Reason

===Reason versus emotion or passion===
{{See also|Emotion|Passion (emotion)}}
After Plato and Aristotle, [[western literature]] often treated reason as being the faculty that trained the passions and appetites.{{citation needed|date=August 2016}} [[Stoic philosophy]], by contrast, claimed most emotions were merely false judgements.<ref name=":0">{{Cite book|last=Sharples|first=R. W.|title=The Oxford companion to philosophy|date=2005|publisher=Oxford University Press|others=Ted Honderich|isbn=978-0191532658|edition=2nd|location=Oxford|page=896|oclc=62563098|quote=Moral virtue is the only good an wickedness the only evil... Emotions are interpreted in intellectual terms; those such as distress, pity (which is a species of distress), and fear which reflect false judgements about what is evil, are to be avoided (as also are those which reflect false judgement about what is good, such as love of honours or riches)... They did however allow the wise man such 'good feelings' as 'watchfulness' or kindness the difference being that these are based on sound (Stoic) reasoning concerning what matters and what does not.}}</ref><ref name=":1">{{Cite book|last=Rufus|first=Musonius|title=Concise Routledge encyclopedia of philosophy|date=2000|publisher=Routledge|others=Routledge|isbn=0203169948|location=London|page=863|oclc=49569365|quote=Vice is founded on 'passions': these are at root false value judgements, in which we lose rational control by overvaluing things which are in fact indifferent. Virtue, a set of sciences governing moral choice, is the one thing of intrinsic worth and therefore genuinely 'good'.}}</ref> According to the Stoics the only good is virtue, and the only evil is vice, therefore emotions that judged things other than vice to be bad (such as fear or distress), or things other than virtue to be good (such as greed) were simply false judgements and should be discarded (though positive emotions based on true judgements, such as kindness, were acceptable).<ref name=":0" /><ref name=":1" /><ref>{{Citation|last=Baltzly|first=Dirk|title=Stoicism|date=2018|url=https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2019/entries/stoicism/|encyclopedia=The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy|editor-last=Zalta|editor-first=Edward N.|edition=Spring 2019|publisher=Metaphysics Research Lab, Stanford University|access-date=2021-03-27}}</ref> After the critiques of reason in the early Enlightenment the appetites were rarely discussed or were conflated with the passions.{{citation needed|date=August 2016}} Some Enlightenment camps took after the Stoics to say reason should oppose passion rather than order it, while others like the Romantics believed that passion displaces reason, as in the maxim "follow your heart".{{citation needed|date=August 2016}}

Reason has been seen as cold, an "enemy of mystery and ambiguity",<ref name="Radford and Frazier (2017)">{{cite journal|author-link1=Benjamin Radford|last1=Radford|first1=Benjamin|author-link2=Kendrick Frazier|last2=Frazier|first2=Kendrick|title=The Edge of Reason: A Rational Skeptic in an Irrational World |journal=Skeptical Inquirer |date=January 2017 |volume=41 |issue=1 |page=60}}</ref> a slave, or judge, of the passions, notably in the work of [[David Hume]], and more recently of [[Freud]].{{citation needed|date=August 2016}}

Reasoning that claims the object of a desire is demanded by logic alone is called ''[[Rationalization (making excuses)|rationalization]]''.{{citation needed|date=August 2016}}

[[Rousseau]] first proposed, in his second ''[[Discourse on Inequality|Discourse]]'', that reason and political life is not natural and is possibly harmful to mankind.<ref>{{Citation|last=Velkley|first=Richard|chapter=Speech. Imagination, Origins: Rousseau and the Political Animal|title=Being after Rousseau: Philosophy and Culture in Question|year=2002|publisher=University of Chicago Press}}</ref> He asked what really can be said about what is natural to mankind. What, other than reason and civil society, "best suits his constitution"? Rousseau saw "two principles prior to reason" in human nature. First we hold an intense interest in our own well-being. Secondly we object to the suffering or death of any sentient being, especially one like ourselves.<ref>{{Citation|last=Rousseau|first=Jean-Jacques|chapter=Preface|title=Discourse on the Origin and Foundations of Inequality Among Men or Second Discourse|publisher=Cambridge University Press|editor=Gourevitch|year=1997|orig-year=1755}}</ref> These two passions lead us to desire more than we could achieve. We become dependent upon each other, and on relationships of authority and obedience. This effectively puts the human race into slavery. Rousseau says that he almost dares to assert that nature does not destine men to be healthy. According to [[Richard Velkley]], "Rousseau outlines certain programs of rational self-correction, most notably the political legislation of the ''[[The Social Contract|Contrat Social]]'' and the moral education in ''[[Emile: or, On Education|Émile]]''. All the same, Rousseau understands such corrections to be only ameliorations of an essentially unsatisfactory condition, that of socially and intellectually corrupted humanity."{{cite quote|date=September 2023}}

This quandary presented by Rousseau led to [[Immanuel Kant|Kant]]'s new way of justifying reason as freedom to create good and evil. These therefore are not to be blamed on nature or God. In various ways, [[German Idealism]] after Kant, and major later figures such [[Nietzsche]], [[Bergson]], [[Husserl]], [[Max Scheler|Scheler]], and [[Heidegger]], remain preoccupied with problems coming from the metaphysical demands or urges of reason.<ref>{{Citation|last=Velkley|first=Richard|chapter=Freedom, Teleology, and Justification of Reason|title=Being after Rousseau: Philosophy and Culture in Question|year=2002|publisher=University of Chicago Press}}</ref> Rousseau and these later writers also exerted a large influence on art and politics. Many writers (such as [[Nikos Kazantzakis]]) extol passion and disparage reason. In politics modern [[nationalism]] comes from Rousseau's argument that rationalist [[cosmopolitanism]] brings man ever further from his natural state.<ref>{{Citation|chapter=Rousseau and the Origins of Nationalism|last=Plattner|first=Marc|year=1997|publisher=University of Chicago Press|title=The Legacy of Rousseau}}</ref>

In ''[[Descartes' Error]]'', [[Antonio Damasio]] presents the "[[Somatic marker hypothesis|Somatic Marker Hypothesis]]" which states that emotions guide behavior and decision-making. Damasio argues that these somatic markers (known collectively as "gut feelings") are "intuitive signals" that direct our decision making processes in a certain way that cannot be solved with rationality alone. Damasio further argues that rationality requires emotional input in order to function.