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The sentence is

"The point of interest was to determine how far the natural light of reason, human reason by itself, could progress in the knowledge of truth, with the important proviso that through religion humans could learn higher truths than reason is in a position to discover from itself?"

Could you please help me clarify this sentence as well? Plus, does that sound like well translated from German? I think it is very complicated and the elements of the sentence are all over the place.

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  • A bit more context would help. As it is, the phrase seems to boil down to :"religion can help guide reason, resaon alone is not enough". It looks like an attemp to use fancy words and construction to hide the lack of arguments supporting the statement.
    – P. O.
    May 13, 2015 at 13:53
  • I would suggest mere substitution of by for from, as better in accord with present-day English usage: from is intelligible but sounds a bit eighteenth-century to my ear.
    – Brian Donovan
    May 13, 2015 at 14:11
  • Replacing "by" with "from" helped much, thank you! Plus, the context is Hegel trying to analyze proofs for the existence of God.
    – Reactor4
    May 13, 2015 at 14:57

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the point being made is that humans use reason to discover truths that is why the phrase discover from itself ie itself is reason it goes further and says religion is more effective than human reason when it comes to discovering higher truths which are likely to be beyond the reach of mere reason

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This is the proviso:

that through religion humans could learn higher truths than reason is in a position to discover from itself

The proviso assumes two preconditions .1. that there are such things as higher truths; and .2. that these truths are accessible through religion. If, and only if, that is accepted as true, then the point of interest is...

"The point of interest was to determine how far the natural light of reason, human reason by itself, could progress in the knowledge of truth.

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