Abstract
After a remark on the logic of meaning variance, part I explicates the chapter’s heading concepts. As a human faculty, reason is distinguished from rationality, being a quality of human products. The systematical role of reason is historically described from classical antiquity until modern times. Globality of reason in the sense of its being universal is emphasized. Subjectively in distinction from objectively rational human actions are explained. Part II shows, how functions and tasks of reason as well as the moments of rationality underlie the global turn. Especially the concepts of practical reason, e.g., justice, change under empirically altering conditions. The goal of reason’s activity is to design globally valid theories. As a consequence hereof, part III claims to qualify received concepts and theses of reason by their local conditions.
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Notes
- 1.
Exemplary Gottlob Frege (1848–1925), who locates the danger in the equivocation of the expression “Law of thoughts.” Psychology uses it descriptively, the philosophical theory of reason uses it prescriptively, and men are to follow the laws of thought. This normative interpretation also resists a purely individual-subjectivistic view of reason, which lurks in psychologism.
- 2.
Cf. Joachim Ritter/Karlfried Gründer/Gottfried Gabriel (eds.), Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie, ‚Vernunft; Verstand‘ III/C, Band 11, Basel: Schwabe 1971, p. 774 f.
- 3.
Jürgen Habermas, The Theory of Communicative Action, Boston: Beacon Press, 1984.
- 4.
Kurt Röttgers, Ein philosophischer Begriff von Globalisierung, in: Hubertus Busche (ed.), Philosophische Aspekte der Globalisierung, Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2009, p 17.
- 5.
Cf. Joachim Ritter/Karlfried Gründer/Gottfried Gabriel (eds), Historisches Wörterbuch der Philosophie, ‚Rationalität, Rationalisierung‘ I, Band 8, 1984, p. 52.
- 6.
Max Horkheimer, Eclipse of Reason, London: Bloomsbury Academic, 2013(reprint edition).
- 7.
Because of its reserve Habermas describes this position as a “positivistically bisected rationalism”: Jürgen Habermas, A Positivistically Bisected Rationalism, in: Theodor W. Adorno et al., The Positivist Dispute in German Sociology. London: Heinemann, 1976, p. 198.
- 8.
Exemplary: Striving for health is rational, because health promotes happiness.
- 9.
The subjective rationality of decisions may yield explanations of actions: Why did person P carry out action A? Answer: Person P aimed at goal G and P held the belief A to be appropriate for realizing G. This model of explanation has been related to the question, whether it makes you understand P’s action, too (Cf. Georg Henrik von Wright, Explanation and Understanding, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1971).
- 10.
Max Weber, Economy and Society, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1978.
- 11.
Cf. Ibid., Chap I/§ 2.
- 12.
Charles Sanders Peirce, Elements of Logic (1931), in: Idem., Collected Papers of Charles Sanders Peirce. Volume II: Elements of Logic, Chapter 1, Section 66, Cambridge, Mass.: The Belknap Press of Harvard University, 1965 (3rd edition).
- 13.
E.g.: The former insight of socioeconomic reason, that industrial growth slows down and that this is desired for reasons concerning politics of environment, holds true for Western European countries with a high economic production. Yet globally, it does not apply to the fast-developing third-world countries. Here economy partly grows rapidly, which is well appreciated.
- 14.
Thus, a high grade of mobility may be good for regions with sparse populations. Whether it is also good for Europe with its dense population is at least questionable.
- 15.
Cf. Süddeutsche Zeitung, 6th/7th July 2013. Definitely a negative answer from the Chinese government. Yet Western Europeans and US Americans nowadays also no longer unreservedly believe in the global value of democracy.
- 16.
For example: To trade coffee, i.e., exchanging coffee against money, is globally just only if the price for coffee covers the expenses for production and the living costs of a Latin-American farmer. Looked at, however, from a Western European view, hence locally, the relation of the market’s offer and its demand decide the price. Things are similar with compensation for suffered injustice—e.g., by the colonial reign over indigenous peoples. The consequences of the global change for determining a just distribution of goods are evident.
- 17.
Cf. Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1958, p. 26.
- 18.
Silvio Vietta, Rationalität: Eine Weltgeschichte, Munich: Wilhelm Fink, 2012, p. 9.
- 19.
Ibid., p. 12.
- 20.
Thomas Samuel Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions, Chicago: The University of Chicago Press, 1962.
- 21.
Cf. Jürgen Habermas, The theory of communicative action, loc.cit. Vol. 1: Reason and the Rationalization of Society.
- 22.
John Rawls, A Theory of Justice, § 4, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1972, p. 17 ff.
- 23.
E.g., by conditionalized statements such as “If we take as basis European conditions, then …”
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Stuhlmann-Laeisz, R. (2019). Reason and Rationality. In: Kühnhardt, L., Mayer, T. (eds) The Bonn Handbook of Globality. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-90377-4_39
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