Faith and doubt or faith and reason?

13th July 14, 2009 had been to M G University school of letters to attend the open defence of the Ph D of Beena Job. She is my aunty, my mother’s cousin and a faculty member at St. Theresa’s college.

The topic of her Ph. D was "Resolution and Irresolution: An exposition of skepticism and faith in the poetry of Denise Levertov and Emily Dickinson"

The main argument was in the case of Levertov there was a progress from skepticism to faith whereas Dickinson vacillated between the two never really resolving the same. Keirkegaardian and Hegelian matrices are used to used for further illumination.

In the course of the post presentation questions, it struck me that the antithesis of faith was given as doubt whereas the literary highlight is more between faith and reason as in the 'age of reason'. I raised the question that reason was not mentioned in the presentation.

The answer was that in the case of Dickinson, the use of reason was perhaps the cause of no resolution whereas faith demands an a priori acceptance even without evidence. Also that the reason- faith duality was first exposed by Thomas a Kempis and so on.......

Perhaps there was a little bit of enthusiasm in being in the teaching profession as the discussions were nore cerebral than the mundane as in a company job....