Many, rightly, understand the discipline of Philosophy as primarily defined by its commitment to Reason. But, what is “Reason”? Is it universal? Is it some kind of fundamental human capacity that transcends class, culture, politics, religion, or any other iteration of human difference? What do we make of the fact that, since the 17th C., inheritors of “European Enlightenment” thinkers unilaterally dictated the scope and limits of Reason for a broad swath of the world’s inhabitants? 

Because, let’s be honest, the legacy of “European Enlightenment thinkers” is a complex and often ugly one.

In this episode, the HBS hosts try, at once, to both defend the privileged place that Reason has been afforded in Western Philosophy and to critique the capitalist / imperialist / colonialist logics to which that legacy has been put to use. 

We reference the following thinkers, ideas, texts, events, et al:

• The murder of Emmit Till
• Jackie Mansky, “An Early Run-in With Censors Led Rod Serling to ‘The Twilight Zone'” (2019)
• Sweden’s “COVID gamble”
• Chris Guest, “The Top 25 Lawnmower Beers” (Beer Connoisseur, 2016)
• Elie Mystal, Allow Me To Retort: A Black Guy’s Guide to the Constitution (2022)
• Rick Moody, Hotels of North America (2016)
• Andrew Blauner (Ed.), The Peanuts Papers: Writers and Cartoonists on Charlie Brown, Snoopy & the Gang (2019)
• Victor Flanagan, O.P., “On Faith and Reason in St. Thomas Aquinas” 
• the principle of sufficient reason (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy) 
• Georg W.F. Hegel, The Phenomenology of Spirit
• Theodor Adorno, The Stars Down to Earth 
• our episode on “Superstition” (Hotel Bar Sessions, Season 4, Episode 43)
• Robert A. Greene, “Thomas Hobbes and the Term ‘Right Reason’: Participation to Calculation” (History of European Ideas, 2019)
• Blaise Pascal, “Heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing”
• Rene Descartes, The Passions of the Soul 
• Immanuel Kant, The Critique of Pure Reason
• Immanuel Kant, The Critique of Practical Reason
• Immanuel Kant, The Critique of Judgment 
• Kim Stanley Robinson, The Years of Rice and Salt (2002)
• Collegium Phenomenologicum
• philosopher David Wood
• Southern Poverty Law Center’s report on white supremacist Richard Spencer
• Aisling McCrea, “The Magical Thinking of Guys Who Love Logic” (The Outline, 2019)
• Kevin Hartnett, “New Proof Settles How to Approach Numbers Like Pi” (Quantum Magazine, 2019)
• Richard A. Lee, The Force of Reason and the Logic of Force (2004)

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