THE REASON AS “INTELLECTUS” and THE REASON AS “RATIO”

Try to UNDERSTAND, because if you try to COMPREHEND everything, you’ll be lost...

From the Mary Magdalene apocryphal Gospels (last precepts):

Vision of Mariamne: She said, «I saw the Lord in a vision and I said to Him, Lord I saw you today in a vision». He answered and said to me: «Blessed you are that you did not waver at the sight of Me. For where the intellect is, there is the treasure». I said to Him, «Lord, how does he who sees the vision see it, through the soul or through the spirit? » The Savior answered and said, «He does not see through the soul nor through the spirit, but the intellect that is between the two that is what sees the vision and it is [...]»

Eduardo Yvorra argentine scholar who wrote "Quantum Physics: A Personal Approach, Conceptual and Historical, though not Math" in the introduction to his magnificent work, says:

<<… just as there are people who enjoy reading poetry or fiction, or like painting, I enjoy reading scientific issues, although after repeating the reading several times do not reach fully understand about the meaning of what is written, at least in the words of the German philosopher Josef Pieper not with the reason as "ratio" (rationally), but more with the reason as "intellectus" (intuitively). This idea of the two aspects or faculties of the reason seems very attractive to me; nothing better than reading what Pieper says about it in his book "The Leisure and Intellectual Life":

The ratio is the power of discursive thought, of search and investigation, of abstracting and then of being precise and concluding. The intellectus however, is the name of reason as it is the power of the "simplex intuitus" from the simple vision, to which is offered the true as being the host of landscape. However the man's spiritual cognitive faculty -as the ancients understood- is both things: ratio and intellectus, and the knowledge results a joint action by both. The way of discursive thinking is woven together by the tester vision and effortless intellectus, which is a faculty of the soul no active but passive, or rather receptive, a faculty whose activity is to receive ... the performance of the ratio, the discursive thinking is work, strenuous activity; while the mere sight of the intellectus, the intuition, is effortless.

I would add that intellect is the facet or inexplicable faculty of reason that makes us feel that we are before something important, I would say glorious. And here I wish to dwell a bit more about the relationship I find between this abstract and scientific subject and the faith. Many times I have gone into interesting discussions but hardly reached conclusions about religious issues and faith. Among them it is common to find two extreme positions, the dogmatists who try by all means and with some force to demonstrate the logic of faith in the existence of a Creator God and the rational skeptics that not seeing the logic (reason as ratio according to Pieper) support the impossibility of the existence of God.

Well in this area of Quantum Physics, I found explanations or facts that are real and proven performance of certain events, despite the crashing with the common sense (again, with the reason as ratio). So it made me wonder: if all this is as such and scientists cannot give satisfactory explanations for human logic, why should not be the same with the existence of God? Could it be that while we cannot grasp all this with the reason as ratio, many times it shows-up before us through the reason as intellectus? Would not it be a matter of giving more importance to that that many depose because it is particularly women's intuition? ... >>

…or perhaps it may be a third dimension: the reason as the "perception of love"...

Josef Pieper