Reason, Rationality and Rationalization in Modern and Contemporary Eras

Publisher: FedOA - Federico II University Press 

Series: School of Human and Social Sciences. Working Papers

Pages: 552

Language: Italian

NBN: http://nbn.depositolegale.it/urn:nbn:it:unina-26502

Abstract: “Reason” and “rationality” are, today, problematic notions: considered for a long time, in the history of Western thought, as distinctive traits of man and of the Euro-American civilization, from a certain point onwards they have been called into question and ripped apart by the crisis and the malaise of the latter. In the light of the most recent controversies and reflections on the subject developed over the first half of the 20^th century, this book aims to riegnite the debate on “ratio” with the intention of highlighting – through a series of “case studies” – the fine texture of the multiple meanings and uses of the notion of reason, but also to question the different “eras” of reason by attempting to reconstruct its “history”. The essays included in this volume, therefore, contextualise and analyse the meanings and ambiguities of the term “ratio” and its derivatives within the framework of the many discussions that have marked its history from the earliest modernity, when the concept assumed new configurations with respect to the uses attested in Ancient and Medieval thought, to the contemporary debate.