Abstract

It has always been recognized that proposals about the sense of 'reason' and 'rationality' will have moral and political implications. I shall argue that it has been a misfortune that the term 'reason' was interpreted by Plato and Aristotle as referring to a faculty of the divided soul. The parallel between the city/social order, rightly conceived and planed, and the soul, put in order by nature, is carefully worked out. In it, political choice is to be guided by the analogy with the natural subordinations recognized in the soul. I suggest that, reversing the tradition, we start at the other end of the analogy and proceed in the opposite direction, and look at the ways that natural rational processes have both a public and inner mental use. Key Words: emotion • rationality • reason • soul strife.