Universalist Unitarian Church Santa Paula, California

The Use of Reason and Its Limits
by Reverend John Alexie Crane

If I had not had the chance to develop intellectually, my existence, I'm sure, would have been painful and impoverished. I have thoroughly enjoyed using my mind, have found excitement and enthusiasm in pursuing an understanding of one or another aspect of life and the world. I enjoy exploring the nature of things mentally, find pleasure and meaning in the task. I like very much the feeling that comes with having an insight finally emerge, after a long period of time in which I have struggled for understanding. It’s a high, an epiphany.

I can see, on looking back over the history of civilization, that reason has played a role of extraordinary importance in the life of our species, that it helped us to find our way out of the primordial darkness, to escape the shadowy patterns of early thought.

And yet, I find myself wondering about reason and rationality from time to time, find myself sensing limits to its utility, hazards in an exclusive dependence on it for human guidance. Humane guidance. I find myself sensing in some way that the mind not only solves problems, but also creates them. I have known many individuals with enormous intellectual gifts (knowledgeable, logical, informed, conscious) who at the same time appeared to be only minimally developed in other areas of their being, who, though intellectually gifted, appeared to be no better than anyone else at making creative decisions in their personal lives.

This is not a new awareness for me. Even though I found college exciting and enlarging, I found myself experiencing an uneasiness about a kind of life that was centered almost wholly in intellectual concerns. I felt a need for a fuller life of some kind, and turned away from it. I didn't do this rationally: rather it was an almost instinctive, an intuitive drawing back. Something indefinable in me, some faculty, feeling or fancy led me to hold back from striving for a career in the academic world.

Then, when I was almost finished with my fifth year in college, I discovered the Unitarian ministry as a career possibility, and though I had for many years, until that moment, regarded organized religion as a strange and incomprehensible realm, I found myself, within a few weeks, highly enthusiastic and excited by the prospect of a career that had been the farthest thing from my mind until I stumbled on it by chance.

I quickly decided to aim for a career in the ministry. I did this in a short space of time and with high enthusiasm. I can't claim that it was a careful, deliberate, rational decision. It was quick, intuitive, based more on sudden enthusiasm than on deliberate reasoning. Yet, that decision has shaped a great deal of my life.

Now, in hindsight, it looks to me like I did the right thing when I impulsively chose the ministry years ago. To be sure, there have been many days, many weeks even, when it appeared to me to have been a terrible error, when I found myself yearning for relief from the overpowering demands of the work; but I can see now, can see almost all of the time, that it was a sound, constructive, self-enlarging decision.

I suppose I must have somehow sensed that the ministry would encourage me to continue to grow, to increase steadily my understanding of the nature of things, but that it would at the same time keep me closer to the problems of everyday life, to people, to the heart as well as the head. In any case, I found myself warmly committed to the prospect of spending my life in the ministry.

And I had, when I made the decision, little awareness of what the ministry was actually like, what ministers did every day, week after week, what it would actually feel like to be in the ministry, in a church, in fall, winter, and spring: in a pulpit, in a committee meeting, at coffee hour, with people in crisis.

I had, in a way, stumbled into the ministry through an instinctive drawing back from several other career possibilities. In college, I found myself attracted by the lure of philosophy, by this ambitious exercise of the intellect aimed at understanding of the world. I studied philosophy, found a lot of it exciting; and yet, found myself drawing back from the great, systematic, exquisitely rational philosophers. I didn't know why I drew back; but I did. Doing that kind of work, developing that kind of dry, abstract understanding, did not excite my interest. I could see that the work was important,that it had considerable consequences for civilization. I could see that the individuals doing the work were highly developed intellectually; but I did not myself have much interest in developing wholly in that direction.

It was much the same in theological school. I could not work up much enthusiasm for the great, rational, systematic theologians. I found fragments of insight in them that were exciting; but the effort to codify, systematize, lay out with exquisite rational precision a knowledge of God, just didn't interest me. Somehow it was enough for me to be aware, as the philosopher Spinoza put it, that "the more we understand individual things, the more we understand God." I found I had little interest in the extensive, meticulous, systematic description of God.

I don't fully understand this characteristic of myself. There is just something in me, something not clearly definable, that has led me to make decisions that were to have a lasting impact on my life. It's not clear, deliberate and rational; but it's an intimate and essential part of me. It goes far to define the shape of my life. Yet, I only get glimpses of it from time to time.

Pascal's observation back in the seventeenth century resonates for me today. This mathematician and philosopher, this exquisitely rational man, asserted that "we know truth, not only by reason, but also by the heart.” Or putting it another way, he said "the heart has its reasons which reason does not understand.”

That is not very clear, I know. It's suggestive rather than rationally definitive. And yet, it seems to me that this is how it is with us: that the heart indeed has "reasons which reason does not understand." We find our way forward "not only by reason, but also by the heart."

Though,to be sure, it's hard to say exactly what the word "heart" means in that context. It seems to me to say something that is ever so real and significant in our lives, but that is not definable with any high degree of precision.

Reason is of inestimable value to us. We can't do without it. We ignore it at our peril; and yet ... There are other,less tangible, much less precise elements in our existence that also can only be ignored at great cost. Our lives are given form, not only by reason, but by other elements in us that we find it impossible to talk about with any precision, elements which may very be described roughly as the “heart.”

II.
It is, I think, interesting (and perhaps embarrassing) to note that the words "rational" and "reason," while we think of them as being clear enough in their implications, prove to be very difficult to define. So it is with many significant elements in human existence.

Rational is an adjective (the dictionary states), and it means "having or exercising the ability to reason ... of sound mind ... based upon reason, logical." Rational means exercising the ability to reason. What is reason, then? Reason "is the capacity for rational thought ...” That, of course, is circular. What about the word "logical?" Does its definition shed any light on the matter? Logical means "showing consistency of reasoning." Logical reasoning is "valid reasoning."

There is a little light, I think, in the definitions of the words "rationalize" and "rationalism." There are, for example, two opposite strands to the meaning of the term rationalize: first, it means "to make conformable to reason ... “ But, second, it also means "to devise self-satisfying but incorrect reasons for (one's behavior).” It means both of those things; and, of course, it is often very hard to tell when oneself or others are rationalizing in the first sense or the second.

Then there is rationalism. This is "the theory that the exercise of reason provides the only valid basis for action or belief." That is a very widely held theory in our part of the world: indeed I think it is safe to say that it is a dominant theory. "The exercise of reason provides the only valid basis for action or belief.”

It appears to me that most folks in the US (including many UUs) think this is true. We think that we govern ourselves by reason; if asked, we say that we do. It is almost unthinkable to say in public that we do not govern ourselves by reason. Yet, it appears to me that, in this area as in many others, there is a disparity between what we think and say, on one hand, and what we actually do on the other.

This is another way of saying that while we espouse the theory that "reason provides the only valid basis for action or belief,” in practice we are often obliged by the nature of things to govern our actions, decisions, and beliefs by other and far more subtle faculties.

In any case, I wanted to take a little time to show that, while it is true the word "heart" is metaphorical and muddy in the context n which Pascal used it (in the contrast between heart and head), the meaning of the words reason and rational also are not exquisitely clear.

III.
Why am I putting reason down, for heaven's sake? Much more frequently here, as is typical of Universalists andUnitarians, I celebrate reason and consciousness and intellect. What am I doing? Or undoing?

I know very well that reason is vitally important to us, both individually and as a species. I know that the ability to use conscious reasoning is one of the most significant characteristics of human beings. What I am responding to now is our tendency to idealize, to idolize, to romanticize, to over-inflate the role of reason in human decision-making.

It seems to me essential that we know ourselves, that we accept ourselves as we are, that we avoid pretending to be what we are not. There is a great deal of security and peace and serenity to be found in living in the world as it actually is, rather than only in the wcrld as we wish it to be.

In addition, we cannot help but be disenchanted, disillusioned when we come face to face with the inescapable fact that people (including ourselves) are not invariably governed by reason. If we insist that people ought always to be rational, reasonable, logical, then we will frequently be disappointed, will be irritated, angry, impatient, even outraged by their behavior. We will, that is, find it hard to love our neighbors. Our families. Ourselves. We are likely often to be disappointed in ourselves, to feel inadequate, inept, worthless, muddle-headed when we find ourselves facing a complex decision, trying dutifully to reason our way through it with precision. We will be shocked and dismayed by our inability to determine our actions with scrupulous rationality.

We will inevitably have considerable difficulty in reasoning our way through personal life decisions, because here it is not only hard data that is involved, is relevant, precise facts and figures, but also our feelings, inclinations, wishes, dreams, aims, goals, values and the like. That is, much of the relevant information required for making decisions in our lives is closer to the heart than the head.

I am not, of course, saying that we should turn our backs on reason. We should, in fact, depend heavily upon it, depend upon it to carry us as far as ever it can. We cannot live effectively without persistently making use of our rational faculties.

But we must not idolize reason. We must be aware that a life governed exclusively by reason would be cold, empty, sterile, destructive, crippled. Not to mention, impossible. At the same time, it is also true that a life governed exclusively by the heart (by feeling, impulse and intuition) would be chaotic, crippling, destructive, not only for the individuals acting in this way, but for those close to them as well. Those who loved them.

As a matter of fact, in practice, in the conduct of our everyday lives, we all of us govern ourselves by some combination of head and heart. We are obliged to do so by our own natures and the nature of existence. We really can't live any other way, though we may think and say that we can. However, some of us err more in the direction of head-governance, and some more in the direction of the heart. Some of us are excessively rational, rigid, and controlled; while others are excessively, oftentimes destructively impulsive.

The fully-lived, complete, warm, satisfying human life must take form under the guidance of a somewhat mysterious combination of information and intelligence coming from both head and heart.

Dr Alexie Crane
2880 Exeter Place
Santa Barbara, CA 93105
(805) 682-3476

Lex1304@aol.com

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