Interestingly, it seems to have been none other than Martin Luther who called Reason a “whore”. These are collected from WikiQuote:
- “But since the devil’s bride, Reason, that pretty whore, comes in and thinks she’s wise, and what she says, what she thinks, is from the Holy Spirit, who can help us, then? Not judges, not doctors, no king or emperor, because [reason] is the Devil’s greatest whore.”
- Reason is the greatest enemy that faith has: it never comes to the aid of spritual things, but–more frequently than not –struggles against the Divine Word
- Reason must be deluded, blinded, and destroyed. Faith must trample underfoot all reason, sense, and understanding, and whatever it sees must be put out of sight and … know nothing but the word of God
- Whoever wants to be a Christian should tear the eyes out of his reason.
There are some other interesting quotes from him, mixed in, of course, with a lot of weird racist and mysogynistic ones.
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10 Comments
Oddly, the terms “whore” and “reason” used together always makes me think of the quote:
“Reason is a whore, surviving by simulation, versatility, and shamelessness.” - Emile M. Cioran
Which actually fits much better with some of the earlier threads re: the malleability of reason, logic and rationalism to explain behavior…
But I always thought Cioran’s quote:
“Illusion begets and sustains the world; we do not destroy one without destroying the other. Which is what I do every day. An apparently ineffectual operation, since I must begin all over again the next day.”
…was apt, particularly when dealing with metaphysics, the occult or philosophy.
But yeah, Luther seems, like many of the “old” church, to be heavily screwed up misogynistically, at the very least. Comes from the whole Pauline “sex=sin” “better to marry than burn” nonsense…
Isn’t there some crowley quote about dancing with doubt as a whore and awakening in the morning to find her a virigin called faith?
once you switch off the critical filters of reason then you have the potential to believe anything. reason can be a whore too, mind you. to me, intuition is divine.
crowley reminds me of winston churchhill. the curmudgeon of mystcism.(both of them)
oh shit thats a great call max. the crowley quote goes:
Isn’t Reason pretty close to Wisdom? And Sophia was called whore, right?
Not sure what Luther meant exactly. Perhaps I’m just getting cranky in my middle age, but blind faith in someone’s doctrine is about as promiscuous as one can get. “Oh sure, I’ll still love you in the morning.â€
I’m with Alistair. Intuition has brought me back from the borders of belief, several times now. Yeah, reason is a whore but so is blind belief. Knowledge is deaper.
Dan, I actually wrote about the Sophia/Reason connection a while back. I don’t know if its a simple equation…
Bill, I definitely agree about intuition. Works for me, but only when I follow it! I guess what I’m exploring right now is how to tell when Reason is in service to intuition, or to fear, or to something else. I like what Luther says here mainly because he’s talking about going beyond Reason into some deeper type of knowing. I don’t know what that is exactly. I’d hesitate to call it faith myself. My favorite quote about faith comes from Alan Moore:
I wish that were in the Bible.
This is an interesting quote from an essay on Charles Manson that I was referred to earlier. Interesting coincidence:
does that give the catholic church(or any other) the right to victimise those who aren`t ready to handle thought?
Um, I don’t know. But I do know that this is what I think “reason is a whore” is supposed to mean: You can get it to do what you want to do, but it’s going to cost you.
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[...] “But since the devil’s bride, Reason, that pretty whore, comes in and thinks she’s wise, and what she says, what she thinks, is from the Holy Spirit, who can help us, then? Not judges, not doctors, no king or emperor, because [reason] is the Devil’s greatest whore.â€- Reason is the greatest enemy that faith has: it never comes to the aid of spritual things, but–more frequently than not –struggles against the Divine Word [...]