Criticism of rationalism

"Irrationalism" redirects here. It is not to be confused with Irrationality.

The philosophy of rationalism, understood as having first emerged in the writings of Francis Bacon and René Descartes, has received a variety of criticisms since its inception. These may entail a view that certain things are beyond rational understanding, that total rationality is insufficient to human life, or that people are not instinctively rational and progressive.

The term irrationalism is a pejorative designation of such criticisms. While irrationalism is in this sense generally understood as an ambiguously-defined philosophical movement of the 19th and early-20th centuries, such criticisms "do not share a philosophical tradition as much as a skeptical disposition toward the notion, common among modern thinkers, that there is only one standard of rationality or reasonableness, and that that one standard is or ought to be taken from the presuppositions, methods, and logic of the natural sciences."

Ontological irrationalism, a position adopted by Arthur Schopenhauer, describes the world as not organized in a rational way. Since humans are born as bodies-manifestations of an irrational striving for meaning, they are vulnerable to pain and suffering.

Oswald Spengler argued that the materialist vision of Karl Marx was based on nineteenth-century science, while the twentieth century would be the age of psychology:

"We no longer believe in the power of reason over life. We feel that it is life which dominates reason."

— Oswald Spengler. Politische Schriften, 1932.

History

György Lukács believed that the first period of irrationalism arose with Schelling and Kierkegaard, in a fight against the dialectical concept of progress embraced by German idealism.