Tolerant Rationalism
スポンサーリンク
概要
- 論文の詳細を見る
If a rationalist called you irrational, you would no doubt get angry. For irrationality implies stupidity, and no one likes to be called stupid. It seems to me that a rationalist who calls you irrational is assuming that you should discard your cherished ideas simply because he has validly criticised and falsified them. But suppose you still cling to your cherished ideas. The rationalist has no choice but to call you irrational, or-if he is really annoyed-irrationalists. Having determined who you are, he may then proceed to exclude you from the camp of rationalists. I think that a rationalist who behaves in such a way, or even attempts to force you to discard your ideas, must be regarded as intolerant. I call one who opts for rationality a rationalist. I think that tolerance as well as rationality is desirable for a rationalist. However, as we have just seen, both rationalism and rationality appear to be inherently intolerant and exclusive. Three points need to be addressed. First, a person called irrational by the rationalist need not necessarily be an irrationalist ; but because of the rationalist's intolerance, he might well turn to the irrationalist camp. Second, an irrationalist in any case would not be concerned by any criticism, least of all, that he is guilty of irrationality. Third, a rationalist is not necessarily rational, and an irrationalist is not necessarily irrational. This said, it must be admitted that the rationalist-rationality relation and the irrationalist-irrationality relation are not symmetrical, since an irrationalist's choice of irrationality is less rational than the rationalist's choice of rationality. Because of this asymmetry, I, as a rationalist, cannot hope to remove completely all intolerance and exclusivity, but, in the following, I do attempt to reduce the degree of intolerance and exclusiveness.
- 2000-03-05