rationality
RATIONALITY
The concept of rationality represents the foundation of much of Western
epistemology that can be traced to ancient Greek philosophers, and the
claim that humans are innately rational. Rationality is grounded in rea-
son, a mental power used to form judgments, make inferences, reach
conclusions, and construct arguments. If an individual possesses a
belief and needs to defend it, that individual can resort to reason to sup-
port, justify, or explain their position. To be declared lacking in reason
by others means that an individual is stupid, irrational or insane.
Western theologians use reason to support their positions on the doc-
trine of God, faith, and revelation during the Middle Ages by arguing
in part that theology is rational and that theological issues do not con-
tradict reason.
In the West, rationality arguably reaches its pinnacle of influence dur-
ing the Enlightenment, which is called the “Age of Reason,” and which
holds the promise of freedom from myth, superstition, and a belief in
mysterious powers by using critical reasoning. Immanuel Kant attempts
to use reason to critique itself, in the sense of determining its own limits,
and to develop rational rules by which to adhere to these restrictions.
Kant not only distinguishes reason (Vernunft) from understanding
(Verstand) and sensibility (Sinnlichkeit), he distinguishes theoretical –
which determines or constitutes the object given in intuition and applies
categories to the data of sense intuition – from practical reason, in which
reason functions as the source of its objects in order to determine its
moral choices in accordance with a law that originates from itself. By
relying solely on concepts gained by such knowledge based on princi-
ples, a person can apprehend the particular contained in the universal
and the former can then be deduced from the latter, which indicates that
knowledge gained through reason is very different from knowledge
obtained by principles of understanding. But by accepting the concepts
and judgments of the understanding, reason attempts to unify these mul-
tiple phenomena according to a higher principle. Therefore, reason seeks
that which is unconditioned, something not given in sense experience,
and unity. Because knowledge is limited to the sphere of experience,
knowledge of things-in-themselves is not possible. The possibility of
synthetic a priori knowledge, truths that can be known independently
of experience, is only transcendentally possible by arguing from the
categories of rationality, innate ideas, or pure concepts of understanding.
Kant’s notion of the law of reason requires us to seek unity.
The influence of Enlightenment rationality shapes the scholarly
approach to the study of religion beginning with the nineteenth-century