So much of my younger writing was written like an existential treatise. It sought to analyse patterns and trends in relation to human behaviour throughout history, focusing in particular on the reoccurrence of popular forms of orthodoxy and the epistemology behind them. In simple terms, it sought to critique the tendency toward the “absolute”, in both myth and religion and other modern intellectual forms of dogma. Underlying the entire book is an investigation into prejudice and the construction of totalised worldviews. From examples of nature religions to the misguided development of the Church of Reason, my intention was to understand the existential drive toward closed, rigidified, absolutist thinking and orthodoxy.
In the book, especially toward the latter sections, I reviewed a critique of a certain form – what some philosophers describe as a counterfeit – of reason. Often times one will read such forms of critique in relation to the notion of “instrumental reason”, whereas I decided to describe it as “abstract reason”. This notion of abstract reason does not target, epistemologically speaking, types of knowledge formed on the basis of tangible abstraction; nor does it concern itself with reason as a concept. Rather, “instrumental reason” was described as “abstract reason” on the basis that it seemed to me that it was a concept of rationality abstracted from the genuine foundations of enlightenment concept of reason. In other words, I took the view that the concept of reason had become bound to the ends of economic orthodoxy, rather than to the open means of rationality itself. On the same token, I have concerns that even science – particularly scientific outputs, but also different aspects of scientific methodology – were being used to serve economic ideologies as opposed to the more honest pursuit of knowledge.
I first began thinking about this book in the developmental stages of my thinking on such matters. Today, there is quite a bit that I would revise and there are certainly many sections I would be inclined to rewrite or deepen in terms of nuance. But this idea of “instrumental reason” – that is, reason tied to an ends, instead of the practice of reason itself – remains an interest. Ultimately, I think, from the vast body of literature that I’ve surveyed, the concepts of reason and rationality are really some of the only sources of hope for humanity. This is why, in the last chapter which concerned itself solely with epistemology, the notion of experiential coherence took on such importance. For me, it was an account of reason in practice: an open, multidimensional, intersubjectively objective view of knowledge.
What’s interesting, in looking back on this work, is that I think what we see is a desire to analyse the entirety of human history in relation to what I ultimately argued as the most fundamental philosophical problem: the struggle between the pursuit and hope of reason and the regularly reoccurring patterns of irrationality, orthodoxy, and prejudice.
Of all the horrors and atrocities that belong to the history of human beings, the examples of the better side of our nature leave a note of promise. And that note of promise pertains very much, I would say, to the rational pursuit of knowledge and understanding. That is, an appeal (in the very least) to the inquisitive, scientific, open, and philosophical side of human activity. The one where we seek reason and logic and understanding instead of violence, war and domination on behalf of prejudiced, the absolute, and dogmatic ideologies.
One of the things I enjoy most about study human evolution and the development of human civilisation, in broad sweeping terms, relates directly to this last point: the focus on the human pursuit of knowledge and understanding with regards to the world and the cosmos. From the earliest of mathematical discoveries through to celebrated mathematicians of ancient Greece and onward, the incredible intellectual development traced through human history forms the foundation on which modern thought, including the modern scientific endeavour, emerged. It is, for me, one of the most hopeful characteristics of human beings: that one day the lessons of science and of intellectualism, coupled with the sensitivity of phenomenological observation and astute empirical analysis, would be realised just as the enlightenment philosophes started to surmise.
