Rationalism versus Irrationalism

Ok so let’s start at the dawn of western philosophy, let’s start with Plato. So Plato is often called a rationalist. Now why exactly? Well, it’s basically because he believed that we ideally recognize and pursue certain goals by our reason first and only then direct our will or desire to help us achieve these goals. In other words, it’s our pure and unfettered intelligence that’s in charge and determines our goals, and only after does it enlist our will or desire for their pursuit. For Plato then, human nature is ideally intellectual, and so for our desires to dominate would be, well, it would be a corruption of our nature as rational beings!

Now Plato’s influence in this regard would be far reaching. The great Descartes, for example, over 1700 years later, would also uphold a kind of rationalism, a primacy of the understanding or the intellect over the will. And actually, this sort of thinking, this emphasis on the pride of place of reason, would extend all the way through the Scientific Revolution to the Enlightenment of the 17th and 18th century. Oh and I should probably also mention the later German philosophers Hegel and Marx here too. I mean they too in their own way upheld rationalist views, most importantly of course, they both saw a rational pattern to the historical process, in other words, they both saw the core of history as a developmental, intelligible story. 

Ok now here’s the thing, of course not all philosophers held to rationalist views. No, for example, Thomas Hobbes and David Hume are two early dissenters. That’s to say, in their own way, they both believed that reason or intelligence is ultimately subordinate to will or desire, not the other way around. I mean Hobbes essentially thought that all human behaviour is based on pain and pleasure or desire and aversion. And Hume, well, he famously said that reason is only the slave of the passions.  

But I would say it’s really not until Schopenhauer and then Nietzsche and Sigmund Freud that we get a kind of radical critique of rationalism and of the Enlightenment notions of historical progress. You see, for Schopenhauer, reason, well, that’s definitely relegated to a  subordinate role. More specifically, reason is just a servant to the larger life force that Schopenhauer called the Will. That’s to say, our reason or intelligence is actually entirely in bondage to our unconscious and irrational desire to perpetuate life. 

So what’s interesting here about this view is that we’re not a special and separate species of being marked out by our capacity for reason and thought; no, for Schopenhauer, the fact of the matter is that we’re simply continuous with animals, equally driven, like them, by instincts and desires rooted way deep down. This special and lofty dignity Immanuel Kant talked about that he claimed we humans had. Not true! We don’t occupy any pedestal, despite the long tradition that claims that we do. No, we’re just as natural as, and as identical to, the animals we share the earth with, and just as oblivious as them when it comes to our true motivations. 

Anyway, in this sense - and of course, this is also in part Freud’s discovery - what’s really going on is that life operates behind reason’s back. What ultimately makes us do the things we do lies well beneath the reach of reason! We don’t have the autonomous human agency we think we do. Life is a subterranean ocean in which we humans swim, pushed and pulled by its forces. 

Now for Schopenhauer and for Nietzsche what this also means is that our intellect is not some privileged faculty engaged in a totally pure or unbiased manner in understanding the world. We don’t see the world transparently. No, because our intellect is an instrument of these larger life forces, it’s always infected by motives and interests that we’re not aware of. If we see, we see through a glass darkly, to quote Corinthians. And again, that’s because the will is our first and deepest source of motivation and our most fundamental means of engagement with the world, even if we’re not consciously aware of it. And so ultimately if truth is something disclosed to us, it’s not by our intellect, but it’s by our bodies, and our passions and the unconscious. As Nietzsche tells us, there is more wisdom in your body than there is in your deepest philosophy! 

And to get back to the likes of Hegel and Marx for a moment. Notice here too they get it wrong, at least according to the likes of Schopenhauer, Nietzsche and Freud. That’s to say, history isn’t rational or developmental, and individuals aren’t becoming more perfect. In other words, there’s no linear concept of progress where history is a process of progressive development. No life is just an endless struggle of forces that simply continues on without leading to some better or utopian outcome. It’s purposeless! The universe is not a rational place and so it, well, it just ultimately doesn’t conform to the sorts of ideals or dreams of humanity spoken about by so many philosophers.  

Ok, so I take it that at least one feature of the rational life is summed up in Socrates’ most famous injunction, you know, that the unexamined life is not worth living. In other words, the suggestion here is that rationality is connected to philosophical reflection about one’s life, even, incredibly, to a life worth living. Now what are we to make of this? I don’t know, it’s a bit extreme isn’t it, a bit arrogant even? I mean wouldn’t this eliminate as candidates for rationality a lot of different cultures. That is, aren’t there a lot of societies where hyper self-reflection isn’t encouraged, or just isn’t on the radar? Or what about all those cultures enveloped in mythology and story telling? Or what about those who look for justification not in critical thinking, but in forms of authority and tradition? Now, are these ways of being any less rational, or if they are, does it matter? That’s to say, is rationality, in this Socratic sense of self-reflection, really necessary for the good or meaningful life? 

Actually, you know what, I think you could make the case that sometimes rationality and the pursuit of the examined life is not just unnecessary for the good life, but an obstacle to it, that’s to say, it can be debilitating. I mean I think about all those philosophers who’ve in one way or another tried to pursue the examined life only to have it ended in failure for them. In their own way, Montaigne and Nietzsche come to mind, and, well, so does Rousseau (who found that he could never live up to the depiction of the proper person he’d described in his works). Anyways,  the truth of the matter is that philosophical reflection and self-examination often leads to doubt and despair, not confidence and joy. And we see something like this in everyday life as well: chronic self-focused rumination can often lead to depression. 

I don’t know, maybe Dostoevsky’s Underground Man was right when he called consciousness and over-awareness a thorough-going illness, one which takes the form of paralysis. And actually speaking of the Russians, Tolstoy also knew this, something he makes clear in his Confessions, where he basically says that too much reflection can bring life to a stop, which it did for him!

I don’t know, maybe Nietzsche was right when he said that we’re necessarily strangers to ourselves. Maybe there are limits to self-knowledge and the examined life. Maybe thoughtfulness incapacitates more than it moves us forward. 

Actually it’s interesting, this idea of incapacitation, this idea of analysis paralysis, makes me think of how Socrates is described in one of Plato’s dialogues, the Meno. There, Socrates is described as a kind of torpedo fish or a kind of electric eel that shocks those it comes into contact with, temporarily leaving them paralyzed. In other words, Socrates’ constant questioning and examining leaves others in a crippling perplexity that they can’t seem to get out of. 

I don’t know, maybe at the end of the day, the best strategy, while not resorting to complacency, is to put aside our perfectionistic ideals, to stop over deliberating and obsessing, and to live the more intuitive life. 

Maybe the most rational life is one that knows not to eat its own tail!