Thread by @EveKeneinan

The rationalism of the Enlightenment was an overcorrection of the overcorrection of the Reformation, which opposed faith to reason. Reason can understand even things which are irrational — but the Enlightenment demanded (impossibly) that those things themselves BE rationalized.

The Left is always asking the question "What plan should be imposed to achieve social justice?"

That's the wrong question in TWO ways: you shouldn't be trying to *plan* society and such things shouldn't be *imposed*.

Humanity cannot be rationalized.

We are indeed the animal with the logos, but although essentially constituted by reason, we are not reasonable creatures for that.

"The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately wicked: who can know it?"

Our current crisis of morality is bound up with the Enlightenment's attempt to rationalize everything, in two stages:

1. The Enlightenment rejected the Classical teachings about morality in order to re-found them on a firmly rational basis

2. The above having failed utterly, we now descend into total moral skepticism, because we are *not* reasonable

The reasonable syllogism is

1 The Enlightenment's attempt to found morality on rationality alone was a failure
2 The project was doomed from the start, and we should return to what the Enlightenment rejected

But the one that won is:

1 The Enlightenment attempt to found morality on rationality alone was a failure
2 So we should give up on morality because even though the Enlightenment was totally wrong about what it could do, it was totally right in rejecting Classical ideas

That is, BECAUSE we cannot have what the Enlightenment demanded we have, we conclude that there just is nothing to be had.

But the Enlightenment's failure is not the failure of Classical thought. In fact, the Enlightenment begins by rejecting it.

"If I can't have a totally rational morality, I'll have none!"

I bet he gets none.