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1 " The psychoanalytic liberation of memory explodes the rationality of the repressed individual. As cognition gives way to re-cognition, the forbidden images and impulses of childhood begin to tell the truth that reason denies. "
― Herbert Marcuse , Eros and Civilization: A Philosophical Inquiry into Freud
2 " What’s emerging from the pattern of my own life is the for belief that the crisis is being caused by the inadequacy of existing forms of thought to cope with the situation. It can’t be solved by rational means because the rationality itself is the source of the problem. The only ones who’re solving it are solving it at a personal level by abandoning ‘square’ rationality altogether and going by feelings alone. Like John and Sylvia here. And millions of others like them. And that seems like a wrong direction too. So I guess what I’m trying to say is that the solution to the problem isn’t that you abandon rationality but that you expand the nature of rationality so that it’s capable of coming up with a solution. "
― Robert M. Pirsig , Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry Into Values (Phaedrus, #1)
3 " Much has been written of the perceived " clash" between Islamic and western civilisations and of the need for reconciliation.... Sergei Bulgakov left a rich repository of economic thought that philosophically bridges a gap between the rationality of western market economies and the transcendent awareness of Islamic social structures. Bulgakov's philosophy of economy embraces ideas of freedom even as it recog- nises the need for " guidance" and the essential nature of economic relationships to the preservation of community. By engaging Bulgakov's economic ideas, westerners can better understand the apprehensions of intellectuals in traditional cultures concerning globalisation and the reticence of many Muslims to embrace it. "
4 " The very principle of democracy is founded on the possibility of making alternative choices. There is no longer a need for democracy, since ideology made the idea that " there is no alternative" acceptable. Adherence to a meta-social principle of superior rationality allows for the elimination of the necessity and possibility of choosing. The so-called principle of the rationality of " markets" exactly fills this function in the ideology of obsolescent capitalism. Democratic practice is thus emptied of all content in the way is open to what I have called " low-intensity democracy" - that is, to electoral buffooneries where parades of majorettes take the place of programs, to the society of the spectacle. Delegitimized by these practices, politics is undone, begins to drift and loses its potential power to give meaning and coherence to alternative societal projects. "
5 " I understood, not with my intellect but with my whole being, that no theories of the rationality of existence or of progress could justify such an act; I realized that even if all the people in the world from the day of creation found this to be necessary according to whatever theory, I knew that it was not necessary and that it was wrong. Therefore, my judgments must be based-on what is right and necessary and not on what people say and do; I must judge not according to progress but according to my own heart. "
― Leo Tolstoy , A Confession
6 " The ritual worked. That is the most ghastly thing. I hold no particular brief for the rationality of the world, but that this vile obscenity should actually have the power to bring back the dead seems to me not merely a sign that the world is not rational, but that it is in fact entirely insane, a murderous lunatic gibbering in the corner of a padded cell. "
― Sarah Monette , The Bone Key: The Necromantic Mysteries of Kyle Murchison Booth
7 " If, however, we pursue what is expressed in the phrase 'the language of things', we are pointed in a similar direction. The language of things too is something to which we should pay better attention. This expression also has a kind of polemical accent. It expresses the fact that, in general, we are not at all ready to hear things in there own being, that they are subjected to man's calculus and to his domination of nature through the rationality of science. "
― GADAMER, HANS GEORG
