after several days of work trying to kill me, I survived…
the question I will attack today is an old one,
a church father name Tertullian around 200AD…
first brought this question up…
and the question was reduced to a formula:
Jerusalem vs Athens…
now what on earth does that possible mean?
each city represents a different aspect of the human being…
Jerusalem is the city of faith, of revelation, of irrationalism… of faith…
Athens is the city of reason, of rationalism, against faith, science…
this theme of reason vs irrationalism has a long history…
many writers have written about it… from Leo Strauss to lev Shestov
to Reynolds and Shapiro to Dostoyevsky and Voegelin……
each of these writers approached the problem of reason vs faith/irrationalism
differently…
I wish to tie it a bit further back… we humans are plagued by our instincts,
we fight a daily battle between our rational side and our instinctually side…
I suggest that faith/irrationalism/revelation/instincts is a biological, evolutionary
solution to some of the vexing problems of being human……
I would also suggest that reason is a very recent addition to the human family…
this would suggest that human beings aren’t rational creatures at all,
but we are irrational, instinctual creatures who is finding our way to
being rational…first came the instincts/irrationalism… then much later
came the rational side of us…
millions, if not billions of human beings are still in the irrational, instinctual
development side of human progress…while millions, but far, far less then
the instinctual side are the rational, logical thinkers…the battle of the
20th century has been between those are irrationalist and those who are
rationalist……we may be able to make a case that with the arrival of the
enlightenment, making for the first time a case for rationalism, that
the war undeclared between rationalism and irrationalism became
overt and out in the public…
while it seems that the two are fighting a war to the death, the real issue is not
a fight to the death but a battle to a formula… where we equally use
rationalism and, and irrationalism/instincts on a equal basis…
for example, let us take love… rationalism cannot ever, ever
understand love… under no circumstances will rationalism ever
understand love…it simply cannot… our instincts from which
love comes from, it understand love…so much of who we are
as humans come from the irrational, instinctual side of us…
so our formula will go something like this:
rationalism = irrationalism…
they are not enemies but partners, much needed partners
in our struggle to become human, fully human…
so I believe that irrationalism, faith, instincts come from our
evolutionary beginning… and as society became much more complex,
we needed to become rational to cope with or to understand society…
under evolutionary pressure, we were forced to develop rationalism, logic,
science…….
we are problem solving creatures… that is the basic function of being human…
and by having instincts we solve one problem and by having rationalism
we solve another problem… and then when we connect the two into
one harmonious family, we will have solved a third problem…
and with each new problem must come new solutions…
we can understand the last two centuries as being a war of rationalism
vs irrationalism… the Nazi’s are prime examples of irrationalism……
as is any type of prejudice and/or bias or superstitions, myths,
the enlightenment for the first time, brought to the forefront
rationalism…and science which is brought into the forefront
starting in the enlightenment age is rationalism…
now one may argue that science/rationalism has been at work
for 200 years before the enlightenment… yes, but that rationalism
didn’t become part of the public arena until the enlightenment…
science/philosophy/rationalism before the enlightenment was
strictly an engagement between a very small number of men…
it wasn’t a public dispute, it was argued between a very small number
of people whereas the enlightenment brought this quiet affair into
the open, into the public eye…….and think about the history of
Europe since the beginning of the enlightenment…
we had the American revolution, the French revolution, the industrial
revolution, multiple wars and civil wars, World war one and two,
the holocaust and the atomic age…….quite a record of events for
only 200 years…and this came to be because the bringing into
light the battle between rationalism and irrationalism…
we cannot, we must not ever allow one side or the other to win the war,
we must engineer a union between rationalism and irrationalism.
we must find an equation that gives free reign to both as needed…
it is my contention that instinct/irrationalism comes from
our evolutionary history and that reason came about because
instinct wasn’t able to solve certain problems that arose,
the rise of rationalism is the rise of a solution to certain problems
of human existence… the very fact we have a large and complex society
tells us that reason has been relatively successful in its tasks of being
able to allow human beings to work together… working together as we do
is a logical, rational thing to do……….love is a irrational/instinctual thing we do…….
the quest of human beings is to rise to become the best human beings that they can be
by finding the possibilities that allow them to become who they are… we use possibilities
to discover what is the range of human possibilities…in other words, we use
running, the possibility of running to discover what we can achieve as runners…
how far can we push ourselves in an attempt to become better runners…
how high can we climb the mountain, how far can we travel, how many
experiences can we have which we then use to understand what is possible for us…
we must push ourselves if we are to discover what it means to be human…
and we use instincts and reason to push ourselves into a state of being
better humans… I would say, I believe that reason is
the higher angel of our existence but others, others might claim the
highest state of being human is the instinctual/irrationalism part of us…
I think instincts has taken us as far as instincts can take us, as far
as irrationalism can take us… we must engage with rationalism to
take us to the next stage of being human… and then we can return to
an engagement with our instincts… making rationalism
as much of our life as instincts/irrationalism is a goal certainly worth
exploring………
Kropotkin