A Guide For The Perplexed Analysis

I am Perplexed
E.F. Schumacher’s A Guide for the Perplexed was written in an age where theology and namely God have been taken off from a pedestal and set aside for other things to become kingdoms. In this text Schumacher attempts to show Christianity as the foundation of life and its principles for understanding, knowing yourself, and knowing God. Schumacher is able to accomplish this through taking the arguments for faith and Gods existence and breaking them down and explaining the accuracies from the “levels of being” to the “Four Fields of Knowledge”. He also encounters several theories and beliefs as to why to disprove Christianity, namely God. He uses several methods and themes throughout the text but I have chosen three of which to …show more content…
A step higher moves to animals. Animals have matter “M”, they have life “X” and they also have something that rocks and plants do not; they have “Y” consciousness. Now at the highest position that is seen with the senses is Human Beings. Humans have matter “M”, they have life “X”, they have consciousness “Y”, but finally they have something that puts humans as the highest being according to our senses, they have “Z” self-awareness. Other than matter, the rest of these attributes cannot have closures in science and that is precisely why the humanities are less respected than the material sciences which only focus on matter. In fact most material sciences have success in studying the human body and what makes the human body function. This material science however does not cover the topic on “what makes a human a human?” With this, science tries to come to the ideological closure that humans and animals are alike as a complex system of arranged molecules and focus little attention to our invisible traits that all humans share. “To say that life is nothing but a property of certain peculiar combinations of atoms is like saying that Shakespeare’s Hamlet is nothing but a property …show more content…
This is the second theme that Schumacher used. “Adaequatio (Adequateness) …the understanding of the knower must be adequate to the thing being known.”(39) A fortunate thing to the Human race would be the five senses that most human beings are blessed with. These bodily senses are used to have things that happen in the senses realm make sense of them to the mind. Most human beings are the same as far as the five senses; however where human beings differ is the “Adaequatio”. Schumacher also insists that self awareness and consciousness are recognizable not through our senses but through something else. This must be some sort of organ that is not our senses but is indescribable. Schumacher uses the example of Beethoven and the music that he has composed. Some human beings could listen to a piece of Beethoven’s’ music repeatedly and never grasp the meaning of it and only see it as several music notes compiled together to make a song. However a person who posesses the ability of “Adaequatio” hears the music piece for exactly as Beethoven had intended it. It is this to where some cannot know or understand God. It is through this understanding of God that I can understand what he reveals about himself and installs my faith in him. When a person can know and understand God he then can find the truth in Him. This is where reason says that a person can only