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Reason & Analysis

Book by Brand Blanshard · 2 quotes · Philosophy, Reason, Ends

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Reason & Analysis Quotes

“The five movements last mentioned-naturalism, instrumentalism, positivism, linguistic analysis, existentialism-are perhaps the most influential philosophic movements of recent years, and they are all derogatory of reason in its traditional use. This is particularly striking because philosophy is, supposedly, an attempt on the nature of things by reason, and if that attempt is futile, philosophy would appear to be futile too. But the rebellion of the last half century has gone far beyond philosophy; indeed it has broken out in every department of culture, and in most of them with marked virulence.”

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“One of his [Freud] favourite doctrines was that of 'rationalization', which may be put as follows. We pride ourselves on being reasonable in our beliefs and actions; when we accept a belief, we like to think that we have adopted it on good grounds; when we decide on an action, we like to think that we have done so because it is right; and if challenged, we readily produce reasons. But these reasons turn out, when examined, to be 'rationalizations' merely, that is, attempts to dress up in rational guise beliefs or actions that sprang, not from reasons at all, but from non-rational causes. [...] What fastened the attention of Freud was that man continually goes wrong. His religious beliefs record an attempt, 'patently infantile', to find a father-substitute; his philosophical systems are projections upon nature of his half hidden desires; his scientific and artistic pursuits mark the sublimation of frustrated instincts; his political convictions are apologies for, or protests against his position in society; even his ethics is an uneasy compromise between selfish desire and group pressures. 'I am sure only of one thing,' Freud wrote, 'that the judgments of value made by mankind are immediately determined by their desire for happiness; in other words, that those judgments are attempts to prop up their illusions with arguments.”

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