Reason and Analysis

Representative Quotations

Mission Statement

". . . it belongs to the idea of the rational man to be objective or impartial. So far as one is governed by reason, one's conclusions will follow the evidence without being coloured by feeling or deflected by desire, and one's conduct as well as one's thinking will be ordered by principle. If, in addition to being rational, one is also a rationalist, one will hold that the truths apprehended through intellect are the most important and certain that we possess, and probably also that they reveal, at least in fragmentary fashion, an intelligible structure in the world.

"We shall see . . . that the belief in reason in its wider senses has been a cardinal component of western culture since the time of the Greeks. . . . it contributed powerfully, through the influence of such men as Socrates and Marcus Aurelius, to the ideal of the good life as the rational life.

"Both reason as a source of knowledge and rationality as a practical ideal are today under attack. Indeed there has been no period in the past two thousand years when they have undergone a bombardment so varied, so competent, so massive and sustained, as in the last half-centry. The purpose of this volume and the two that follow it is to examine the most important of these criticisms as they apply to the theory of knowledge, theology, and ethics." [Editor's note: the other two volumes are Reason and Belief, and Reason and Goodness.]

Samples

"'The love of truth,' said another great scholar, Housman, 'is the faintest of human passions', and when hurt pride and envy are at work, its whisper is too easily drowned out. Democracy, whether within a nation or between nations, calls for more than counting heads. It requires the pocketing of small egotisms in the attempt to find a common good and an objective better and worse."

"Scepticism of rational standards has been most marked, perhaps, in the plastic and pictorial arts. Our age is one of uninhibted artistic experimentation, which may of course lead to achievements of great value. But its most conspicuous achievement so far is a state of aesthetic anarchy . . . . There is, to be sure, a kind of philosophy behind the development of abstract art. It is felt that the sentimentalism of the nineteenth century, the attempt through painting or sculpture to tell a story or paint a moral, was artistically impure because it introduced so much that was not properly aesthetic, and that the right way to get rid of this embarrassing freight is to confine oneself to arrangements of line and color . . . . If this is the only way in which art can achieve integrity, we must wish it well. But is there any reason to believe this? I cannot think so. The painter or poet who prefers the fall of man to a pinhead as his subject is choosing what gives him larger scope as an artist; and he has not felt in the past that he was immolating his art when he used it for the expression of significant ideas and feelings. And an art so pure as to be meaningless can hardly complain if a busy and burdened humanity passes it by."

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Go to the review of Reason and Analysis in the Philosophy Field Guide See a brief Biography of Brand Blanshard Some notes on a Humanistic lifestyle Have a look at some FAQ concerning Humanism Look at the relationship between Humanism and Religion. Go to the Progressive Living preamble to have a look at our mission statement Go to the Progressive Living site map