You need faith And reason to find wisdom.
But how do you follow both?
I'll tell you how Plato did it.
You examine feeling with reason.
Plato took a universal idea like Love, described it, and didn't need to prove that Love was good: he had described it, and we could feel that it was good. And then he examined it with reason and figgured out the consequences.
He did this with Love. He did this with Virtue. He described it, we could feel that it was good, so that he did not have to prove rationally that it was good, and then he examined it rationally. He did this with Love, he did this with Virtue. He did this with other things like an idea of God.
And because he did not have to prove rationally that Love was good, he could use a much less limited idea of Love. For example, if you had to prove rationally that Love is good, you would never be able to explain why, if you had to kill an innocent person to save the Universe, why you would cry for that innocent person. Something like that is beyond a rational explination to explain. But your feelings know it to be true.
And thus, because he did not have to prove rationally that Love was good, but instead could describe Love and we would know in our heart that it is good, Plato could use a much less limited definition of Love. And thus for his definition of Virtue, and so on.
That is how you follow both faith and reason.
You take something that your feelings tell you that you can have faith in, like love, you describe it, you don't have to prove rationally that it is good because you can feel that it is good, and then you examine it rationally.
That is how Plato combined reason with faith.
And something much like this is how all the great sages discovered their wisdom- Mahavira, The Buddha, Confucius, Lao Tzu, Chuang Tzu, the Prophet Isaiah, the Roman Stoics, the Greek church fathers. The sages in the Upanishads. All of them followed faith and reason in a similar way. Only Aristotle and his followers limited themselves to only reason, and required themselves to prove rationally that Love is good.
That is how all the great sages worked.
They examined feeling with reason- without needing to prove rationally that what they know in their heart to be good is good. For if you need to prove everything with reason, you will have nothing meaningful to believe in. For that is why you need both Faith and Reason.
Sincerely,
David S. Annderson