I am currently reading The Closing of the Western Mind which charts how the reason and rationality of the Greek world was replaced with the dogma of faith in the Medieval world. The interfaces of rationality are fascinating; I recently read through A World Lit Only By Fire which looked at the Medieval mind and how it changed with the reformation and renaissance. I also finished Peter Watson's The Modern Mind which looks a the rationality of the twentieth century and how science came to dominate modern intellectualism. The rationality of humankind is an amazing thing.
Cam Riley: South Sea Republic. Freedom, liberty, equity and an Australian Republic.

Comments

  • Without necessarily advocating his thesis, it might be interesting to compare with John Ralston Saul's "Voltaire's Bastards: The Dictatorship of Reason in the West". Wikipedia's surprisingly brief one-paragraph summary really is a one-paragraph summary:

    These books deal with themes such as the dictatorship of reason unbalanced by other human qualities, how it can be used for any ends especially in a directionless state that rewards the pursuit of power for power's sake. He argues that this leads to deformations of thought such as ideology promoted as truth; the rational but anti-democratic structures of corporatism, by which he means the worship of small groups; and the use of language and expertise to mask a practical understanding of the harm this causes, and what else our society might do. He argues that the rise of individualism with no regard for the role of society has not created greater individual autonomy and self-determination, as was once hoped, but isolation and alienation. He calls for a pursuit of a more humanist ideal in which reason is balanced with other human mental capacities such as common sense, ethics, intuition, creativity, and memory, for the sake of the common good, and he discusses the importance of unfettered language and practical democracy.

    • cam . # .
      The Greeks recognised that rhetoric didnt need a moral rudder to be presuasive which is why Aristotle came up with the Philosopher King - a moral, learned individual able to rule in the public good.

      It is probably also why liberalism's utilitarianism tries to temper it with morality and personal responsibility. That is where the social good comes in.
      'Sworn to no party, and of no sect am I.' Frederick Vosper's republican motto.