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Reason
Francisco de Goya's 1797 etching The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters captures a terrifying truth about the human condition: when the mind stops working, chaos takes over. The image shows a man slumped over his desk, surrounded by owls and bats, while a donkey looks on with judgment. This artwork serves as a visual metaphor for the central tension in human history, the struggle between the light of logic and the darkness of unexamined instinct. For centuries, philosophers have argued that reason is the defining characteristic of humanity, the spark that separates us from the rest of the animal kingdom. Yet, as the Enlightenment progressed, thinkers began to question whether this very faculty could be a source of destruction rather than salvation. The etching suggests that without the constant vigilance of the mind, the world descends into a nightmare of superstition and violence. This fear was not merely artistic; it reflected a growing anxiety among intellectuals who saw the French Revolution descending into bloodshed, a revolution that claimed to be rational but often acted on pure passion. The history of reason is not a straight line of progress but a complex dance between order and disorder, where the same tool used to build civilizations can also be used to justify their collapse.
The concept of reason has been the subject of intense debate since the days of ancient Greece, where philosophers like Plato and Aristotle first attempted to define its role in human life. Plato viewed reason as the natural monarch of the soul, tasked with ruling over the spirited and passionate parts of the self. He believed that a life lived in accordance with reason was the only path to true happiness and well-being. Aristotle, his student, expanded on this by defining humans as rational animals, emphasizing that reason was not just a tool but the very essence of human nature. This classical view held that reason was a divine spark, linking the human mind to the cosmic order. However, this teleological understanding of the world, where everything had a purpose, began to crumble in the early modern era. Scientists and philosophers started to question whether nature itself had a reason, or if it was simply a collection of mechanical processes. This shift in perspective fundamentally changed how humanity understood its place in the universe, moving from a spiritual cosmos to a cold, indifferent machine.
The transition from the classical to the modern view of reason was marked by a radical skepticism that challenged the very foundations of knowledge. René Descartes, writing in the 17th century, explicitly rejected the traditional notion of humans as rational animals, suggesting instead that they were nothing more than thinking things. He brought into doubt all knowledge except that of the mind itself, establishing a new foundation for epistemology based on the thinking subject. This subject-centred reason became the dominant paradigm of the Enlightenment, where the individual mind was seen as the sole arbiter of truth. Descartes argued that any knowledge outside of this thinking process was subject to doubt, leading to a profound isolation of the self. The world was no longer a place of inherent meaning but a set of objects to be studied and mastered by the application of accumulated knowledge. This shift laid the groundwork for the scientific method, but it also created a rift between the human mind and the world it sought to understand, a rift that would fuel centuries of philosophical conflict.
As the Enlightenment gave way to the 19th and 20th centuries, the confidence in reason began to waver under the weight of its own limitations. David Hume, a contemporary of Descartes, took a skeptical turn, arguing that there could be no possibility of deducing relationships of cause and effect, and therefore no knowledge was based on reasoning alone. He famously remarked that reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, serving only to obey and serve them. This radical claim suggested that human reason was not qualitatively different from the simple association of ideas, and that animals possessed reason, albeit in a less complex form. Hume's skepticism forced philosophers to confront the uncomfortable reality that logic might be an illusion, a wonderful and unintelligible instinct that carried us along a certain train of ideas. The critique of reason continued with Immanuel Kant, who attempted to show that Hume was wrong by demonstrating that a transcendental self was a necessary condition of all experience. Kant argued that reason could be the vehicle of morality, justice, and aesthetics, provided its limits were respected. However, the unity of reason began to dissolve in modern times, with thinkers like Jürgen Habermas suggesting that it could no longer answer the question of how to live, but could only provide formal procedures for decision-making.
The history of reason is also a history of its critics, who have argued that the very concept of rationality has obscured the importance of intersubjectivity and the spirit of human life. Philosophers like Søren Kierkegaard, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Michel Foucault have contributed to a debate about what reason means, or ought to mean. Kierkegaard and Nietzsche were skeptical of subject-centred, universal, or instrumental reason, viewing it as a force that stifled individual existence and creativity. Foucault, on the other hand, believed there were other forms of reason, neglected but essential to modern life, that could help us understand what it means to live a life according to reason. He proposed a critique based on Kant's distinction between private and public uses of reason, arguing that the use of reason must be free and public when one is reasoning as a member of reasonable humanity. This critique has led to a re-orientation of the debate, with proposals to recognize other voices and new departments of reason, such as communicative reason and the faculty of disclosure. The story of reason is not one of triumph but of constant struggle, a struggle to define what it means to be human in a world that is often irrational and unpredictable.
Common questions
What does Francisco de Goya's 1797 etching The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters symbolize?
Francisco de Goya's 1797 etching The Sleep of Reason Produces Monsters symbolizes the terrifying truth that when the mind stops working, chaos takes over. The artwork depicts a man slumped over his desk surrounded by owls and bats to represent the darkness of unexamined instinct. This visual metaphor illustrates the central tension in human history between the light of logic and the darkness of unexamined instinct.
How did Plato and Aristotle define the role of reason in human life?
Plato viewed reason as the natural monarch of the soul tasked with ruling over the spirited and passionate parts of the self. Aristotle expanded on this by defining humans as rational animals and emphasizing that reason was the very essence of human nature. Both philosophers believed that a life lived in accordance with reason was the only path to true happiness and well-being.
What was René Descartes' contribution to the modern understanding of reason?
René Descartes explicitly rejected the traditional notion of humans as rational animals in the 17th century and suggested instead that they were nothing more than thinking things. He established a new foundation for epistemology based on the thinking subject and brought into doubt all knowledge except that of the mind itself. This subject-centred reason became the dominant paradigm of the Enlightenment where the individual mind was seen as the sole arbiter of truth.
What is David Hume's famous claim about the relationship between reason and passions?
David Hume famously remarked that reason is and ought only to be the slave of the passions serving only to obey and serve them. He argued that there could be no possibility of deducing relationships of cause and effect and therefore no knowledge was based on reasoning alone. This radical claim suggested that human reason was not qualitatively different from the simple association of ideas.
How does the argumentative theory of reasoning explain the evolution of human reason?
Sperber and Mercier's argumentative theory of reasoning claims that reason may have more to do with winning arguments than searching for the truth. This theory suggests that reason evolved as a social tool for navigating complex social environments where the ability to argue and persuade others was crucial for survival. The perspective shifts the focus from the individual mind to the social group highlighting the importance of communication and interaction in the development of reason.
What is the Somatic Marker Hypothesis proposed by Antonio Damasio?
Antonio Damasio presents the Somatic Marker Hypothesis which states that emotions guide behavior and decision-making through intuitive signals known collectively as gut feelings. He argues that these somatic markers direct our decision-making processes in a certain way that cannot be solved with rationality alone. Damasio further argues that rationality requires emotional input in order to function.
The ancient Greeks did not view reason as a mere tool for calculation but as a divine connection to the cosmos itself. Pythagoras and Heraclitus were among the first to suggest that the cosmos had reason, a cosmic order that governed all things. This teleological understanding meant that every type of thing had a definitive purpose that fit within a natural order. Reason was considered of higher stature than other characteristics of human nature because it was something people shared with nature itself, linking an apparently immortal part of the human mind with the divine order of the cosmos. Plato described reason as the natural monarch of the soul, ruling over spiritedness and the passions. He believed that the highest human happiness was a life lived consistently, excellently, and completely in accordance with reason. This view was not unique to Plato; Aristotle, his student, defined human beings as rational animals, emphasizing reason as a characteristic of human nature. The conclusions drawn from these discussions remain among the most debated in the history of philosophy, yet they established a foundation for Western thought that would endure for millennia.
The classical view of reason was adopted by the early Church, blending Greek philosophy with Christian theology. The greatest among the early Church Fathers, such as Augustine of Hippo, Basil of Caesarea, and Gregory of Nyssa, were as much Neoplatonic philosophers as they were Christian theologians. They adopted the Neoplatonic view of human reason and its implications for our relationship to creation, to ourselves, and to God. In the Neoplatonist account of Plotinus, the cosmos had one soul, which was the seat of all reason, and the souls of all people were part of this soul. Reason was for Plotinus both the provider of form to material things and the light which brought people's souls back into line with their source. This synthesis of Greek philosophy and Christian faith created a powerful framework for understanding the human condition, one that would influence Islamic and European thought for centuries.
Medieval Islamic philosophers also adopted the Neoplatonic conception of the rational aspect of the human soul, and it continues to hold significance in Iranian philosophy. As European intellectual life reemerged from the Dark Ages, the Christian Patristic tradition and the influence of esteemed Islamic scholars like Averroes and Avicenna contributed to the development of the Scholastic view of reason. Among the Scholastics who relied on the classical concept of reason for the development of their doctrines, none were more influential than Saint Thomas Aquinas. He put this concept at the heart of his Natural Law, concluding that because humans have reason and because reason is a spark of the divine, every single human life is invaluable. Aquinas argued that all humans are equal and that every human is born with an intrinsic and permanent set of basic rights. On this foundation, the idea of human rights would later be constructed by Spanish theologians at the School of Salamanca. Other Scholastics, such as Roger Bacon and Albertus Magnus, followed the example of Islamic scholars like Alhazen, emphasizing reason as an intrinsic human ability to decode the created order and the structures that underlie our experienced physical reality. This interpretation of reason was instrumental to the development of the scientific method in the early Universities of the high Middle Ages.
The classical view of reason also shaped the understanding of the relationship between faith and tradition. Religious adherents argued that faith and reason could be reconciled, or that they had different non-overlapping domains. Theologian Joseph Ratzinger, later Pope Benedict XVI, asserted that Christianity had understood itself as the religion of the Logos, the religion according to reason. He claimed that the rationality of Western Enlightenment was of Christian origin. This view of reason as a divine spark that connected humanity to the cosmos and to God remained a central theme in Western philosophy, even as it faced increasing challenges from the emerging scientific and secular world. The tension between the classical view of reason and the modern view of reason would become a defining feature of the intellectual landscape, driving the development of new philosophical and scientific paradigms.
The Calculating Mind and The Slave of Passions
The early modern era marked a radical shift in the understanding of reason, starting in Europe with a change in the metaphysical understanding of human beings. Scientists and philosophers began to question the teleological understanding of the world, rejecting the idea that nature had its own aims or reason. Nature was no longer assumed to be human-like, and human nature was no longer assumed to work according to anything other than the same laws of nature which affect inanimate things. This new understanding eventually displaced the previous world view that derived from a spiritual understanding of the universe. In the 17th century, René Descartes explicitly rejected the traditional notion of humans as rational animals, suggesting instead that they were nothing more than thinking things along the lines of other things in nature. He brought into doubt all knowledge except that of the mind itself, establishing a new foundation for epistemology based on the thinking subject. This subject-centred reason became the dominant paradigm of the Enlightenment, where the individual mind was seen as the sole arbiter of truth.
A contemporary of Descartes, Thomas Hobbes, described reason as a broader version of addition and subtraction which was not limited to numbers. This understanding of reason is sometimes termed calculative reason. Similar to Descartes, Hobbes asserted that no discourse whatsoever could end in absolute knowledge of fact, past or to come, but that sense and memory was absolute knowledge. In the late 17th century through the 18th century, John Locke and David Hume developed Descartes's line of thought still further. Hume took it in an especially skeptical direction, proposing that there could be no possibility of deducing relationships of cause and effect, and therefore no knowledge was based on reasoning alone, even if it seemed otherwise. Hume famously remarked that reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them. He also took his definition of reason to unorthodox extremes by arguing that human reason was not qualitatively different from either simply conceiving individual ideas, or from judgments associating two ideas. It followed from this that animals had reason, only much less complex than human reason.
The skepticism of Hume and the calculative reason of Hobbes challenged the classical view of reason as a divine spark. They argued that reason was not a faculty that could lead to absolute truth but rather a tool for managing the passions and the world. This shift in perspective had profound implications for the development of science and philosophy. The Enlightenment thinkers began to see reason as a means to control and predict the world, rather than to understand its inherent meaning. This instrumental view of reason became the foundation for the scientific method, which relied on observation, experimentation, and logical deduction. However, it also created a rift between the human mind and the world it sought to understand, a rift that would fuel centuries of philosophical conflict. The question of whether reason could lead to truth or whether it was merely a slave to the passions remained a central debate in the history of thought, driving the development of new philosophical and scientific paradigms.
The critique of reason continued with Immanuel Kant, who attempted to show that Hume was wrong by demonstrating that a transcendental self was a necessary condition of all experience. Kant argued that reason could be the vehicle of morality, justice, and aesthetics, provided its limits were respected. He formulated such a principle, called the categorical imperative, which would justify an action only if it could be universalized. Kant claimed that these solutions could be found with his transcendental logic, which unlike normal logic was not just an instrument that could be used indifferently, as it was for Aristotle, but a theoretical science in its own right and the basis of all the others. However, the unity of reason began to dissolve in modern times, with thinkers like Jürgen Habermas suggesting that it could no longer answer the question of how to live, but could only provide formal procedures for decision-making. The history of reason is a story of constant struggle, a struggle to define what it means to be human in a world that is often irrational and unpredictable.
The Evolution of Reason and The Argumentative Theory
Sperber and Mercier's argumentative theory of reasoning claims that reason may have more to do with winning arguments than searching for the truth. This theory challenges the traditional view of reason as a tool for discovering objective truth, suggesting instead that it evolved as a social tool for navigating complex social environments. The ability to argue and persuade others was crucial for survival in early human societies, where cooperation and competition were constant features of daily life. This perspective shifts the focus from the individual mind to the social group, highlighting the importance of communication and interaction in the development of reason. It also suggests that the human capacity for reason is not a fixed trait but a dynamic process that has evolved over time to meet the challenges of social life.
The argumentative theory of reasoning has implications for our understanding of human nature and the development of human societies. It suggests that reason is not a purely individual faculty but a social one, shaped by the needs of the group. This view challenges the traditional view of reason as a tool for discovering objective truth, suggesting instead that it evolved as a social tool for navigating complex social environments. The ability to argue and persuade others was crucial for survival in early human societies, where cooperation and competition were constant features of daily life. This perspective shifts the focus from the individual mind to the social group, highlighting the importance of communication and interaction in the development of reason. It also suggests that the human capacity for reason is not a fixed trait but a dynamic process that has evolved over time to meet the challenges of social life.
The evolution of reason also raises questions about the relationship between reason and emotion. Antonio Damasio presents the Somatic Marker Hypothesis, which states that emotions guide behavior and decision-making. Damasio argues that these somatic markers, known collectively as gut feelings, are intuitive signals that direct our decision-making processes in a certain way that cannot be solved with rationality alone. He further argues that rationality requires emotional input in order to function. This view challenges the traditional view of reason as a purely cognitive faculty, suggesting instead that it is deeply intertwined with emotion and the body. The relationship between reason and emotion is a complex one, with both playing crucial roles in human decision-making and behavior. The evolution of reason has been shaped by the need to balance the demands of the mind with the needs of the body, creating a dynamic and adaptive system that has allowed humans to thrive in a wide range of environments.
The relationship between reason and emotion has been a central theme in Western philosophy, with thinkers debating whether reason should rule over the passions or whether the two should be seen as complementary forces. After Plato and Aristotle, Western literature often treated reason as being the faculty that trained the passions and appetites. Stoic philosophy, by contrast, claimed most emotions were merely false judgements. According to the Stoics, the only good is virtue, and the only evil is vice, therefore emotions that judged things other than vice to be bad, such as fear or distress, or things other than virtue to be good, such as greed, were simply false judgements and should be discarded. Positive emotions based on true judgements, such as kindness, were acceptable. After the critiques of reason in the early Enlightenment, the appetites were rarely discussed or were conflated with the passions. Some Enlightenment camps took after the Stoics to say reason should oppose passion rather than order it, while others like the
The Conflict of Reason and Passion
Romantics believed that passion displaces reason, as in the maxim follow your heart.
Reason has been seen as cold, an enemy of mystery and ambiguity, a slave, or judge, of the passions, notably in the work of David Hume. More recently, Freud wrote, It seems as though the activity of the other agencies of the mind is able only to modify the pleasure principle but not to nullify it; and it remains a question of the greatest theoretical importance, and one that has not yet been answered, when and how it is ever possible for the pleasure principle to be overcome. Reasoning that claims the object of a desire is demanded by logic alone is called rationalization. Rousseau first proposed, in his second Discourse, that reason and political life is not natural and is possibly harmful to mankind. He asked what really can be said about what is natural to mankind. What, other than reason and civil society, best suits his constitution? Rousseau saw two principles prior to reason in human nature. First we hold an intense interest in our own well-being. Secondly we object to the suffering or death of any sentient being, especially one like ourselves. These two passions lead us to desire more than we could achieve. We become dependent upon each other, and on relationships of authority and obedience. This effectively puts the human race into slavery.
This quandary presented by Rousseau led to Kant's new way of justifying reason as freedom to create good and evil. These therefore are not to be blamed on nature or God. In various ways, German Idealism after Kant, and major later figures such Nietzsche, Bergson, Husserl, Scheler, and Heidegger, remain preoccupied with problems coming from the metaphysical demands or urges of reason. Rousseau and these later writers also exerted a large influence on art and politics. Many writers, such as Nikos Kazantzakis, extol passion and disparage reason. In politics modern nationalism comes from Rousseau's argument that rationalist cosmopolitanism brings man ever further from his natural state. The conflict between reason and passion has been a defining feature of Western thought, driving the development of new philosophical and political paradigms. The question of whether reason should rule over the passions or whether the two should be seen as complementary forces remains a central debate in the history of thought, shaping our understanding of human nature and the development of human societies.
Philosophy is often characterized as a pursuit of rational understanding, entailing a more rigorous and dedicated application of human reasoning than commonly employed. Philosophers have long debated two fundamental questions regarding reason, essentially examining reasoning itself as a human endeavor, or philosophizing about philosophizing. The first question delves into whether we can place our trust in reason's ability to attain knowledge and truth more effectively than alternative methods. The second question explores whether a life guided by reason, a life that aims to be guided by reason, can be expected to lead to greater happiness compared to other approaches to life. Since classical antiquity, a question has remained constant in philosophical debate concerning the role of reason in confirming truth. People use logic, deduction, and induction to reach conclusions they think are true. Conclusions reached in this way are considered, according to Aristotle, more certain than sense perceptions on their own. On the other hand, if such reasoned conclusions are only built originally upon a foundation
The Logic of Truth and The Limits of Knowledge
of sense perceptions, then our most logical conclusions can never be said to be certain because they are built upon the very same fallible perceptions they seek to better.
This leads to the question of what types of first principles, or starting points of reasoning, are available for someone seeking to come to true conclusions. In Greek, first principles are archai, starting points, and the faculty used to perceive them is sometimes referred to in Aristotle and Plato as nous, which was close in meaning to awareness or consciousness. Empiricism, sometimes associated with Aristotle but more correctly associated with British philosophers such as John Locke and David Hume, as well as their ancient equivalents such as Democritus, asserts that sensory impressions are the only available starting points for reasoning and attempting to attain truth. This approach always leads to the controversial conclusion that absolute knowledge is not attainable. Idealism, associated with Plato and his school, claims that there is a higher reality, within which certain people can directly discover truth without needing to rely only upon the senses, and that this higher reality is therefore the primary source of truth. Philosophers such as Plato, Aristotle, Al-Farabi, Avicenna, Averroes, Maimonides, Aquinas, and Hegel argued that reason must be fixed and discoverable, perhaps by dialectic, analysis, or study. Religious philosophers such as Thomas Aquinas and Étienne Gilson attempted to show that reason and revelation are compatible. According to Hegel, the only thought which Philosophy brings with it to the contemplation of History, is the simple conception of reason; that reason is the Sovereign of the World; that the history of the world, therefore, presents us with a rational process.
Since the 17th century rationalists, reason has often been taken to be a subjective faculty, or rather the unaided ability, pure reason, to form concepts. For Descartes, Spinoza, and Leibniz, this was associated with mathematics. Kant attempted to show that pure reason could form concepts, time and space, that are the conditions of experience. Kant made his argument in opposition to Hume, who denied that reason had any role to play in experience. The debate over the limits of knowledge and the nature of truth has been a central theme in the history of philosophy, driving the development of new philosophical and scientific paradigms. The question of whether reason can lead to absolute truth or whether it is limited by the fallibility of sense perception remains a central debate in the history of thought, shaping our understanding of human nature and the development of human societies. The history of reason is a story of constant struggle, a struggle to define what it means to be human in a world that is often irrational and unpredictable.
Logical reasoning methods and argumentation form the backbone of philosophical inquiry, providing the tools necessary to distinguish valid conclusions from flawed ones. The traditional main division made in philosophy is between deductive reasoning and inductive reasoning. Formal logic has been described as the science of deduction. The study of inductive reasoning is generally carried out within the field known as informal logic or critical thinking. Deduction is a form of reasoning in which a conclusion follows necessarily from the stated premises. A deduction is also the name for the conclusion reached by a deductive reasoning process. A classic example of deductive reasoning is evident in syllogisms like the following: Premise 1 All humans are mortal. Premise 2 Socrates is a human. Conclusion Socrates is mortal. The reasoning in this argument is deductively valid because there is no way in which both premises could be true and the conclusion be false. Induction is a form of inference that produces properties or relations about unobserved objects or types
The Structure of Thought and The Art of Argument
based on previous observations or experiences, or that formulates general statements or laws based on limited observations of recurring phenomenal patterns. Inductive reasoning contrasts with deductive reasoning in that, even in the strongest cases of inductive reasoning, the truth of the premises does not guarantee the truth of the conclusion. Instead, the conclusion of an inductive argument follows with some degree of probability. For this reason also, the conclusion of an inductive argument contains more information than is already contained in the premises. Thus, this method of reasoning is ampliative.
Analogical reasoning is a form of inductive reasoning from a particular to a particular. It is often used in case-based reasoning, especially legal reasoning. An example follows: Premise 1 Socrates is human and mortal. Premise 2 Plato is human. Conclusion Plato is mortal. Analogical reasoning is a weaker form of inductive reasoning from a single example, because inductive reasoning typically uses a large number of examples to reason from the particular to the general. Analogical reasoning often leads to wrong conclusions. For example: Premise 1 Socrates is human and male. Premise 2 Ada Lovelace is human. Conclusion Ada Lovelace is male. Abductive reasoning, or argument to the best explanation, is a form of reasoning that does not fit in either the deductive or inductive categories, since it starts with incomplete set of observations and proceeds with likely possible explanations. The conclusion in an abductive argument does not follow with certainty from its premises and concerns something unobserved. What distinguishes abduction from the other forms of reasoning is an attempt to favour one conclusion above others, by subjective judgement or by attempting to falsify alternative explanations or by demonstrating the likelihood of the favoured conclusion, given a set of more or less disputable assumptions. For example, when a patient displays certain symptoms, there might be various possible causes, but one of these is preferred above others as being more probable. Flawed reasoning in arguments is known as fallacious reasoning. Bad reasoning within arguments can result from either a formal fallacy or an informal fallacy. Formal fallacies occur when there is a problem with the form, or structure, of the argument. An argument that contains a formal fallacy will always be invalid. An informal fallacy is an error in reasoning that occurs due to a problem with the content, rather than the form or structure, of the argument.
The study of logical reasoning methods has been a central theme in the history of philosophy, providing the tools necessary to distinguish valid conclusions from flawed ones. The traditional main division made in philosophy is between deductive reasoning and inductive reasoning. Formal logic has been described as the science of deduction. The study of inductive reasoning is generally carried out within the field known as informal logic or critical thinking. The history of reason is a story of constant struggle, a struggle to define what it means to be human in a world that is often irrational and unpredictable. The debate over the nature of truth and the limits of knowledge has been a central theme in the history of philosophy, driving the development of new philosophical and scientific paradigms. The question of whether reason can lead to absolute truth or whether it is limited by the fallibility of sense perception remains a central debate in the history of thought, shaping our understanding of human nature and the development of human societies.
Reason in political philosophy and ethics has been a central theme in the history of thought, with philosophers debating the nature of human society and the role of reason in shaping it. Aristotle famously described reason, with language, as a part of human nature, because of which it is best for humans to live politically, meaning in communities of about the size and type of a small city state. If human nature is fixed in this way, we can define what type of community is always best for people. This argument has remained a central argument in all political, ethical, and moral thinking since then, and has become especially controversial since firstly Rousseau's Second Discourse, and secondly, the Theory of Evolution. Already in Aristotle there was an awareness that the polis had not always existed and had to be invented or developed by humans themselves. The household came first, and the first villages and cities were just extensions of that, with the first cities being run
The Social Mind and The Political Animal
as if they were still families with Kings acting like fathers. Friendship seems to prevail in man and woman according to nature, for people are by nature pairing more than political, in as much as the household is prior and more necessary than the polis and making children is more common with the animals. In the other animals, community goes no further than this, but people live together not only for the sake of making children, but also for the things for life; for from the start the functions are divided, and are different for man and woman. Thus they supply each other, putting their own into the common. It is for these reasons that both utility and pleasure seem to be found in this kind of friendship.
Rousseau in his Second Discourse finally took the shocking step of claiming that this traditional account has things in reverse: with reason, language, and rationally organized communities all having developed over a long period of time merely as a result of the fact that some habits of cooperation were found to solve certain types of problems, and that once such cooperation became more important, it forced people to develop increasingly complex cooperation, often only to defend themselves from each other. In other words, according to Rousseau, reason, language, and rational community did not arise because of any conscious decision or plan by humans or gods, nor because of any pre-existing human nature. As a result, he claimed, living together in rationally organized communities like modern humans is a development with many negative aspects compared to the original state of man as an ape. If anything is specifically human in this theory, it is the flexibility and adaptability of humans. This view of the animal origins of distinctive human characteristics later received support from Charles Darwin's Theory of Evolution. The two competing theories concerning the origins of reason are relevant to political and ethical thought because, according to the Aristotelian theory, a best way of living together exists independently of historical circumstances. According to Rousseau, we should even doubt that reason, language, and politics are a good thing, as opposed to being simply the best option given the particular course of events that led to today. Rousseau's theory, that human nature is malleable rather than fixed, is often taken to imply, for example by Karl Marx, a wider range of possible ways of living together than traditionally known. However, while Rousseau's initial impact encouraged bloody revolutions against traditional politics, including both the French Revolution and the Russian Revolution, his own conclusions about the best forms of community seem to have been remarkably classical, in favor of city-states such as Geneva, and rural living.
The debate over the nature of human society and the role of reason in shaping it has been a central theme in the history of thought, driving the development of new philosophical and political paradigms. The question of whether reason is a fixed part of human nature or a product of social evolution remains a central debate in the history of thought, shaping our understanding of human nature and the development of human societies. The history of reason is a story of constant struggle, a struggle to define what it means to be human in a world that is often irrational and unpredictable. The relationship between reason and politics has been a defining feature of Western thought, driving the development of new philosophical and political paradigms. The question of whether reason can lead to a better society or whether it is limited by the fallibility of human nature remains a central debate in the history of thought, shaping our understanding of human nature and the development of human societies.