Arationality

[dms1972]

I recently came across this word group, or prefix - arational, and thought it was interesting that we don't hear it used a lot compared to the words irrational and rational.

Irrational vs Arational - What's the difference? | WikiDiff

 

[Amittai]

Irrational vs Arational - What's the difference? | WikiDiff

Here are some comments I feel like making about some of the examples given:

• * 1938 , Marten Ten Hoor, "The Philistines over Philosophy," The Journal of Philosophy , vol. 35, no. 20, p. 542:

If the end-product of a man's philosophizing about the nature of the cosmos is the ultimate, arational matter, this will affect his moral opinion of the cosmos.

I was reminded by Ten Hoor's phrase "moral opinion", of what I've been told about Heidegger. Heidegger proposed to hyperfocus on what he called "Being" (and he sometimes claimed to speak in the name of theology) and his product might be the sort of thing alluded to here: but he is in himself irrational because real being is not undifferentiated, hence the effect on morals (people like Heidegger like to play deceptively on arational versus irrational).

(Perhaps the term arational proper is somewhat neutral; what is arational belongs in its proper places; irrational means somehow not straight as to reason.)

• *1996 , (David Foster Wallace), Infinite Jest , Abacus 2013, p. 146:

• *:Regarded with the objectivity of hindsight, the illusion appears arational , almost fantastic: it would be like being able both to lie and to trust other people at the same time.

An operative word is "appear"; if we look deeply enough paradoxes are rational, at least because they are based on the complexities of the universe. I think the part after the colon is very interesting also (potential moral angle again).

• * 2001 , Ronald De Sousa, "Moral Emotions," Ethical Theory and Moral Practice , vol. 4, no. 2, p. 109:

On the first view, emotions are purely biological phenomena. . . . They are arational and amoral, like other natural bodily functions.

Without knowing De Sousa's argument, this is interesting because the phenomenology of Husserl and his authentic followers in the matter such as Walter Hopp, accepts this and bridges the gaps to reason: the antidote to today's knee-jerk world. Individually revaluing for ourselves helps train the habits of our habitus to not jump the tracks from one to the other, at whatever our own proper speed is. (Memes speak to habitus, that's why they are in button pushing.)

I heartily recommend Straight And Crooked Thinking by R T Thouless, 1953. Were some big shouts making false appeals to the arational (mystique etc) to foist the irrational upon our minds?

This sort of approach should IMO be acceptable to agnostics of good will as well as Christians.

There is more reason in some parts of differentiated being than in others, hence there is reason: it is irrational to claim arationality is absolute.

 

[Tolworth John]

Irrational is not rational, but is seeking to be rational.
Rational is not rational.