User:Ssstephen/Reading/The Utopia of Rules

3: The Utopia of Rules, or why we really love bureaucracy after all

II: Rationalism as a Form of Spirituality

Our very conception of rationality is strangely incoherent

Re 10.11.1619

public servants... it is the responsibility of servants to do their master's bidding... insofar as their master is something called "the public", however, this creates certain problems: how to figure out what, exactly, the public really wants them to do.

<ppre>pretty much anyone with a utopian vision... dreams of creating a social orderthat will, unlike current arrangements, make some sort of coherent sense-and which will, therefore, represent the triumph of reason over chaos.

What does it mean to not allow reason to triumph? It is not the same as fully succumbing to the chaotic. And the accepting of democratic drive is not the same as the rejection of reason, it is simply putting it on a different scale. This body politic determines this action as correct, as opposed to this specialist or regent. It is just a matter of authority, reason is being appealed to in all cases?

a human being without emotions would not be able to think at all

And a reference is given to oh no hang on a second, the footnote just says "There is a reason Mr. Spock was a fictional character. But of course Spock wasn't really supposed to be emotionless, he just pretended to be, so ina way he represented the ideal of rationality perfectly. I feel a little cheated by this footnote but also its super funny. I feel nerdsniped. Five of the fifteen footnotes on this page refer to other texts. You are confusing me Dave thank you.

In the next few paragraphs he makes some extreme statements that when people claim to be rational they are implying everyone else is irrational, but its not so binary and the argument is a bit weak. People usually claim to be more rational, not exclusively rational.

you cant really make an argument against rationality, because for that argument to be convincing, it would itself have to be framed in rational terms.

Do you ever wake up in the middle of the night and just feel no this isnt it?

pythagoreans... music of the spheres... when the human mind (or soul) exercised its powers of reason, it was simply participating in that larger rational order, the cosmic "world soul" that animated all.

Maybe it feels right because it is right.

The Pythagoreans, like most greek philosophers, had been avid participants in the political life of the city, which they often sought to reconstitute on rational grounds. Under the Roman Empire, this was impossible. All political questions were now settled. A single-and apparently eternal-legal and bureaucratic order regulated public affairs; instead of aspiring to change this structure, intellectuals increasingly embraced outright mysticism, aspiring to find new ways to transcend earthly systems entirely.

Spiritual logic or rationality as escapism, but can escapism also be a way of creating alternative imaginaries? Maybe there is a reason we are trying to escape. Spin faster.

Most of us accept as self-evident truth, that what sets humans apart from other animals is rationality

Poor lil spiders. B ut then dave goes on to say that humans have other faculties that are in fact unique, like imagination. I dont understand why so many humans argue that humans are so amazing.

The Great Chain of Being

I dont know if this hierarchy essentially strikes me as problematic in the same way as Aglaia has highlighted it with an exclamation mark. Although I do see issues with it, I've been influenced by Douglas Hofstaedters idea that there are "big souls" and "little souls". If I had to pull the lever in a trolley problem of a human vs a mosquito, yes I would save the human. It's more complicated than a linear spectrum but there is some order or system for sure.

Marsilio Ficino

Oh the fun stuff nice. But again yes there is a cause for some hierarchy or "value free ethics" but obviously these ideas lead to extremely dangerous beliefs and actions too which I'm not trying to say are right. I just wonder where is the grey area between swatting a mosquito and genocide. which both find themselves on this very broad scale.

The appeal to rationality in Descartes and his successors remains a fundamentally spiritual, even mystical, commitment, that the mathematical or math-like abstractions that are assumed to be the essence of thought, are also the ordering principles othat regulate nature.

the relation between reason, imagination and desire

Not explained here, but where? Can it be explained?