Nicholas
Reid reflects in essay form on general matters and ideas related to
literature, history, popular culture and the arts, or just life in general. You are free to agree
or disagree with him.
LIMITS OF REASON
There
is a very old folk-tale which has often been passed off as historical fact, and
has sometimes been attached to historical figures such as King Henri IV of
France. But it is, in truth, a fiction.
A
wretched man is hauled before the king. He is accused of stealing a loaf of
bread. As the king has to pass judgement on the poor man, he asks him “Why did you steal the loaf?”
The
poor man answers “Well, your majesty, I
have to live.”
To
which the king replies “I don’t see the
need for that.”
The
old tale often gets a laugh because of the king’s callous wit. Surely we all
know that human life is valuable and the poor man wants to preserve his life,
as we all do. The story is funny because the king hasn’t even considered such
an obvious thing as the value of human life. Unless he is consciously joking,
his judgement is based entirely on his own indifference. And after all, if you
don’t begin with the premise that human life is valuable, you will be quite
justified in making the same judgement as the king. What the king says would be
perfectly reasonable.
I
often think of this story when I hear people making lofty claims for reason
alone as the arbiter of what is right and wrong.
Some
years back, I reviewed for a national magazine a foolish little potboiler which
purported to expose all sorts of bullshit (this was the author’s preferred
word) – religious bullshit, political bullshit, academic bullshit, advertising
bullshit etc. The author told us, sometimes with a simple and crude wit,
anecdotes about the foolishness of all these things, and gave some convincing
examples, because of course there is much bullshit in all these fields. But in
the end, his collection of anecdotes seemed like the scrawlings of a cynical
adolescent. He was enjoying an extended sneer.
And
what was the author’s antidote for misleading bullshit?
Apparently,
it was pure reason.
But
here’s the problem. Reason is a method of thinking. But, in itself, it
is not a value or virtue.
Reason
- which includes the ability to judge things empirically, to size up the odds
of success, and to make a judgement – can easily be harnessed to the most
reprehensible of causes. The people who designed nuclear and chemical weapons
were perfectly reasonable people. They were highly-qualified scientists and
they were judging that these weapons were necessary. The people who devised
Zyklon-B for death camps, who worked out the timetables for the cattle trucks
that would take people to the death camps, who decided which people should be
killed immediately and which should be worked to death – they too were
reasonable people, using their reason to plan and execute all these things
efficiently. The people who worked out how best to starve to death Ukranian
peasants to make room for collective farms and build the great Soviet state,
these too were reasonable people. It took so much planning, so much
organization, so much use of reason to bring these things about.
Please
let us not delude ourselves that all these people were self-evidently evil
madmen. Certainly Hitler's cohorts contained many pseudo-scientists with
cranky and untenable ideas about race. But among Hitler’s scientific advisers
were Nobel Prize winners and internationally-esteemed chemists, biologists and
physicists. Certainly people of great reason. That what they were doing caused
millions of deaths was – as far as pure reason is concerned – beside the point.
In
our language we have a verb which immediately signals that we know when reason
alone is not sufficient. The verb is “to rationalise”. (There are equivalents
to this word in other languages too.) When we say somebody is rationalising, we
mean that person is genuinely using reason, but using it for corrupt, dishonest
or self-interested purposes. “Why
shouldn’t I shoplift? The company makes millions every year and they won’t
miss what I take.” “Of course I take things from the office.
Everybody else does.” Etc.
etc. etc. These are examples of true reason – empirical evidence is used and a
clear conclusion is reached. If you don’t begin with the axiom that is
it wrong to steal or embezzle, then they are perfectly reasonable statements.
Pure reason, in fact.
Reasoning
is only as good as its premises. The real arbiter of what is right or wrong,
good or evil, ethical or unethical, is not reason itself, but the assumptions,
premises and axioms that we have before we begin our reasoning. Where these
assumptions, premises and axioms come from is matter for a much longer
discussion than I’m prepared to write here. (Is morality the general consensus
of society or does it come from God? If it is the consensus of society, can’t
it easily be altered with enough public persuasion? If it is from God, which
conception of God is being used? etc. etc.) But it remains true that an immoral
or plain evil conclusion can be reached by the use of real reason, if the
premises themselves are false.
None
of this is written to denigrate the very necessary and important tool that
reason is. I am not anti-reason. We need the reasoning of planners, doctors
making diagnoses, engineers working out stress points, lawyers gathering
evidence etc. etc.
But
reason is only one of our necessary mental abilites. We also require
imagination, faith (in the sense of holding certain axioms and premises to be
necessary), sympathy for others, and an awareness of our own self-interest and
how it can corrupt our thinking. Reason is a great help in judging the
rightness of things – but only a help.
If
I didn’t accept this fact, then I would agree with the fictional king’s
judgement.
Footnote: This “Something Thoughtful” is a re-working of an
argument that I have already made on this blog. But a good argument is worth repeating.
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