ভূমিকা

Shiavault - a Vault of Shia Islamic Books Aristotelian Perspectives For Post-modern Reason (ii) Introduction The purpose of the present paper is to advance the construction of a model for rationality for the Post-modern Age. The identification of reason with science is no longer sustainable. What I propose is the development of an idea of prudent reason of Aristotelian inspiration.

My method consists in bringing Aristotelian concepts to the current debate by connecting them with related present-day notions.

In this way, the incorporation of Aristotelian notions into the current debate is made possible, as is the integration of today’s concepts into a coherent and fertile metaphysical framework, while a third effect, one of vast importance, is also obtained: from the Aristotelian perspective, the integrity of human action is recuperated, and is no longer split off in unconnected areas - Aristotelian anthropology may thus contribute to saving what Russell called ‘the schizophrenia of modern man’.

Today, then, Aristotelian prudence is correctly expressed in the attitude of intellectual modesty and respect for reality that we find in thinkers like Pierce, Popper and Jonas, enshrined in the Peircian maxim of not blocking the way of inquiry and in Jonas’s responsibility principle, which insists on the protection of the conditions for the continuity of life[^1] .

These positions of contemporary authors are strengthened when understood against the background of Aristotelian ontology (there is a plurality of substances; being may be actual or potential, there is a path from is to ought . Man is desiring intelligence or intelligent desire; reality is not a copy of the concept, but is intelligible).

Furthermore, things being thus, we realize that a rational attitude is fundamentally the same in the different contexts of science and in other areas of human life. It is a question basically of protecting openness of human action in the future, for we know that it will have to tackle a (socio-natural) world whose future is also open.

This attitude of protecting openness does not guarantee anything, but it is the best bet we can place in order for creative discoveries to continue to be made, so that man’s and nature’s creativity may survive. One might think, however, that both Aristotelian prudence and Peirce’s maxim, together with Jonas’s responsibility principle are a scanty characterization of human action, for they do not take into account its creative aspects.