Romanticism And Misuses Of Reason

Somebody on the Internet has tried to get me to deconstruct the transition from rationalism to romanticism. I see the situation as being a confusion between a value and the misuses of the value.

Reason, as such, is not a bad thing at all. It becomes bad when it is used for emotional cruelty and contempt for such things as romantic love and spiritual experience. Misuses of a value discredit the value itself. So if reason is used for such things, it is only a matter of time before someone will say – in confusion or in deception – that reason is a bad thing in itself.

We see the same thing with just about anything. Feminists took the misuses of beauty by ignorant teenagers and unscrupulous plastic surgeons and decided that beauty is a bad thing. Liberals took the misuses by Hitler and others of national pride to impugn national pride. Many people see misuses of money and think that money as such is a bad thing. All of these people are wrong.

The Christians have still not been able to live down the Dark Ages and the Inquisition. The wrongful things done in the name of Christ has tarnished for many the name of Christ. So that when a sensitive young person is seeing abuses of reason, he may be vulnerable to the error of thinking that reason is bad as such.

Once again, what we see here is confusion between a value and the misuses of the value. If you use reason to be vicious toward other people, then many people may start to think that reason is bad as such. It is not. It is a tool – a very valuable tool. We owe most of what we have in the civilization to reason. Militating against reason is completely wrong. However correcting abuses done in the name of reason is valid.

So if someone is using reason to keep making a case that you are an inferior form of life, that is not the fault of reason. That is the fault of the person misusing reason for such a thing. And the correct solution is not to militate against reason, but to correct its misuses and thus preserve its value and credibility.