Em A vitória da razão, Rodney Stark mosta “[...] uma pesquisa abrangente
e multifacetada que leva os leitores do Velho
Mundo ao Novo, do passado ao presente, revertendo ao longo do caminho
não apenas séculos de erudição
preconceituosa, mas o preconceito antirreligioso de nosso próprio tempo. A vitória da razão mostra que o que
mais admiramos em nosso mundo - progresso
científico, governo democrático, livre comércio - é em grande parte
devido ao “cristianismo”, através do
qual somos todos herdeiros dessa grande tradição.” (trecho citado, ligeiramente
modicado e com grifos meus
...
“Many books have been
written about the success of the West, analyzing why Europe was able to pull
ahead of the rest of the world by the end of the Middle Ages. The most common
explanations cite the West’s superior geography, commerce, and technology. Completely
overlooked is the fact that faith in reason, rooted in Christianity’s
commitment to rational theology, made all these developments possible. Simply
put, the conventional wisdom that Western success depended upon overcoming
religious barriers to progress is utter nonsense.
In The Victory of Reason, Rodney
Stark advances a revolutionary, controversial, and long overdue idea: that
Christianity and its related institutions are, in fact, directly responsible
for the most significant intellectual, political, scientific, and economic
breakthroughs of the past millennium.
In Stark’s view, what has
propelled the West is not the tension between secular and nonsecular society,
nor the pitting of science and the humanities against religious belief.
Christian theology, Stark asserts, is the very font of reason: While the
world’s other great belief systems emphasized mystery, obedience, or
introspection, Christianity alone embraced logic and reason as the path toward
enlightenment, freedom, and progress. That is what made all the difference.
In explaining the West’s
dominance, Stark convincingly debunks long-accepted “truths.” For instance, by
contending that capitalism thrived centuries before there was a Protestant work
ethic–or even Protestants–he counters the notion that the Protestant work ethic
was responsible for kicking capitalism into overdrive. In the fifth century,
Stark notes, Saint Augustine celebrated theological and material progress and
the institution of “exuberant invention.” By contrast, long before Augustine,
Aristotle had condemned commercial trade as “inconsistent with human
virtue”–which helps further underscore that Augustine’s times were not the Dark
Ages but the incubator for the West’s future glories.
This is a sweeping, multifaceted survey that takes readers from the Old World to the New, from the past to the present, overturning along the way not only centuries of prejudiced scholarship but the antireligious bias of our own time. The Victory of Reason proves that what we most admire about our world–scientific progress, democratic rule, free commerce–is largely due to Christianity, through which we are all inheritors of this grand tradition.”
This is a sweeping, multifaceted survey that takes readers from the Old World to the New, from the past to the present, overturning along the way not only centuries of prejudiced scholarship but the antireligious bias of our own time. The Victory of Reason proves that what we most admire about our world–scientific progress, democratic rule, free commerce–is largely due to Christianity, through which we are all inheritors of this grand tradition.”
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