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Though I admire Kit's rhetoric, don't lump mine in with it. I would certainly not say that "all we are left with is competing notions of 'rationality' supported by rhetorical appeals to emotion." There are two dimensions of the DBH quote that I would stress: first, that exhortation and rhetoric are taken here to be forms or reason, and need to be treated as such, i.e. with honesty and charity. This is not to sell snake-oil, it is to participate in something good and beautiful. Second, the final clause: there are no arguments better than these, and thus they should be marshaled "before other forms of reason can be marshaled." There are other arguments and other modes of reason -- plenty of them. Again, as I said before, and as Aquinas certainly did, bring it all on. This applies to pederasty as much as to Christianity. I agree with you that we are, in fact, right, and we have many sound reasons to believe we are, from Rindian statistics to the history of the world to the feelings in our hearts to lives of boys we have known. There may exist no truly disinterested rationality, but there still exists Truth. We do not inhabit the groundless nihilist world of pure discourse that the "postmodern" mind, or any mind overwhelmed by selfishness or despair, would imagine. |