Why Reason is Given Such Importance in Philosophy

By Stan Hedges, Student

In 1500 words, explain why reason is so important in philosophy. Justify by citing Plato, Descartes, Rousseau, Kant, Wollestonecraft, and any others.

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It is impossible to overestimate the importance of reason to philosophers. Notes taken at the first lecture on this course reveal that among questions raised during that lecture was one attempting to answer the question, “What is philosophy?’ Besides other an-swers, I made note of the following:

"Philosophy is not opinion. Philosophy presents arguments rather than opinions. Of greater importance is the debate; i.e. a rea-soned argument."

Finding a reference to reason so early in the course might imply that the power of reasoning - the ability to evaluate empirical knowledge - is fundamental to our intellectual facilities; hence to philosophers. Here it is worth noting that philosophers still debate whether or not lower animals are endowed with such powers, but undoubtedly it is through this facility that human beings assert their own existence, their separateness, their sense of isolation from all other things, including other human beings. It might be said that this very sense gave birth to philosophy, for reason is employed in attempting to answer the questions raised by this feeling of ‘otherness’. However, though it involves the intellect, reason is not entirely synonymous with that facility. A distinction needs to be made.
According to Russell, (1961, p.139), Plato (417 - 348/7 BC) distinguished the world of the intellect from the world of the senses, going on to divide each into two categories.

As it is irrelevant to this discussion, we may leave aside sense-perception. But in regard to the intellect, Plato separated this into ‘reason’ and ‘understanding’, reason being the superior of the two, the higher kind. His famous cave analogy is meant to illustrate how, by the use of imaginative supposition, our reason enables us to contemplate pure ideas. Through dialectic, he then posits a fundamental theory of why human beings can conceive of perfection though none exists in the real world. (Examples might be equilateral triangles, where we assume they are possible when straight lines do not exist in nature and cannot be drawn precisely by man; or the ability to combine mental images of horse and horn to produce the concept of a unicorn, a beast which, again, does not exist). According to Plato we are able to do this because the ideas —or ‘forms’— of such things do exist, but only in ‘heaven’. He maintains that, without the dissemination of insight gained from philosophical reasoning, mankind cannot be led from the cave into the light of the sun, i.e. the ‘good’, the awareness, or sense of God.

Through reason, philosophy first attempts to answer questions bearing on such things as the actuality of existence, concepts of spirituality and physicality, the structure of the universe, the evidence of God, concepts of time and space, and goes on to examine ideas of good and evil, as well as abstract concepts such as ‘the beautiful’, or 'freedom', their value and true meaning. Philosophy also embraces the realm of moral and ethical concepts: the importance of gender issues, the necessity or otherwise of social, scientific, and political ethics.
Taking only the first of these — individual existence — by a long and thorough process of reasoning which has come to be known as ‘Cartesian doubt’, René Descartes (1596-1650) left a definitive legacy to future philosophers when he said:

"cogito ergo sum." (I think, therefore I am).

On p547, Russell quotes Descartes as follows:

"While I wanted to think everything false, it must necessarily be that I who thought was something; and remarking that this truth, I think, therefore I am, was so solid and so certain that all the most extravagant suppositions of the sceptics were incapable of upset-ting it, I judged that I could receive it without scruple as the first principle of the philosophy that I sought."

A hundred or so years later another philosopher, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, (1712- 78), was indirectly responsible for ushering in the Age of Enlightenment with his 'Social Contract' of 1762. In this discourse, intended to embrace every aspect of individual freedom, Rousseau contended that only the benefits bestowed upon him through his power of reason separated modern man from primitive man. In brief, all that was needed to capitalise on this was to devise a just system of government. Now it is held that, in certain respects, Rousseau might be thought a ‘humbug’ in later life, but this should not be allowed to detract from this, his most important work, which is still seen as a mile-stone in the struggle for individual freedom in the Western world.

An early feminist, Mrs Mary Wollstonecraft, (1759-97), ruffled the feathers of a patriarchal society by making radical use of Emile, (1762), another of Rousseau’s important works. Here, he propounds his ideal individual education plan for both males and females; and the plans differ greatly. By a spectacular use of reason, Mary Wollstonecraft, (mother of Mary Shelley, wife of the poet), complains that Rousseau unfortunately included sexuality in his theory and, justifiably, refuted this by maintaining that the individual mind, as such, has no sex. She continued by suggesting that, instead of accepting his monstrous ideal of femininity, women would be better mothers if they were first taught to reason alongside men on equal terms. Thus, it could be said that feminism today owes a debt to her powers of reasoning.

However, no Essay on reason, however short, would be complete without some reference to Immanuel Kant, (1724-1804). According to Russell, Kant is recognised as representing a moment of change in the history of philosophy, and is still consid-ered by most, but by no means all, to be the greatest of modern philosophers (Russell, p.677).

An Eighteenth-century German academic and lifelong bachelor, Kant devoted some eleven years to the subject of reason, producing his Critique of Pure Reason in 1781. A revised second edition appeared in 1787.

This is a treatise of immense scope and proportion, and the writer cannot pretend to an intimate knowledge of the complete work. Let me summarise what I do know by saying the work sets out to prove, through a process of reasoning, that although no knowledge can transcend experience it does come to us, in part, a priori.

A critical element is where Kant makes a distinction between ‘analytic’ propositions (where the predicate is part of the subject) and ‘synthetic’ propositions. However, he draws heavily upon laws of contradiction too complex for the uses of this short paper. And in a dictum from another of his works, 'Metaphysic of Morals' (1785), we have the most famous of his ‘categorical imperatives’:

"Act only according to a maxim by which you can at the same time will that it shall become a General law," (Russell, 1961, p.683).

Personally, I have no difficulty accepting the concept of a priori knowledge. If, during coition, instincts, reflexes, and the physical and mental characteristics of the parents, as well as individual talents such as aptitude for music or mathematics, etc., (which might be considered virtual forms of knowledge), can be incorporated in the embryo, I ask why certain forms of 'learned' or empirical knowledge may not also be transmitted. Indeed, why not certain precise incidents of memory from the parents?
However, tempting as it is (for the writer) to divert from the question and speculate further on such propositions they must await their own time, for, on this occasion, space forbids.

In closing, most would agree that reason is a human biological tool. But which is most, the anvil to the man who makes the spear, or the spear to the man who wields it? Both tools appear equally efficient for their purpose, sympathetic to the same end. Is this a good analogy for reason? Is it no more than that: a tool which enables us to distinguish the anvil from the spear? The facility from the purpose? Or is it something more, something metaphysical, a vestige of the Creator Himself? Alas, another avenue of thought which cannot be explored here.

In conclusion therefore, one may say it would be difficult to conceive of anything, either concrete or abstract, which, having a cognitive effect on the mind, has not already been subjected to reasoned philosophical argument by at least one of the world’s greatest thinkers, and for which some attempt to find, or suggest, rational explanations in human terms has not already been made. Therefore, I repeat, where phi-losophy is concerned, it is impossible to overestimate the importance of the human power of reasoning.

Bibliography
The Republic of Plato, translated, Cornford, M. F. (1941), London, O.U.P.
Social Contract & Discourses, (1762), Rousseau, J-J., trans. Cole, G.D.H. London, Dent & Sons.
History of Western Philosophy, (1946), Russell, B., 2nd edn., (1961), Canada, Routledge.