Editing Reason (section)

==Philosophical history{{anchor|History_of_reasoning}}==
[[File:Goya Caprichos3.jpg|thumb|[[Francisco de Goya]], ''[[The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters]]'' ({{lang|es|El sueño de la razón produce monstruos}}), {{circa|1797}}]]
The proposal that reason gives humanity a special position in nature has been argued{{cn|reason=|date=September 2023}} to be a defining characteristic of [[Western culture|western]] [[philosophy]] and later western [[History of science#Modern science|science]], starting with classical Greece. Philosophy can be described as a way of life based upon reason, while reason has been among the major subjects of philosophical discussion since ancient times. Reason is often said to be [[Reflexivity (social theory)|reflexive]], or "self-correcting", and the critique of reason has been a persistent theme in philosophy.<ref name="Jürgen Habermas 1990">{{cite book |last1=Habermas |first1=Jürgen |author-link=Jürgen Habermas |title=The Philosophical Discourse of Modernity |location=Cambridge, Mass. |publisher=MIT Press |year=1990 }}</ref>

===Classical philosophy===
For many classical [[philosophers]], nature was understood [[teleology|teleologically]], meaning that every type of thing had a definitive purpose that fit within a natural order that was itself understood to have aims. Perhaps starting with [[Pythagoras]] or [[Heraclitus]], the [[cosmos]] was even said to have reason.<ref>{{cite book|title=The Presocratic Philosophers|edition=second|last1=Kirk|last2=Raven|last3=Schofield|publisher=Cambridge University Press|year=1983|pages=204 & 235}}</ref> Reason, by this account, is not just a characteristic that people happen to have. Reason was considered of higher stature than other characteristics of human nature, because it is something people share with nature itself, linking an apparently immortal part of the human mind with the divine order of the cosmos. Within the human [[mind]] or [[Soul (spirit)|soul]] ({{transliteration|grc|[[psyche (psychology)|psyche]]}}), reason was described by [[Plato]] as being the natural monarch which should rule over the other parts, such as spiritedness ({{transliteration|grc|[[thumos]]}}) and the passions. [[Aristotle]], Plato's student, defined human beings as [[rational animal]]s, emphasizing reason as a characteristic of [[human nature]]. He described the highest human happiness or well being ({{transliteration|grc|[[eudaimonia]]}}) as a life which is lived consistently, excellently, and completely in accordance with reason.{{r|NE|at=[[Nicomachean Ethics#Defining eudaimonia and the aim of the Ethics|I]]}}

The conclusions to be drawn from the discussions of Aristotle and Plato on this matter are amongst the most debated in the history of philosophy.<ref name=Davidson>{{cite book|title=Alfarabi, Avicenna, and Averroes, on Intellect|last=Davidson|first=Herbert|publisher=Oxford University Press|year=1992|page=3}}</ref> But teleological accounts such as Aristotle's were highly influential for those who attempt to explain reason in a way that is consistent with [[monotheism]] and the immortality and divinity of the human soul. For example, in the [[Neoplatonism|neoplatonist]] account of [[Plotinus]], the [[cosmos]] has one soul, which is the seat of all reason, and the souls of all people are part of this soul. Reason is for Plotinus both the provider of form to material things, and the light which brings people's souls back into line with their source.<ref>{{Citation|chapter=Plotinus|title=Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy|chapter-url=https://iep.utm.edu/plotinus/|last=Moore|first=Edward}}</ref>

===Christian and Islamic philosophy===

The classical view of reason, like many important Neoplatonic and Stoic ideas, was readily adopted by the early Church<ref>{{Citation|chapter=Plato and Platonism|title=Catholic Encyclopedia|chapter-url=https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/12159a.htm|last=Turner|first=William|year=1911|location=New York|publisher=Robert Appleton Company|volume=12}}</ref> as the Church Fathers saw Greek Philosophy as an indispensable instrument given to mankind so that we may understand revelation.<ref>{{Citation|title=Catholic Dictionary|chapter=Hellenism|chapter-url=https://www.catholicculture.org/culture/library/dictionary/index.cfm?id=33893}}</ref>{{Verify source|reason=source does not appear to validate claim|date=September 2023}} For example, the greatest among the early [[Church Fathers]] and [[Doctors of the Church]] such as [[Augustine of Hippo]], [[Basil of Caesarea]], and [[Gregory of Nyssa]] were as much Neoplatonic philosophers as they were Christian theologians, and they adopted the Neoplatonic view of human reason and its implications for our relationship to creation, to ourselves, and to God.

The Neoplatonic conception of the rational aspect of the human soul was widely adopted by medieval Islamic philosophers and continues to hold significance in [[Iranian philosophy]].<ref name=Davidson/> As European intellectual life reemerged from the [[Dark Ages (historiography)|Dark Ages]], the Christian [[Patristic]] tradition and the influence of esteemed Islamic scholars like [[Averroes]] and [[Avicenna]] contributed to the development of the [[Scholasticism|Scholastic]] view of reason, which laid the foundation for our modern understanding of this concept.<ref>{{Citation|chapter=Reason|title=Catholic Encyclopedia|chapter-url=https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/12673b.htm|last=Rahilly|first=Alfred|year=1911|location=New York|publisher=Robert Appleton Company|volume=12}}</ref>

Among the Scholastics who relied on the classical concept of reason for the development of their doctrines, none were more influential than [[Saint Thomas Aquinas]], who put this concept at the heart of his [[Natural Law]]. In this doctrine, Thomas concludes that because humans have reason and because reason is a spark of the divine, every single human life is invaluable, all humans are equal, and every human is born with an intrinsic and permanent set of basic rights.<ref>{{Citation|chapter=Natural Law|title=Catholic Encyclopedia|chapter-url=https://www.newadvent.org/cathen/09076a.htm|last=Fox|first=James|year=1910|location=New York|publisher=Robert Appleton Company|volume=9}}</ref> On this foundation, the idea of human rights would later be constructed by Spanish theologians at the [[School of Salamanca]].

Other Scholastics, such as [[Roger Bacon]] and [[Albertus Magnus]], following the example of Islamic scholars such as [[Alhazen]], emphasised reason an intrinsic human ability to decode the created order and the structures that underlie our experienced physical reality. This interpretation of reason was instrumental to the development of the scientific method in the early Universities of the high Middle Ages.<ref>{{Citation|chapter=Religion and Science|title=Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy|year=2022|publisher=Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University|chapter-url=https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/religion-science/|first=Helen|last=De Cruz}}</ref>

===Subject-centred reason in early modern philosophy===

The [[early modern era]] was marked by a number of significant changes in the understanding of reason, starting in [[Europe]]. One of the most important of these changes involved a change in the [[metaphysics|metaphysical]] understanding of human beings. Scientists and philosophers began to question the teleological understanding of the world.<ref>{{cite web |first=Hubert |last=Dreyfus |title=Telepistemology: Descartes' Last Stand |url=http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~hdreyfus/rtf/Limits_of_Telepresence_6_99.rtf|url-status=dead|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20110521043801/http://socrates.berkeley.edu/~hdreyfus/rtf/Limits_of_Telepresence_6_99.rtf|archive-date=2011-05-21 |publisher= socrates.berkeley.edu |access-date= February 23, 2011}}</ref> Nature was no longer assumed to be human-like, with its own aims or reason, and human nature was no longer assumed to work according to anything other than the same "[[Scientific law|laws of nature]]" which affect inanimate things. This new understanding eventually displaced the previous [[world view]] that derived from a spiritual understanding of the universe.
[[File:Frans Hals - Portret van René Descartes.jpg|thumb|René Descartes]]
Accordingly, in the 17th century, [[René Descartes]] explicitly rejected the traditional notion of humans as "rational animals", suggesting instead that they are nothing more than "thinking things" along the lines of other "things" in nature. Any grounds of knowledge outside that understanding was, therefore, subject to doubt.

In his search for a foundation of all possible knowledge, Descartes decided to throw into doubt ''all'' knowledge—''except'' that of the mind itself in the process of thinking:

<blockquote>At this time I admit nothing that is not necessarily true. I am therefore precisely nothing but a thinking thing; that is a mind, or intellect, or understanding, or reason—words of whose meanings I was previously ignorant.<ref>{{cite book|last=Descartes|first=René|title=[[Meditations on First Philosophy]]|chapter=Concerning the Nature of the Human Mind|year=1641}}</ref></blockquote>

This eventually became known as [[epistemological]] or "subject-centred" reason, because it is based on the ''knowing subject'', who perceives the rest of the world and itself as a set of objects to be studied, and successfully mastered, by applying the knowledge accumulated through such study. Breaking with tradition and with many thinkers after him, Descartes explicitly did not divide the incorporeal soul into parts, such as reason and intellect, describing them instead as one indivisible incorporeal entity.

A contemporary of Descartes, [[Thomas Hobbes]] described reason as a broader version of "addition and subtraction" which is not limited to numbers.<ref>{{Citation|chapter=Of Philosophy|title=Elements of Philosophy I: De Corpore|url=https://archive.org/details/englishworkstho21hobbgoog|last=Hobbes|first=Thomas|editor-first=William|editor-last=Molesworth|location=London|publisher=J. Bohn|year=1839|orig-year=1655|page=5|quote=We must not therefore think that computation, that is, ratiocination, has place only in numbers, as if man were distinguished from other living creatures (which is said to have been the opinion of ''[[Pythagoras]]'') by nothing but the faculty of numbering; for ''magnitude, body, motion, time, degrees of quality, action, conception, proportion, speech and names'' (in which all the kinds of philosophy consist) are capable of addition and substraction {{sic}}. Now such things as we add or substract, that is, which we put into an account, we are said to ''consider'', in Greek {{lang|grc|λογίζεσθαι}} [{{transliteration|grc|logizesthai}}], in which language also {{lang|grc|συλλογίζεσθι}} [{{transliteration|grc|syllogizesthai}}] signifies to ''compute'', ''reason'', or ''reckon''.}}</ref> This understanding of reason is sometimes termed "calculative" reason. Similar to Descartes, Hobbes asserted that "No discourse whatsoever, can end in absolute knowledge of fact, past, or to come" but that "sense and memory" is absolute knowledge.<ref>{{multiref2
|1={{citation|first=Thomas|last=Hobbes|title=Leviathan|chapter=Of the ends, or resolutions of discourse|chapter-url=https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.224021/page/n65/mode/2up|year=1651}}
|2={{citation|first=Thomas|last=Hobbes|title=Leviathan|chapter=Of the several subjects of knowledge|chapter-url=https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.224021/page/n76/mode/1up|year=1651}}
}}</ref>

In the late 17th century through the 18th century, [[John Locke]] and [[David Hume]] developed Descartes's line of thought still further. Hume took it in an especially [[skepticism|skeptical]] direction, proposing that there could be no possibility of [[deductive reasoning|deducing]] relationships of cause and effect, and therefore no knowledge is based on reasoning alone, even if it seems otherwise.<ref>{{multiref2
|1={{cite book|first=John|last=Locke|chapter=Of Identity and Diversity|year=1689|chapter-url=https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.223061/page/n257/mode/2up|title=An Essay concerning Human Understanding|volume=II}}
|2={{cite book|first=David |last=Hume|chapter=Of Personal Identity|chapter-url=https://archive.org/details/0213-bk/page/251/mode/1up|title=A Treatise of Human Nature|volume=I.4|year=1740}}
}}</ref>

Hume famously remarked that, "We speak not strictly and philosophically when we talk of the combat of passion and of reason. Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them."<ref>{{citation|first=David |last=Hume|chapter=Of the influencing motives of the will|chapter-url=https://archive.org/details/0213-bk/page/413/mode/1up|title=A Treatise of Human Nature|volume=II.3|year=1740}}</ref> Hume also took his definition of reason to unorthodox extremes by arguing, unlike his predecessors, that human reason is not qualitatively different from either simply conceiving individual ideas, or from judgments associating two ideas,<ref>{{citation|first=David |last=Hume|chapter=Of the Nature of the Idea Or Belief|chapter-url=https://archive.org/details/0213-bk/page/94/mode/1up8|title=A Treatise of Human Nature|volume=I.3|year=1740|at=[https://archive.org/details/0213-bk/page/96/mode/1up footnote 1]}}</ref> and that "reason is nothing but a wonderful and unintelligible instinct in our souls, which carries us along a certain train of ideas, and endows them with particular qualities, according to their particular situations and relations."<ref name=HumeI3xvi>{{citation|first=David |last=Hume|chapter=Of the reason of animals|chapter-url=https://archive.org/details/0213-bk/page/176/mode/2up|title=A Treatise of Human Nature|volume=I.3|year=1740}}</ref> It followed from this that animals have reason, only much less complex than human reason.

In the 18th century, [[Immanuel Kant]] attempted to show that Hume was wrong by demonstrating that a "[[transcendental arguments|transcendental]]" self, or "I", was a necessary condition of all experience. Therefore, suggested Kant, on the basis of such a self, it is in fact possible to reason both about the conditions and limits of human knowledge. And so long as these limits are respected, reason can be the vehicle of morality, justice, aesthetics, theories of knowledge ([[epistemology]]), and understanding.{{cn|reason=|date=September 2023}}<ref>{{Cite web |title=The critique of pure reason |url=https://www.marxists.org}}</ref>

===Substantive and formal reason===

In the formulation of Kant, who wrote some of the most influential modern treatises on the subject, the great achievement of reason ({{langx|de|Vernunft}}) is that it is able to exercise a kind of universal law-making. Kant was able therefore to reformulate the basis of moral-practical, theoretical, and aesthetic reasoning on "universal" laws.

Here, [[practical reason]]ing is the self-legislating or self-governing formulation of universal [[norm (philosophy)|norms]], and [[theory|theoretical]] reasoning is the way humans posit universal [[natural law|laws of nature]].<ref>{{multiref2
|1={{cite book|first=Immanuel|last=Kant|author-link=Immanuel Kant|title=[[Critique of Pure Reason]]|year=1781}}
|2={{cite book|first=Immanuel|last=Kant|author-link=Immanuel Kant|title=[[Critique of Practical Reason]]|year=1788}}
}}</ref>

Under practical reason, the moral [[autonomy]] or freedom of people depends on their ability, by the proper exercise of that reason, to behave according to laws that are given to them. This contrasted with earlier forms of morality, which depended on [[religion|religious understanding]] and interpretation, or on [[nature]], for their substance.<ref>{{cite book|first=Michael|last=Sandel|title=Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do?|location=New York|publisher=Farrar, Straus and Giroux|year=2009}}</ref>

According to Kant, in a free society each individual must be able to pursue their goals however they see fit, as long as their actions conform to principles given by reason. He formulated such a principle, called the "[[categorical imperative]]", which would justify an action only if it could be universalized:
<blockquote>Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law.<ref name="Ellington">{{cite book|last1=Kant|first1=Immanuel|author-link=Immanuel Kant|translator-first=James W.|translator-last=Ellington|orig-year=1785|title=Grounding for the Metaphysics of Morals|edition=3rd|publisher=Hackett|year=1993|page=[https://archive.org/details/groundingformet000kant/page/30 30]|isbn=978-0872201668|url=https://archive.org/details/groundingformet000kant}}</ref></blockquote>

In contrast to Hume, Kant insisted that reason itself (German {{lang|de|[[wikt:Vernunft|Vernunft]]}}) could be used to find solutions to metaphysical problems, especially the discovery of the foundations of morality. Kant claimed that these solutions could be found with his "[[transcendental logic]]", which unlike normal logic is not just an instrument that can be used indifferently, as it was for Aristotle, but a theoretical science in its own right and the basis of all the others.<ref>{{multiref2
|1={{cite book|last=Velkley|first=Richard|year=2002|chapter=On Kant's Socratism|title=Being After Rousseau|publisher=University of Chicago Press}}
|2={{cite book|first=Immanuel|last=Kant|author-link=Immanuel Kant|title=[[Critique of Pure Reason]]|year=1781|at=Preface}}
}}</ref>

According to [[Jürgen Habermas]], the "substantive unity" of reason has dissolved in modern times, such that it can no longer answer the question "How should I live?" Instead, the unity of reason has to be strictly formal, or "procedural". He thus described reason as a group of three autonomous spheres (on the model of Kant's three critiques):

; Cognitive–instrumental reason: the kind of reason employed by the sciences; used to observe events, to predict and control outcomes, and to intervene in the world on the basis of its hypotheses
; Moral–practical reason: what we use to deliberate and discuss issues in the moral and political realm, according to universalizable procedures (similar to Kant's categorical imperative)
; Aesthetic reason: typically found in works of art and literature, and encompasses the novel ways of seeing the world and interpreting things that those practices embody

For Habermas, these three spheres are the domain of experts, and therefore need to be mediated with the "[[lifeworld]]" by philosophers. In drawing such a picture of reason, Habermas hoped to demonstrate that the substantive unity of reason, which in pre-modern societies had been able to answer questions about the good life, could be made up for by the unity of reason's formalizable procedures.<ref>{{cite book|first=Jürgen|last=Habermas|author-link=Jürgen Habermas|title=Moral Consciousness and Communicative Action|location=Cambridge, Mass.|publisher=MIT Press|year=1995}}</ref>

===The critique of reason===

[[Johann Georg Hamann|Hamann]], [[Johann Gottfried Herder|Herder]], [[Immanuel Kant|Kant]], [[Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel|Hegel]], [[Søren Kierkegaard|Kierkegaard]], [[Friedrich Nietzsche|Nietzsche]], [[Martin Heidegger|Heidegger]], [[Michel Foucault|Foucault]], [[Richard Rorty|Rorty]], and many other philosophers have contributed to a debate about what reason means, or ought to mean. Some, like Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Rorty, are skeptical about subject-centred, universal, or instrumental reason, and even skeptical toward reason as a whole. Others, including Hegel, believe that it has obscured the importance of [[intersubjectivity]], or "spirit" in human life, and they attempt to reconstruct a model of what reason should be.

Some thinkers, e.g. Foucault, believe there are other ''forms'' of reason, neglected but essential to modern life, and to our understanding of what it means to live a life according to reason.<ref name="Jürgen Habermas 1990"/> Others suggest that there is not just one reason or rationality, but multiple possible systems of reason or rationality which may conflict (in which case there is no super-rational system one can appeal to in order to resolve the conflict).<ref>{{multiref2|1={{cite book|first=Robert|last=Nozick|author-link=Robert Nozick|title=The Nature of Rationality|url=https://archive.org/details/natureofrational0000nozi_l8f5|url-access=registration|year=1993}}{{page needed|date=September 2023}}
|2={{cite book|first=Alasdair|last=MacIntyre|author-link=Alasdair MacIntyre|title=Whose Justice? Which Rationality?|url=https://archive.org/details/whosejusticewhic0000maci|url-access=registration|year=1988}}
}}</ref>

In the last several decades, a number of proposals have been made to "re-orient" this critique of reason, or to recognize the "other voices" or "new departments" of reason:

For example, in opposition to subject-centred reason, Habermas has proposed a model of [[communicative rationality|communicative reason]] that sees it as an essentially cooperative activity, based on the fact of linguistic [[intersubjectivity]].<ref>{{cite book|first=Jürgen|last=Habermas|title=The Theory of Communicative Action: Reason and the Rationalization of Society|translator-first=Thomas|translator-last=McCarthy|location=Boston|publisher=Beacon Press|year=1984}}</ref>

[[Nikolas Kompridis]] proposed a widely encompassing view of reason as "that ensemble of practices that contributes to the opening and preserving of openness" in human affairs, and a focus on reason's possibilities for social change.<ref>{{multiref2
|1={{cite book|first=Nikolas|last=Kompridis|title=Critique and Disclosure: Critical Theory between Past and Future|location=Cambridge, Mass.|publisher=MIT Press|year=2006}}
|2={{cite journal|first=Nikolas|last=Kompridis|doi=10.1080/096725500750039282|title=So We Need Something Else for Reason to Mean|journal=International Journal of Philosophical Studies|date=2000 |volume=8|number=3|pages=271–295|s2cid=171038942 }}
}}</ref>

The philosopher [[Charles Taylor (philosopher)|Charles Taylor]], influenced by the 20th century German philosopher [[Martin Heidegger]], proposed that reason ought to include the faculty of [[world disclosure|disclosure]], which is tied to the way we make sense of things in everyday life, as a new "department" of reason.<ref>{{cite book|first=Charles|last=Taylor|title=Philosophical Arguments|publisher=Harvard University Press|year=1997|pages=12, 15|isbn=978-0674664777}}</ref>

In the essay "What is Enlightenment?", Michel Foucault proposed a critique based on Kant's distinction between "private" and "public" uses of reason:<ref>{{cite book|first=Michel|last=Foucault|author-link=Michel Foucault|chapter=What is Enlightenment?|title=The Essential Foucault|location=New York|publisher=The New Press|year=2003|pages=43–57}}</ref>
; Private reason : the reason that is used when an individual is "a cog in a machine" or when one "has a role to play in society and jobs to do: to be a soldier, to have taxes to pay, to be in charge of a parish, to be a civil servant"
; Public reason : the reason used "when one is reasoning as a reasonable being (and not as a cog in a machine), when one is reasoning as a member of reasonable humanity"; in these circumstances, "the use of reason must be free and public"