To the delight of bleary-eyed and muddled graduate students everywhere, Ernest Gellner has penned a creative and seemingly-comprehensive historical accounting of Rationalismâs lengthy battle with Culture, Empiricism and other foes. Cleverly incorporating some of the giants of logic, philosophy, sociology, linguistics and other disciplines, Gellner develops a compelling philosophical history of the development of a modern rationalist culture.

Gellner utilizes Descartes as a starting point for Rationalism, continuously referring back to his ideas concerning cognition, transcendancy and individualism throughout the book. From there, he proceeds to Hume and Kant and their reworkings of the Cartesian undertaking, from which Humeâs work in particular both points out the stumbling blocks of Cartesian thinking (the inability to escape culture) and foreshadows Gellnerâs conclusions regarding the development of a new rational culture (p. 19).

From Hume and Kant, the book introduces Durkheimâs opposition to empiricism (p. 30) and his extension of Kantâs explanation of the origins of conceptual compulsion, locating the instilling mechanism in ritual (p. 31; p. 36; p. 37). Gellner then ties this in to Weberâs notations regarding Protestant asceticism

- the abstention from ritual as a more powerful form of ritual (p. 48). Gellner then posits a Durkheimian/Weberian version of Cartesian theory, that the acceptance of cognition equals a submission to compulsions requiring orderly, symmetrical thoughts without ritual; something Protestantism was wholly suited for. But again, Descartesâcultural stumbling block is not surpassed, as both Durkheim and Weber find culture insurmountable on the grounds of compulsion and selectiveness, respectively (p. 51).

At this point, Gellner comes to Descartesâ rescue, insisting that exile from culture is real (p. 52), because Reason is universal, a faculty possessed by all, as codified by Rationalists as requiring all concepts to submit to the same rules of evidence, which are supposedly not controlled by culture (p. 53). This would seem convincing has Gellner been more effective at convincing the reader that the constitutive rules of Reason themselves were universal and not specific to Western culture.

By Chapter Three, Gellner feels confident enough in Reason to put it up against a number of foes. Itâs bout against tradition demonstrates that human-created objects either follow a plan and are typically designed for one purpose or slowly emerging and poly-functional, Descartes preferring the former. Without really assessing how this was a bout between Reason and Tradition at all, nevermind the real victor, Gellner moves Authority into Traditionâs corner. Here, he usefully points out the two available options utilized when encountering things not covered by existing scientific theory: subjection to rational inquiry (explicitly defined on p. 61) or the granting of special mystical status that exempts it from rational inquiry. Reason only meets a formidable opponent in Experience. "Pure" experience logically trumps rationalism, but before empiricists can dump champagne on their championâs head, Gellner asks if "pure" experience is even possible, or if experience can ever be free of the prejudices and biases embedded within it, vanquishing its authoritative claim to the judgeâs seat (p. 66).

In the Reason vs. Emotion battle, Gellner introduces morality, a side-issue in the book that is best left outside of its scope, at least for the time being. What suffers instead from lack of attention is the Reason vs. Piecemeal Trial and Error match, which goes into little detail at all.

Gellner crowns Reason champion at the chapterâs conclusion, claiming that it is universally-available because its criteria and the truths it attains are not tied to the person doing the reasoning (p. 71). Whether this is a fair appraisal of the fights Gellner puts Reason through to get to that point is, as in a judged event like boxing, still up for debate in this readerâs mind.

Gellner continues with his historical accounting, bringing Hegel into the picture, along with Marx and Engels shortly thereafter (p. 79). Here, he poses an interesting question: whether some other means besides those of production could possibly motivate history, like the means of coercion, for example. (p. 80). The Marxist response he posits is most convincing and impressive, particularly from an author so dismissive of Marxism. He further attempts to squeeze both Hegel and Marx into the Rationalist camp, though he notes that critics would place them both in the mystical side of the Reason-Authority match from Chapter Three (p. 81).

Hegelâs proposal that Reason increasingly permeates the world is repudiated by Schopenberger (pp. 84-87), whose irrational argument later begets those of Nietzsche (pp. 87-88), which in turn begets Freud and his psychoanalytic solution, which in effect provided the ritualization missing from Schopenbergerâs and Nietzcheâs conception of Will (p. 88). Freudâs particular form of ritual, submission of self to "qualified guidance" (p. 91) harkens back to the mysticism option available in the Reason vs. Authority bout.

Gellner begins Chapter Five by introducing the Pragmatist perspective on Knowledge, which he unconvincingly ties into the structure of American society (p. 99), instead of noting its more obvious Hegelian influences. The pragmatists are juxtaposed with "siege mentality rationalists" briefly, but not adequately, before Gellner continues with a list of irrationalist oppositions to Reason (pp. 102-103). In this context we are introduced to Popperâs thoughts on the nature of science (p. 106) and those of his critics (p. 109) concerning the interpretive difficulty of "facts."

From here, we move on to Kuhnâs paradigms (p. 112), which are incomparable (p. 114). This begs the question of how Gellner manages to compare paradigms anyway, which is the basis of his book. Is it a blind faith in the progress of new paradigms over the ones they replace? Or is Gellner finding "bridgeheads" of similar concepts and similarities as the basis for comparison? The reader is left to wonder, as Gellner moves on to introduce linguistic theory in his historical account of modern rational society. Wittgensteinâs backtracking from Gesselschaft to Gemeinschaft empowers custom and example (p. 123), while Chomsky introduces a unversalistic argument about the pre-wired human mind (pp. 124-125).

Gellner begins to formally present his theory of the development of a new and distinctive modern rationalist culture in Chapter 7. However, the ideas he presents are only loosely-tied to the concepts and debates he presents in the previous six chapters. And the only evidence he provides to support his vision is the pragmatic evidence of technological advance, which he goes so far as to say is the only evidence he could be required to produce. "Pragmatic considerations underwrite Reason in cognition and production." (p. 155). For Gellner, pragmatism acts as the only evidentiary standard to judge rationalityâs performance.

Whether or not this is an agreed-upon point, some questions and loose ends remain. Gellner claims that the "privileges of affluence" in modern society shield men from exploitation (p. 142), as evidenced by working-class resistance to accepting positions of indentured servitude for the upper classes. While Gellner is right that butlers and maids are decreasing in numbers, he ignores the exponential growth of the service sector. The working class are not resisting servile status; the location of their subjection to this status has been removed from the homes of the wealthy to the service sector.

Gellner is less convincing in his explanations of the performance of capitalist and socialist economic performance in the modern world (pp. 139-143), largely because his explanations have little to do with the rest of the book and little evidence is presented to support his views. This section is most jarring and inconsistent with the rest of the book, and perhaps should have been left on its own, elsewhere.

In the end, Gellner posits an exciting and compelling account of the birth of a new culture based on the tenets of rationalism, in which empiricism achieved the trascendance of rationalism, while rationalism achieved the sensitivity of empiricism (p. 166). He also credits Weber for providing the best explanation for this change, "perhaps the biggest event in human history"(p. 178), "incomparably superior to the complacency of the Hegelo-Marxist tradition" which, to Gellnerâs mind, was "simply a fantasy." (p. 182). Strong words and strong convictions to hold. While I may not be absolutely convinced of it, Gellner does make a compelling and interesting argument in Reason and Culture.