Turning and turning in the widening gyre
The falcon cannot hear the falconer;
Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;
Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world,
The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere
The ceremony of innocence is drowned;
The best lack all conviction, while the worst
Are full of passionate intensity.
— William Butler Yeats
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In “The Second Coming” Yeats poses one of the great ethical riddles: “The best lack all conviction, while the worst are full of passionate intensity.”
Who are the best and the worst? What defines them as best or worst? How does the question of best and worst connect with questions of belief and will?
What does it looks like when the best rediscovers its convictions?
My own attempts to resolve these questions have more and more revolved around reason. In fact, these attempts have traced a tightening spiraling question: what does it mean to be reasonable?
Below is a first attempt at an answer.
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Reason is not elemental. It is essentially composite and essentially complete.
With reason, the closest approximation to reason is the furthest thing from reason: a facet removed from reason is not reasonable; but reason deprived of one of its facets is unreasonable.
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Reason is fivefold:
Reason is empirical. Reason begins and ends with concrete experience.
Reason is logical. Reason follows the rules of thought, for the sake of civility.
Reason is realist. Reason exists toward a world beyond the realm of knowledge.
Reason is experimental. Reason’s knowledge arises from interaction with reality.
Reason is supple. Reason is ready for surprise, because surprise is the mark of the real.
*
An isolated facet of reason is not reasonable.
Empiricism divorced from reason is impressionistic.
Logic divorced from reason is empty.
Realism divorced from reason is helpless.
Experiment divorced from reason is impulsive.
Suppleness divorced from reason is submissive.
*
Reason deprived of one of its facets is unreasonable.
Reason without empiricism is delusive.
Reason without logic is arbitrary.
Reason without realism is solipsistic.
Reason without experiment is scholastic.
Reason without suppleness is stagnant.
I like your comment on surprise, but I wonder if you didn’t end up answering a different question than you asked. You asked, “What does it mean to be reasonable?” and instead you define what reason is. Aren’t those distinct things?
Yrs, CM
I like your point about surprise. I wonder if you don’t end up answering a different question than you asked, though. You ask, “What does it mean to be reasonable?” and instead you define what reason is. Aren’t those distinct things?
Yrs, CM
This is a great question, but it begs the question I am asking: Do we really know what reason is? Our ideas about reasonableness, being able to be reasoned with, reasoning with someone… why would so much of the humanity in adjective, verb, adverb usages drop away once reason becomes a noun, and especially a proper noun?
My own position is that the noun reason has lost its verb/modifier foundations and become a tool for unreasonableness. Reclaiming reason and not allowing its dismemberments and crippled forms to pass for reason in its essential wholeness will help us live more reasonably with one another.