Reason

===The critique of reason===

[[Johann Georg Hamann|Hamann]], [[Johann Gottfried Herder|Herder]], [[Immanuel Kant|Kant]], [[Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel|Hegel]], [[Søren Kierkegaard|Kierkegaard]], [[Friedrich Nietzsche|Nietzsche]], [[Martin Heidegger|Heidegger]], [[Michel Foucault|Foucault]], [[Richard Rorty|Rorty]], and many other philosophers have contributed to a debate about what reason means, or ought to mean. Some, like Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Rorty, are skeptical about subject-centred, universal, or instrumental reason, and even skeptical toward reason as a whole. Others, including Hegel, believe that it has obscured the importance of [[intersubjectivity]], or "spirit" in human life, and they attempt to reconstruct a model of what reason should be.

Some thinkers, e.g. Foucault, believe there are other ''forms'' of reason, neglected but essential to modern life, and to our understanding of what it means to live a life according to reason.<ref name="Jürgen Habermas 1990"/> Others suggest that there is not just one reason or rationality, but multiple possible systems of reason or rationality which may conflict (in which case there is no super-rational system one can appeal to in order to resolve the conflict).<ref>{{multiref2|1={{cite book|first=Robert|last=Nozick|author-link=Robert Nozick|title=The Nature of Rationality|url=https://archive.org/details/natureofrational0000nozi_l8f5|url-access=registration|year=1993}}{{page needed|date=September 2023}}
|2={{cite book|first=Alasdair|last=MacIntyre|author-link=Alasdair MacIntyre|title=Whose Justice? Which Rationality?|url=https://archive.org/details/whosejusticewhic0000maci|url-access=registration|year=1988}}
}}</ref>

In the last several decades, a number of proposals have been made to "re-orient" this critique of reason, or to recognize the "other voices" or "new departments" of reason:

For example, in opposition to subject-centred reason, Habermas has proposed a model of [[communicative rationality|communicative reason]] that sees it as an essentially cooperative activity, based on the fact of linguistic [[intersubjectivity]].<ref>{{cite book|first=Jürgen|last=Habermas|title=The Theory of Communicative Action: Reason and the Rationalization of Society|translator-first=Thomas|translator-last=McCarthy|location=Boston|publisher=Beacon Press|year=1984}}</ref>

[[Nikolas Kompridis]] proposed a widely encompassing view of reason as "that ensemble of practices that contributes to the opening and preserving of openness" in human affairs, and a focus on reason's possibilities for social change.<ref>{{multiref2
|1={{cite book|first=Nikolas|last=Kompridis|title=Critique and Disclosure: Critical Theory between Past and Future|location=Cambridge, Mass.|publisher=MIT Press|year=2006}}
|2={{cite journal|first=Nikolas|last=Kompridis|doi=10.1080/096725500750039282|title=So We Need Something Else for Reason to Mean|journal=International Journal of Philosophical Studies|date=2000 |volume=8|number=3|pages=271–295|s2cid=171038942 }}
}}</ref>

The philosopher [[Charles Taylor (philosopher)|Charles Taylor]], influenced by the 20th century German philosopher [[Martin Heidegger]], proposed that reason ought to include the faculty of [[world disclosure|disclosure]], which is tied to the way we make sense of things in everyday life, as a new "department" of reason.<ref>{{cite book|first=Charles|last=Taylor|title=Philosophical Arguments|publisher=Harvard University Press|year=1997|pages=12, 15|isbn=978-0674664777}}</ref>

In the essay "What is Enlightenment?", Michel Foucault proposed a critique based on Kant's distinction between "private" and "public" uses of reason:<ref>{{cite book|first=Michel|last=Foucault|author-link=Michel Foucault|chapter=What is Enlightenment?|title=The Essential Foucault|location=New York|publisher=The New Press|year=2003|pages=43–57}}</ref>
; Private reason : the reason that is used when an individual is "a cog in a machine" or when one "has a role to play in society and jobs to do: to be a soldier, to have taxes to pay, to be in charge of a parish, to be a civil servant"
; Public reason : the reason used "when one is reasoning as a reasonable being (and not as a cog in a machine), when one is reasoning as a member of reasonable humanity"; in these circumstances, "the use of reason must be free and public"