Tagged: theoretical reason

The Philosophic Life and Political Reality: A Humbling Dilemma

I was recently asked, by a student seeking to understand the full conditions and practical implications of the philosophic life, a question which has, in one form or another, probably occurred to, or rather preoccupied, the mind of every person attracted to philosophy in a serious way from the sixth century B.C. to the present. I paraphrase her question closely: “Let’s suppose everyone...

Late Modernity: What It Means and Whence It Arose

When theoretical reason is forsaken in favor of practical reason as the human standard — or, to say the same thing, when the theoretical is reduced to the status of handmaiden of the practical — this will necessarily have certain verifiable and visible effects on life in the civilization in which this reversed perspective takes hold. In brief, this reversal reduces thinking to...