 | The Politics of Rationality: Reason through Occidental History Subjects: Humanities; Politics & International Relations; Political Philosophy; Political Theory; Philosophy; Ancient Philosophy; Ethics Philosophy; Modern Philosophy (16th Century-18th Century); 19th Century Philosophy; Political Philosophy; Ancient & Medieval Political Theory; What are reason and rationality? How significant are recent postmodernist and neuroscientific challenges to these longheld notions? Should we abandon a belief in reason and an adherence to rationality? Or can reason and rationality be reformulated and reframed? And what does politics have to do with how we think about reason and why we act more or less rationally? The Politics of Rationality differs from other books with "reason" or "rationality" due to its historical, political, depth-psychological, and multidisciplinary approach to understanding reason through history. Charles P. Webel eloquently clarifies the links among ideas, their creators, the relevant mental processes, and the political cultures within which such important concepts as reasons and rationality take hold. He demonstrates how reason and rationality/irrationality have become what they mean for us today and proposes a way to rethink reason and rationality in light of the withering critiques leveled against them. In doing so, he presents a "history of reason and rationality" by examining the intellectual and political contexts of four representative theorists of reason and rationality-- Plato, Machiavelli, Kant, and Weber--and by addressing contemporary challenges posed by postmodernism, depth psychology, and neurophilosophy. Charles P. Webel is currently a professor at the University of New York in Prague. He has taught philosophy, psychology, intellectual history, and politics at the University of California at Berkeley, the University of South Florida, California State University at Chico, Saybrook University, and Harvard University. He was also Director of the Centre for Peace Studies at the University of Tromso, Norway, and he graduated from the Psychoanalytic Institute of Northern California. |
