
secularized
“Enlightenment
rationalism cut the top off Greek ideals and kept the bottom;
cut off wisdom and kept logic; transformed
reason into reasoning.”
Scientific
method became the method for achieving the summum
bonum: the conquest of nature;
things are real insofar
as they are measurable
This
period is now often referred to as “modernism.”
Hume’s skepticism= the logical
conclusion of modernism
***********************************************************************************************************
KANT: attempts to reply to Hume, provide foundations
once more for science, reason;
Result is a Copernican
revolution in philosophy: the death of philosophical realism.
************************************************************************************************************
9. 19th century:
[Romanticism], Nihilism, Existentialism
reactions against Enlightenment
rationalism; fallout from Kant's "Big Bang"
Romanticism=triumph
of heart over head, but a trimmed down,
secularized heart
“Romanticism’s
heart was sentiment instead of will, and it was in relationship to nature,
rather than
to God.” Existentialism
exalts the will; Nietzsche deifies it.
10. 20th century: Postmodernism/ Naturalism, Eastern
Pantheistic Monism, New Age
Postmodernism(or
as some call it, hyper-Modernism) has come into its own in the past decade.
It
repudiates the rationalism and universal truth of modernism, preferring individual perspectives
andrelativism (metaphysical,
epistemological and moral.) This opens the
Pandora’s Box of
worldviews, but the main contenders seem to be
falling out, and they are naturalism;
Eastern
Pantheistic monism and its half-breed stepchild, New Age
thought; and finally, Christian Theism.
(Though one could argue whether it should rather be
Theism in general, or Theisms in particular—
Judaism, Islam, and Christianity.)
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