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The Scope of Reason: An Epistle to the Persians

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 January 2010

Renford Bambrough
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Extract

‘Does the planetary impact of Western thought allow for a real dialogue among civilizations?’ This arresting question was set to the lecturers at the first international symposium of the Iranian Centre for the Study of Civilizations, which took place in Tehran in October 1977. Plans were made for a second symposium to be held in January 1979 under the title ‘The Limits of Knowledge According to Different World-views’. The Director's letter of invitation amplified the theme in a series of questions:

For instance, is the agnosticism which has now extended to a world-wide level the consequence of the destruction of objective reason, namely the universal logos, as conceived earlier in the great metaphysical doctrines of the East and the West? Is there any organic link among these: the creation of modern political myths, the individual's fragmentation and the reduction of thought to its mere instrumentality? Is knowledge limited solely to our calculating reason or can it lead to spheres raising us above the limits determined by Kant in his Critique of Pure Reason?

Type
Papers
Information
Royal Institute of Philosophy Supplements , Volume 17: Objectivity and Cultural Divergence , March 1984 , pp. 195 - 208
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy and the contributors 1984

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References

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