One of the most hotly contested debates in Kierkegaard studies concerns his sense of the relationship between faith and reason. Often caricatured as a proponent of irrational fideism, scholarship in recent decades has tried to present a more nuanced account of Kierkegaard’s position. Two likely interpretive options have emerged: supra‐rationalism and anti‐rationalism. On the former view, Kierkegaard believes that while the achievement of faith is beyond the capabilities of reason, there are still ways that reason can aid the maintenance of (...) faith once reason’s limits are recognized. On the latter view, faith is a constant struggle against rationalizing justification, and thus, any attempt to use reason to assist in the maintenance of faith is a mistake. Interestingly, a comparison with Pascal can help one arbitrate between these two responses to the dubious irrationalist reading of Kierkegaard. (shrink)

According to many accounts, propaganda is a variety of politically significant signal with a distinctive connection to irrationality. This irrationality may be theoretical, or practical; it may be supposed that propaganda characteristically elicits this irrationality anew, or else that it exploits its prior existence. The view that encompasses such accounts we will call irrationalism. This essay presents two classes of propaganda that do not bear the sort of connection to irrationality posited by the irrationalist: hard propaganda and propaganda by (...) the deed. Faced with these counterexamples, some irrationalists will offer their account of propaganda as a refinement of the folk concept rather than as an attempt to capture all of its applications. The author argues that any refinement of the concept of propaganda must allow the concept to remain essentially political, and that the irrationalist refinement fails to meet this condition. (shrink)

INTRODUCTION Irrationalism: Lukacs and the Marxist View of Reason At the very least, Karl Marx and Marxism are committed to a form of con textual ism, ...

The article examines the concept of anti-irrationalism coined by the members of the Lvov-Warsaw School. The term “anti-irrationalism” comes from Ajdukiewicz, who used it to define the specificity of the School as a whole. For Ajdukiewicz, anti-irrationalism, which values cognition with intersubjective qualities, is contrasted with irrationalism. The article discusses Twardowski’s tripartite division of beliefs into rational, “irrational,” and “non-rational.” Against this background, the article explores Dąmbska’s view on irrationalism, which is divided by her into several subcategories.Finally, the author considers (...) the question of anti-irrationalism as a metaphilosophical standpoint in the context of the question of a worldview. (shrink)

Reprint of Popper and After: Four Modern Irrationalists. In an afterword, James Franklin discusses reactions to Stove's work.

SummaryAccording to classical rationalism prejudiced people cannot conduct proper research. This is refuted by cases of prejudiced and even Nazi scientists. According to classical rationalism all error is prejudice. This was refuted when crucial experiment between Newton and Einstein favored Einstein. Contemporary popular irrationalists claim crucial experiments are impossible. Their ability to convince rests on the cowardice of the leadership of science which fails to admit openly the present need for a new theory of rationality.RésuméSelon la rationalisme classique, seuls des (...) individus sans préjuges peuvem faire de la bonne recherche. Ce qui est réfuté par des exemples de savants partisans et en particulier nazis. Selon le rationalisme classique, toute erreur est préjugé. Ce qui a été réfuté lorsqu'une expérience cruciale entre Newton et Einstein a tranché en faveur ?on;Einstein. Des irrationalistes contemporains populates prétendent qu'aucune expérience cruciale n'est possible. Leur force de persuasion ne tient Quà la couardise des ténors de la science qui refusent de reconnaître ouvertement le besoin ?on;une nouvelle théorie de la rationalité.ZusammenfassungDem klassischen Rationalismus gemass können voreingenommene Personen nicht wirkliche Forschung betreiben. Diese Ansicht wird widerlegt durch Fälle von voreingenommenen Wissen‐schaftlern – sogar unter der Herrschaft des Nazionalsozialismus. Dem klassischen Rationalismus gemass beruht jeder Irrtum auf Vorurteil. Dies wurde durch die Tatsache widerlegt, dass ein experimentum crucis zugunsten von Einstein gegen Newton entschied. Zeitgenössige populäre Irrationalisten behaupten, dass kein experimentum crucis möglich sei. Ihr Erfolg lasst sich nur durch die Feigheit der für die Wissenschaft Verantwortlichen erklären, die sich weigern, die Not‐wendigkeit einer neuen Theorie der Rationalität einzugestehen. (shrink)

In The Destruction of Reason, Lukács considered the Weimar Republic an accomplice in the victory of fascism. Lukács has no monopoly on this thesis. The restorative ideological interests of the fifties portrayed Nazi Germany as an outbreak of irrationality, after which society returned to its rational routine lost at the end of the 1920s. Lukács view of the irrational as the ideological tool of fascist propaganda, of course, differs from this version. Yet, this difference is obscured by his method of (...) simplification that led him to reject all irrationality. In addition Lukács described the development of the philosophy of irrationalism, in which bad conscience, doubt and uneasiness with this movement gradually decreased. (shrink)

This essay deals with a particularly recalcitrant problem in the history of ideas, that of irrationalism. It emerged to full consciousness in mid-eighteenth century thought. Irrationalism was a logical consequence of individualism which in turn was a direct outcome of the Cartesian self-reflective subject. In time these tendencies produced the "critical" Zeitgeist and the "epoch of taste" during which Kant began thinking about such matters. Like Alfred Bäumler, I argue that irrationalism could not have arisen in ancient or medieval philosophical (...) discourse, as they both lacked a certain type of rationalism required as its conceptual antipode. Only after the Lisbon earthquake (1755), and the ensuing reason vs. passion debate acknowledging for the first time both human powers as equal contenders, did the specter of irrationalism arise and become a focus. Kant's revolution in thought produced "transcendental psychology" reconciling "pure" sensibility and "pure" reason and provided, I argue, the conceptual wherewithal to grant aesthetic feeling and irrationalism a philosophical niche. (shrink)

This essay deals with a particularly recalcitrant problem in the history of ideas, that of irrationalism. It emerged to full consciousness in mid-eighteenth century thought. Irrationalism was a logical consequence of individualism which in turn was a direct outcome of the Cartesian self-reflective subject. In time these tendencies produced the "critical" Zeitgeist and the "epoch of taste" during which Kant began thinking about such matters. Like Alfred Bäumler, I argue that irrationalism could not have arisen in ancient or medieval philosophical (...) discourse, as they both lacked a certain type of rationalism required as its conceptual antipode. Only after the Lisbon earthquake (1755), and the ensuing reason vs. passion debate acknowledging for the first time both human powers as equal contenders, did the specter of irrationalism arise and become a focus. Kant's revolution in thought produced "transcendental psychology" reconciling "pure" sensibility and "pure" reason and provided, I argue, the conceptual wherewithal to grant aesthetic feeling and irrationalism a philosophical niche. (shrink)

Adorno and Horkheimer’s legacy is incomplete without reference to their infamous political quietism. To thinkers such as Habermas, this was the unfortunate consequence of their alleged evacuation of reason. Attending to the treatment of Nietzsche in Dialectic of Enlightenment illuminates the distinct irony of such charges. Here, in their most popular book, Nietzsche is presented as precisely that which they praised him for warning against elsewhere: an advocate of cruelty animated by a reactionary morality. I contend that this exaggeration is (...) not accidental, but rather illustrative; the authors present a consciously hyperbolized version of Nietzsche in order to articulate how he made possible his own misappropriation, and to distinguish themselves sharply from Nietzsche given their disagreements about the necessity of reason. Ultimately, however, even though Adorno and Horkheimer performatively differentiate themselves from the nihilism they saw in Nietzsche, their alternative would ironically be subject to precisely the same charges of irrationalism and political aporia that they sought so desperately to avoid. (shrink)

This paper has two aims, as an exposition of Jürgen Habermas's response to the work of Michel Foucault, and to engage in and assess this debate between two influential contemporary schools of Continental philosophy. Habermas locates Foucault's project in the history of several attempts at a totalizing critique of reason, attempts which are trapped in a performative self?contradiction. Habermas also argues that Foucault is still caught up in the conceptual straitjacket of the philosophy of the subject which his theory was (...) meant to overcome. He shows that Foucault's central notion of power is used in two different and ultimately irreconcilable ways ? as a transcendental as well as an empirical concept. Much of Habermas's critique is justified and could, indeed, be extended to Foucault's anti?realist relativism, but Habermas's own defence of rationalism is not without difficulties of its own. Thus his notion of knowledge?guiding interests commits him to a form of anti?realism and a transcendental concept of instrumental power which is almost as problematic in its consequences as the anti?realism of Foucault. (shrink)

In ‘The Open Society and its Enemies,’ Karl Popper contrasts closed and open societies. He evaluates irrationalism and the different kinds of rationalism and he argues that critical rationalism is superior. Living in an open society bestows great benefits but involves a strain that may in some people engender a longing to return to a closed society of tribal submission and an attraction for irrationalism. Attempts to recreate a closed society lead to totalitarianism. In the light of Popper’s arguments I (...) criticise contemporary identity politics and I show that identity politics is irrationalist and tends to totalitarianism. (shrink)

Irrationalism is not irrationality but a philosophical reaction to rationalism. Yet the dynamic is no simple one, especially in the wake of Kant, who could seem both hyper-rationalist and as opening the way to Schopenhauerian irrationalism. Marx in turn accused all classical philosophers not just of failing to grasp reality but also of adopting a theoretical rather than activist epistemology. Actual Marxist rule over some of reality added still another layer of complexity to the theoretical debate.

Criticizes the irrationalist and social constructionist tendencies in Kuhn's Structure of Scientific Revolutions.

Stove argues that Popper and his successors in the philosophy of science, Kuhn, Lakatos and Feyerabend, were irrationalists because they were deductivists. That is, they believed all logic is deductive, and thus denied that experimental evidence could make scientific theories logically more probable. The book was reprinted as Anything Goes (1998) and Scientific Irrationalism: Origins of a Postmodern Cult (1998).

About the book: Contemporary Debates in Aesthetics and the Philosophy of Art features pairs of newly commissioned essays by some of the leading theorists working in the field today. Brings together fresh debates on eleven of the most controversial issues in aesthetics and the philosophy of art Topics addressed include the nature of beauty, aesthetic experience, artistic value, and the nature of our emotional responses to art. Each question is treated by a pair of opposing essays written by eminent scholars, (...) and especially commissioned for the volume. Lively debate format sharply defines the issues, and paves the way for further discussion. Will serve as an accessible introduction to the major topics in aesthetics, while also capturing the imagination of professional philosophers. (shrink)

Introduction to my three essays on the relevance of Karl Popper to contemporary social, political and philosophical problems.

I resolve a tension in Hegel’s views, which I call the “paradox of irrationalism,” in order to lay the logical foundation of Hegel’s philosophy of the absurd. The paradox is that Hegel both affirms and denies that the world is rational. While critics maintain that this presents a genuine problem for Hegel, I argue Hegel resolves this paradox by showing that reason constitutes itself through the irrational element that it itself grounds. I make my case by investigating the categories of (...) diversity and contingency, which are central to the paradox of irrationalism and Hegel’s account of human agency. (shrink)

Briefly traces the life of the eighteenth century German philosopher, discusses his major ideas, and looks at the relevance of his work today.

O objetivo último deste artigo é demostrar a atualidade da crítica de Hegel ao irracionalismo. A hipótese interpretativa a ser demonstrada é que o conceito moderno de irracional, cuja origem se encontra na linguagem matemática, está diretamente relacionado com o problema do infinito. Para melhor desenvolver essa questão, pretendo mostrar o diálogo de Hegel com Schelling, cujo diagnóstico sobre o problema da oposição entre finito e infinito nos sistemas filosóficos até sua época muito influenciou a própria concepção de filosofia e (...) de razão do jovem Hegel. (shrink)

In Sleeping with Extra-Terrestrials , Wendy Kaminer argues that we are a society intoxicated by the irrational: religion, spirituality, and popular therapies threaten to replace rational thought with supernaturalism and impassioned but unexamined personal testimony. Ranging from our fascination with angels, aliens, and near- death experiences to the rise of junk science, the recovery movement, and the digital culture, Kaminer points out the amusing and ominous effects of our deference to spiritual authorities and resistance to critical thinking. She questions conventional (...) wisdom about the association of religious belief with virtue, identifying the sectarianism of efforts to establish religion in the public square. With both wit and empathy, Kaminer takes on what many people hold sacred. Kaminer is an eloquent and incisive critic and rationalist living in a superstitious, evangelical age. In Sleeping with Extra-Terrestrials she challenges us to exercise skepticism, reason, and irreverence and to appreciate the pleasures of free inquiry. (shrink)

A reprint of Popper and After: Four Modern Irrationalists.