Rationality: our guide through the dark by The Editor ARTICLE:
Why is rationality important? Well, for one thing, it allows us
not only to understand principles (which are by their nature
often counter-intuitive) but to apply them to those decisions we
make in pursuit of the good life. That is not always easy,
because emotion’s pull in the other direction can be powerful.
But rationality and reason are the tools we can use to help
exercise the best possible judgement. Rationality: our guide
through the dark Imagine a continuum that runs from rational
choice through to emotional desire and you are imagining a
sliding scale that underpins the relationship between most
democratic principles and their opposites. Tolerance and hate;
excellence and mediocrity; transparency and secrecy; many
others. All of them embody, on the one extreme, an intellectual
tenet, often counter-intuitive, usually contested and always
with a well-established history; and, on the other extreme, an
emotional impulse, born of the moment, s