This book provides an overview of some of the most important critics of Enlightenment rationalism. The subjects of the volume (including, among others, Pascal, Vico, Schmitt, Weber, Anscombe, Scruton, and Tolkien) do not share a philosophical tradition as much as a skeptical disposition toward the notion, common among modern thinkers, that there is only one standard of rationality or reasonableness, and that that one standard is or ought to be taken from the presuppositions, methods, and logic of the natural sciences.
The essays on each thinker are intended not merely to offer a commentary on that thinker, but also to place the person in the context of this larger stream of anti-rationalist thought.
1. Introduction.- 2. Conservatism and Social Criticism: Pascal on Faith,
Reason, and Politics.- 3. Giambattista Vico and Democratic Pluralism: Lessons
for Deliberative Democracy.- 4. A Modest Spinozist: George Eliot and the
Limits of Rationalism.- 5. Projections Upon the Void: Irving Babbitts
Critique of Naturalism.- 6. Carl Schmitt's Exceptional Critique of
Rationalism.- 7. Moral Man in a Morally Irrational World: Max Weber and the
Limits of Reason.- 8. The Moral Personality of Mikhail Bulgakov.- 9. Nec Spe
Nec Metu: Philosophic Catharsis in Karl Löwiths Meaning in History.-
10. Metaphor, Meaning, and Mind: Knowledge and Imagination in Owen Barfield.-
11. Rings and Rationalism: Tolkiens Tales Against Domination.- 12. Shedding
the Shackles of Rationalism.- 13. Beautiful Minds: Gregory Bateson on
Ecology, Insanity, and Wisdom.- 14. Robert Nisbet: Art, History, and the
Anti-Rationalism of Sociological Methodology.- 15. Elizabeth Anscombe on
Rationalism.- 16. A.C. Graham on Rationalism, Irrationalism, and
Anti-Rationalism (Aware Spontaneity).- 17. Intention, Intellect, and
Imagination: Stuart Hampshires Pluralism.- 18. Rationality and Tradition in
Roger Scrutons Thought.- 19. A Counter-Enlightenment of the Present: A
Defense of John Grays' Modus Vivendi Liberalism.
Gene Callahan teaches at New York University. He is the author of Economics for Real People (2002), Oakeshott on Rome and America (2012), and co-editor of Tradition v. Rationalism (2018).
Kenneth B. McIntyre is Professor of Political Science at Sam Houston State University. He is the author of The Limits of Political Theory: Michael Oakeshott on Civil Association (2004), Herbert Butterfield: History, Providence, and Skeptical Politics (2012), and Nomocratic Pluralism: Plural Values, Negative Liberty, and the Rule of Law (2021), and co-editor of Critics of Enlightenment Rationalism (2021).
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