Ralph Wedgwood gives a general account of what it is for states of mind and processes of thought to count as rational. Whether you are thinking rationally depends purely on what is going on in your mind, but rational thinking is a means to the goal of getting things right in your thinking, by believing the truth or making good choices.

v. 1. Inheritance and vocation.--v. 2. Philosophy and psychology.

This is a review, by Sebastian Schmidt, of Ralph Wedgwood's The Value of Rationality (Oxford University Press, 2017).

Extensive and profound as philosophic speculation on the nature of knowledge may have been during the last twenty-five centuries, it must be conceded that it has, on the whole, failed in its undertaking. In fact, we do not seem to be much closer to the solution of the epistemological problem than were Kant and Hegel or, for that matter, Plato and Aristotle. Obviously enough, the problem should now be approached in some new way, perhaps one growing out of recent scientific (...) findings. (shrink)

Many centuries ago, at the very beginning of the systematic development of philosophy, Plato declared that the thinker's domain comprises “the wholeness of things;” and indeed, the earlier thinkers took all knowledge for their province and did not hesitate to discuss problems now referred to art, psychology, economics, mathematics, or physics. Since then the meaning of philosophy has appreciably changed, however, and the intellectual descendants of the great founder of the Academy no longer claim the monopoly of all fields of (...) study. For there appeared in the meantime a mighty competitor—or should we say a partner?—in the pursuit of truth, namely, science. (shrink)

Ralph Webers Beitrag setzt ein mit der Situation konfuzianischer Selbstkultivierung im Kontext aktueller politischer Entwicklungen der VR China. Sein Beitrag zeigt, wie schwer es führenden Vertretern der neukonfuzianischen Bewegung fällt, Selbstkultivierung kritisch zu denken, das heißt, nicht bloß als ideologischen Ersatz für die schwindende Legitimität des Marxismus-Leninismus im Rahmen des autoritären Regimes der kommunistischen Partei zu verstehen.

This is a review of Christopher Peacocke's book The Realm of Reason (Oxford University Press, 2004).