The purpose of this journal is to delineate and elucidate what I mean by the word “reason,” as the term has a long and diverse history and I don’t want to cause confusion by my employment of it here. Given the significance of reason, many intellectuals throughout history have written extensively on the subject and offered their own definitions of the concept, from Plato to Descartes to Hegel. To give a full account of all of these conceptions and ruminations on man’s distinguishing feature would fill many journals and perhaps bore some of you to death (the last time I wrote out a brief history of the idea of reason in Western thought, leaving out the church leaders’ writings, the result was over 5000 words). Instead of going through its history, therefore, I wish to here just better define the word reason as I use it.
Generally, however, I can say that throughout its entire history, reason has been regarded as a relational concept. Before the advent of the Greeks and their use of reason in the search of final ends and meanings, reason was that human faculty which connected means to ends, which discovered more efficient ways to use what we had to get what we wanted. This is much the sense that I’ve been talking about reason. However, the Greeks and later thinkers distinguished reason from human action generally, and began to conceptualize reason as a type of “knowing that” rather than a “knowing how.” In their view, reason was the light that revealed the pattern of the universe, which showed the connections between all things. That is, these thinkers believed that the universe was causally interconnected in a complex web of relationships, which man was capable of understanding, and reason was our tool for doing so. Indeed, understanding this arrangement of everything was man’s ultimate purpose, many of them believed. Personally, the distinction between these two ideas of reason escapes me. I understand the arguments that the thinkers make, saying that their concept of reason attempts to understand man’s place in the universe and thereby determine what ends man should choose, as opposed to the lower form of reason which merely applies means to ends. But man’s ultimate end is happiness (in the strict economics meaning of the word), so even the choice of intermediate ends is really just a means for the attainment of the ultimate end. So I guess it’s not that the distinction escapes me, it’s just that the truth escaped them (which is understandable, as many of them lived and died before Cantillon birthed the science of economics). Regardless, it’s worth stating that almost every thinker in the history of Western thought understood reason as a relational concept.
Brand Blanshard has written that if we take reason to be man’s defining characteristic, as Aristotle suggested, then man’s reason to encompass four features, four features of human thinking that are not shared by animals. These four features, writes Blanshard, are: thought not tied to perception, the use of abstractions, explicit inferences, and self-consciousness. These are the functions of our mind which are denied to lower life forms, and they thus set us apart from other living creatures.
Each of these four functions are crucial, I think, although it could be argued that the first is most important. The first feature, thought not tied to perception, is the basis for imagination, which is what I have previously argued makes man special in the order of things. Man alone imagines different worlds, chooses which imaginary world he believes would suit him best, and acts to bring that world into existence by changing his existing world. Reason is that function of the human mind, I believe, that allows man to imagine, choose, and act. The other features, I believe, serve this human conceptualization and action.
[To briefly comment on the other features: The use of abstractions allow us to understand general causal laws which are applicable in many areas besides the one from whence we learned the law. That is, this feature allows us to classify phenomenon and objects as of a certain type, and thereby organize and apply far greater sums of knowledge to far more situations than we would be able to without the abstractions. Explicit inferences allow us to reason independent of experience. It lets us see the relationships between abstractions, rather than between concrete experiences. This is very important because this makes possible the hard logic which is often contrasted with the soft emotions that might muddle the logic when applied to situations which elicit our sympathies. Explicit inferences allow us to find the right answer logically without the messiness of emotions. And self-consciousness is important for many reasons, but I’d like to specifically point out that it makes possible self-reflection. Freud and his followers in psychology have argued that humans do not actually reason, that our actions are unconsciously driven by external influences, and that the closest we get to reason is rationalizing our actions in hindsight. But, even if this is true, this indicates that there is something in humans that tend towards reason, and that this self-reflection and rationalization can train us (by influencing later actions) to be more reasonable in the future.]
I have previously defined reason as man’s ability to imagine, choose, and act rationally. Most people would probably limit reason to just the rational action part. But all three of these phenomenon happen in the human mind, and they are all part of the same process, so I group them together. The features elucidated by Blanshard make this function of the human mind possible. So, I think that, in my own world of definitions, I would call these features enablers of reason, but not reason itself. Or perhaps just parts of the whole. I think that I could define reason as the four functions listed by Blanshard, infused with purpose. Reason allows us to think of more satisfactory ends, allows us to classify the objects around us as means for the attainment of these ends, plan for the utilization of these means for the attainment of our ends, and act to so utilize the means economically. Reason is itself an enabler; it allows us to be what we are: creators.
I really want to stress this idea of reason as purposeful, because it’s taken as an assumption through much of my writing but, in fact, sets my theory of reason apart from almost every other philosopher in Western history. This is in large part due to my understanding of economics, and the accompanying rejection of the premise underlying much of Western thought in this area, that reason is something different and greater than the minutia of human action, more akin to the gods than the foxes. My theory of reason is distinct in that it holds fast to the belief that an explanation of reason cannot lose sight of the fact that it is human reason. That reason is the defining feature of acting man, and that it must be defined thusly. This is something that almost everyone in history has missed.
So, reason, in my conception, is the unique feature of the human mind, the ability to imagine, choose, and act rationally to bring about the imagined world. The rational action is obviously related to reason, but it takes a little more thought to see that there is no action without choice and no choice without imagined options. So, my definition can be a little confusing if not carefully considered and in light of the weight of what has been written on this topic by other thinkers. I have written extensively on this topic and my own theory of reason in other places, but hopefully this reasonably-lengthed post has provided enough clarification for purposes of this project.
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