Abstract
The theoretical clash between the sacred and the profane is one of the most compelling aspects of the way humans use discourse in the pursuit of truth. Rene Descartes’ method, understood as an attempt to rebuild a body of knowledge by calling all that is known into question, demonstrates this dynamic. As Descartes disavows all previously held assumptions, he makes a deliberate caveat to exempt his faith in God from suspicion. In this essay, I argue that the separation of Descartes’ faith from his method is a meaningful illustration of reasoning from the sacred. I demonstrate that a key role of the sacred is to shape the way a person reasons, even as a sacred belief can hold a vaunted, protected position in that person’s worldview. This status of a belief is characterized by two distinct logical structures: separation and security. Finally, based on this analysis, I explicate a few ways that this type of separation has telling implications for our contemporary moral discourse.
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