With the second volume of his essay, De Lamennais enters the region of epistemology. It is especially the question of the foundation of all certainty that interests him. He considers three possible answers to the question, all of which he finds wanting. First of these answers is the classical empiricism, in which certainty is based on sensations - Lamennais calls this possibility materialism. His criticism is predictable: sensations give us no certainty on anything, because we do not know how or even whether they are connected to a thing existing independently of sensation.
The second answer Lamennais considers is idealism, which he says to be exemplified by Berkeley and Kant. This pairing might raise some eyebrows and even more suspect is Lamennais’ suggestion that such an idealism based certainty on sentiment. Lamennais does not offer a serious justification of this characterisation, but one might suspect that it is especially the post-Kantian idea of intellectual intuition as the method of philosophy, which lies behind his suggestion. In any case, Lamennais can quickly note just that sentiment is no better a foundation than sensation, because different people have diverse sentiments of same topics.
The final answer is Cartesian dogmatics, which in Lamennais’ opinion bases everything on reasoning. Although Lamennais regards dogmatics most favourably of the three answers, he is quick to point out that all reasoning must have some starting point or use some axiom which is not based on further reasoning. Thus, even reason is no final answer to the question of certainty and Descartes must accept the bane of Pyrrhonian skepticism.
Having denied the validity of these three answers, Lamennais introduces his own solution. Certainty, he says, cannot be based on thoughts of a single individual, but this does not mean that it couldn’t be based on a group of individuals. Indeed, Lamennais insists, whenever we are arguing and come to a standstill, we ask the opinion of other people. In other words, it is the intersubjective criterion of authority, which Lamennais takes as the foundation of certainty. There is certain feasibility in this ideas, since e.g. when discussing a difficult scientific theory, we are more likely to accept the opinion of an expert than that of a layman with a clear feeling about the correct solution, because the expert is more of an authority than the layman. Still, what we could consider an acceptable authority and what Lamennais considers it to be are two different things.
It is then no wonder that when Lamennais starts to consider the existence of God that he uses the common opinion of all humanity as a proof of this existence. He does mention more meatier proofs, notably what Kant called an ontological proof - surely God must exist, since he is just “that who is” or the epitome of all existence, which must exist, never mind what else there is. So convinced Lamennais is of his authorial justification that he puts all the other proofs he uses in a footnote.
The existence of God is not just some very theoretical statement, which doesn’t concern human life, Lamennais thought. Instead, a number of important truths follow from the existence of God, he said. Notably, humans, created by God, must have some laws governing their nature, just like all things, and furthermore, they must follow these laws of their nature, if they are to find true happiness. For instance, Lamennais noted, human beings need to know the truth, but as he supposedly showed, all truth is based on authority and ultimately on authority of God himself, who is supposed to know all the truth.
The purpose of Lamennais’ argument is then clearly to show that human beings need a relation to God, in order to satisfy their own yearning for truth. The relation of human being to God, then, is obviously meant to be the defining moment in religion. Yet, not just any relation to God satisfies Lamennais, but he insists that there is only one proper religion, since the natures of human being and God are not variable - they are like two puzzle pieces that can be combined in only one manner. This means that all the other supposed religions are then just falsifications of the one true religion.
The next question is obviously then what criteria we should use for discerning this true religion and distinguishing it from all false religions. Lamennais considers again the possibility to use sentiment or reasoning as a criterion - apparently sensation just has nothing to do with religion in Lamennais’ eyes. Both possibilities are easily shown to be unfeasible. Sentiment cannot be the basis of one religion, since different cultures have had different feelings about the true religion, while reason is again incapable of fending off doubts even about the simplest truths.
The only possible option left, Lamennais insists, is authority, this time of the society. God has created human being as an essentially social entity, who has to find his certainty through education given by others. Since this flow of education cannot be infinite, it must end at a stage where human beings were directly educated by God himself - hence, the need for revelation.
It is to be expected that the true revealed religion Lamennais has in mind is Christianity in its Catholic form. In the next post I shall enter into more details of the justification Lamennais gives for this thesis, but we can already note the emphasis on the unity on religion - a clear statement against any tolerance of opinions. Indeed, Lamennais is quick to dismiss all pagan religions because of such a tolerance of different viewpoints, which appears to be the worst form of idolatry. Furthermore, he regards almost all non-Christian religions as such an idolatry. The only exceptions are Judaism, which Lamennais thinks was just a temporary phase in the development of true religion and is now just a lifeless husk, and Islam, which he considers to be just another heretical form of Christianity.
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