1

The reflections set forth in this paper are born of the following question: how did it come about that a society that had staked its future on the progress of reason had ended up in barbarism and in the regress of humanity? Is the progress in technological achievement, both theoretical and practical, necessarily bound up with the decrease of individual and collective rationality? The nexus between progress of technological reason and regress of social rationality may perhaps be determined by an inquiry into the very concept of reason that is ruling our scientific procedures. It seems that even as the technological progress expands the horizon of human potentialities and activities, man's autonomy as an individual, his ability to resist the apparatus of mass-manipulation, is on the retreat.

Philosophy or rational discourse has fallen into disrepute. Philosophy claims the universality of reason. But reason cannot be truly universal as long as violence overtly or covertly rules the relation between man and man. The universality of reason cannot be achieved as long as there is no accord established among the interests of all individuals. History, however, unfolds before us a human society that is split into groups with conflicting interests. The contradiction between the claim of philosophy to the universality of reason and the actual split of society into antagonistic groups is reflected also in the discourse of men. This contradiction has rightly brought a philosophical pursuit that does not take note of the actual situation into disrepute. But we do not invite chaos if we approach a "systematic" problem of philosophy like an inquiry into the concept of reason by analysing reason in its historical context? Are we not lost to the opinions of mortals if we consider the social implications of the concept of reason? Such questions carry weight and cannot be dismissed easily. What is the common premise

2

of these objections? These arguments presuppose that the concepts of mortals are
"immortal" - that they are valid without relation to man. In these arguments the
nexus between philosophy and history is severed. Philosophy comes to analyze the
formal constitutive elements of science, while history deals only with contingent
configurations of human opinions. An historical analysis of reason, therefore,
would endanger the purity of the scientific pursuit.

Philosophy long since developed its own method more arithmetic. The analytical
character of mathematics saves the mathematical procedure from all dangers lurking
in human experience. Mathematical theory abstracts from questions concerning the
possible reality of its objects and dispenses with the consideration of the meaning
of this abstraction. Philosophical analysis in imitating mathematical procedure
surely gains the security of pure operations. But it gains this security only by
eclipsing the foundations on which all operations are built - man. If philosophical
inquiry, however, is a pursuit that studies the meaning of human concepts, then,
it seems to me, it cannot abstract from man as the root of all meaning. Thus it would
seem that the price for a pure field of operation is ignorance about the genesis of
judgment. It may be that in mathematics such a procedure has its advantages. It
becomes, however, grotesque in the formal sciences in the moment when such formal
structures are established as a realm in itself, as a reality in itself. An operation
which is established in a purely self-subistent realm without recourse to its
genesis in human consciousness only testifies to the alienation of man from the
products of his own making, from the products of his own reasoning. The separate
realms begin to act as fetishes that control their own maker. There is no basic
difference between fetishes that are dressed up as metaphysical substantial entities
or that are dressed up as formal logical entities.

The "purity" of philosophical inquiry, of the logical and epistemological

3

[N]

pursuit is usually argued in view of the fallacy of psychologism. The validity
of a logical statement or of an epistemological analysis cannot be made dependent
on the state of an individual. It must, so the argument runs, be valid in a domain
by itself, irrespective of man. But such a conclusion is warranted only because
the subject of logical validity is tested on an abstract and isolated individual
removed from the concrete socio-historical context. The reduction of man to an
isolated individual on the one hand and the positing of universal rules of validity
into an abstract realm vitiates the dialectic between individual certainty and
transindividual validity. No individual starts as a tabula rasa - he is integrated
into a social system of language and signs.

The polemic against a genetic interpretation of rationality succeeds so easily,
since it limits the idea of genesis to the psychological nexus which, indeed, is
unable to face the question of universal validity. But reason is a social category:
it presupposes that men are speaking. The logical rules are incarnated in language.
Language, however, mediates between the isolated individual and the community; between
man and society.

If philosophical analysis operates with the human consciousness only in terms
of an individual monad, it is driven to hypostasise a realm of validity since indeed
the validity of universal rules cannot be limited to an individual monad. By
hypostasising a realm of validity in the no-where, philosophy loses insight into
the source of all meaning, into man in his historical existence.

Logical operations are, indeed, valid for all possible judgments, but this rule
does not yet give a green light to hypostasise a realm of validity in itself. For
both, the logical operations and all possible judgments are mediated by man's historic
existence. Even the most abstract sentence is still a verdict, a spoken word. Even

4

[Y]

formal logic is "functional" and not an *a priori* ideal realm. It is the radical
division between genesis and validity of judgment that drives philosophy to
hypostasise a *priori*-realms. We should indeed guard against confounding the
justification of a judgment with its genesis. But does it follow from this that
in the explication of the meaning of validity we should abstract from all genetic
socio-historic elements? All philosophy that isolates the subjective pole of
reference, be it in a logical or in an existential manner, leads into the antimonies
of psychologism, but all philosophy that abstracts completely from all subjective
elements in the analysis of reason and postulates a separate realm of validity
seems no less to be entangled in difficulties. (1)

The metamorphosis of the concept of reason contains the history of the stages
of Western development. The concept of reason from the very beginning included
an element of criticism. Thus gradual stages of enlightenment produced, as Max
Weber has pointed out, a progressive disenchantment of the universe. Man employed
reason to dispel nebulae, to free himself from fear and anxiety so that he grew
gradually out of his state of dependence.

The function of modern reason is well summarized in Francis Bacon's remark
that 'knowledge and human progress are synonymous'. (2) This concept of reason can
be actualized only through the domination of nature. Therefore Bacon adds immediately,
'for nature is only subdued by submission. Man dominates nature by the instrument
of reason'. Kant in his preface to the second edition of his *Critique of Pure Reason*
( a work that carries in the second edition a motto from Francis Bacon ) has
elaborated more fully the premise of the modern scientific procedure:

"When Galilei let balls of a particular weight which he had determined
himself, roll down an inclined plane, or Torricelli made the air carry a
weight, which he had previously determined to be equal to that of a definite