@Reconstructo,
[CENTER]
Reason and Rationality in Plato[/CENTER]
It's been twenty-four centuries since one of the greatest realists, Plato, asked himself what is that which we call "
reason" -
- , and his answer is essentially, still valid.
Reason is not simply knowing. In seeing a thing, I know it in some way or I know something of it; nevertheless, I don't
reason it, my knowing is not
rational. Between this mere knowing or taking notice of something -
- and theoretical knowledge or science
Plato finds an essential difference. Science is the knowledge of something that permits us to "give
reason" to that thing -
. This is the most authentic and primary meaning of the
ratio. When we find out the cause of a phenomenon, the proof or foundation of a proposition, we posses a
rational knowledge.
Reasoning is, thus, going from an object -thing or thought- to its principle. It is penetrating into the intimacy of something, discovering its most intimate being behind the manifest and apparent. In the
Theaetetus, where Plato examines this matter in detail, definition is recognized as the exemplary form of the
ratio. In effect, defining is decomposing a composite into its ultimate elements. These are the interior or belly of the former. When the mind analyzes something and arrives at its ultimate ingredients, it's as if it penetrated into its intimacy, as if you saw it from within. Understanding,
intus-
legere, consists exemplararily in this reduction of the complex and, as such, the confusing, to the simple and, as such, clear. Rigorously [speaking],
rationality signifies that movement of reduction and can be made a synonym of defining.
But Plato himself stumbles, at once, onto the inevitable antinomy which
reason incubates. If knowing
rationally is descending or penetrating from the complex to its elements or principles, it will consist of a merely formal operation of analysis, of anatomy. Upon the mind finding the ultimate elements, it cannot follow its resolving or analyzing task, it cannot decompose any more. From which it results that, faced with the elements, the mind ceases to be
rational. And one of two things [results]: either, upon not being able to continue being
rational before them, it does not know them, or it knows them by an
irrational means. In the first case, it will result that knowing an object would reduce it to unknowable elements, which is altogether paradoxical. In the second case,
reason would remain like a narrow intermediate zone between the
irrational knowledge of the compound and the no less
irrational of its elements. Before these, the analysis or
ratio would be determined and would only admit intuition. In
reason itself we would find, thus, an abyss of
irrationality.
[Translated by
longknowledge Revista del Occidente, October 1924. Included in his
Obras Completas, Vol. III, pp. 273-274.]
