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Antonio Livi,
Reasons for Believing
Contemporary
European Cultural Studies
Series editors, Gianni
Vattimo and Santiago Zabala
For many
years, Antonio Livi has addressed key issues concerning the logical
basis of the act of faith, understood as the ascent to a reality
that in itself is knowable yet beyond the ordinary limits of human
cognition. In Reasons for Believing he attempts to recover an
emphasis on the rationality of faith in Christian revelation.
What makes the
author’s approach interesting and timely is his insistence that
there is a fundamental rational component to religious assent that
can be examined and weighed against the backdrop of a ‘horizon of
truth’, i.e., some claims by religions are true, and some are
not.
He refocuses
the entire question concerning the rationality of belief, and he
does so within an epistemological context referred to as alethic
logic, (the epistemological investigation of the logical
consistency of religious truth claims). By scrutinizing the logical
structure of the principles of ‘common sense’ Livi explores the path
that leads to the act of faith and defends the reasonableness of
that path, employing a notion of truth that connects with scientific
truth while also going beyond the limiting confines that science
imposes on itself.
This book is
an English version of Razionalità della fede nella Rivelazione.
Un’analisi filosofica alla luce della logica aletica (Rome:
Leonardo da Vinci, 2003). Professor Philip Larrey has added a
foreword, and the final chapter of the book, written by the author,
is quite new.
Contents
Foreword
Preface
Introduction
Part One:
Philosophical Insight on Knowing and Believing
Chapter One:
What we Know About God Through Reason Alone
Chapter Two:
Rationality of Believing in General
Part Two: Why
Believing in Christian Revelation is Rational
Chapter Three:
What Believing in Divine Revelation Means
Chapter Four:
The Rationality of Faith in Divine Revelation
Part Three:
Why According to Some Modern Philosophers Christian Faith is Based
on Skepticism
Chapter Five:
Modern Skepticism and Descartes’ Search for Uncertainty
Chapter Six:
Cartesian Epistemology at the Center of the Debate on Faith and
Reason
Conclusion
References
Author
Antonio Livi is Dean of the Philosophical Faculty at the Lateran
University (Rome). The main subject of his research is the
truth-value of knowledge in its different levels or meanings:
ordinary knowledge, scientific inquiry, and religious belief
(especially Christian faith). He is the author of some twenty books
and hundreds of essays and journal articles.
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