Chapter 1: Introduction, by Gene Callahan and Kenneth McIntyre
Chapter 2: Burke on Rationalism, Prudence and Reason of State, by Ferenc Hörcher
Chapter 3: Alexis de Tocqueville and the Uneasy Friendship between Reason and Freedom, by Travis D. Smith and Jin Jin
Chapter 4: Kierkegaard’s Later Critique of Political Rationalism, by Robert Wyllie
Chapter 5: Friedrich Nietzsche: The Hammer Goes to Monticello, by Justin Garrison
Chapter 6: Pagans, Christians, Poets, by Corey Abel
Chapter 7: Wittgenstein on Rationalism, by Daniel Sportiello
Chapter 8: Heidegger’s Critique of Rationalism and Modernity, by Jack Simmons
Chapter 9: Gabriel Marcel: Mystery in an Age of Problems, by Steven Knepper
Chapter 10: Michael Polanyi: A Scientist Against Scientism, by Charles Lowney
Chapter 11: C.S. Lewis: Reason, Imagination, and the Abolition of Man, by Luke C. Sheahan
Chapter 12: Hayek: Postatomic Liberal, Nick Cowen
Chapter 13: Anti-rationalism, Relativism, and the Metaphysical Tradition: Situating Gadamer’s Philosophical Hermeneutics, by Ryan Holston
Chapter 14: Eric Voegelin and Enlightenment Rationalism, by Michael P. Federici
Chapter 15: Michael Oakeshott’s Critique of Modern Rationalism, by Wendell John Coats Jr.
Chapter 16: Isaiah Berlin on Monism, by Jason Ferrell
Chapter 17: Russell Kirk: The Mystery of Human Existence, by Nathanael Blake
Chapter 18: Jane Jacobs and the Knowledge Problem in Cities, by Sanford Ikeda
Chapter 19: Practical Reason and Teleology: MacIntyre’s Critique of Modern Moral Philosophy, by Kenneth McIntyre
Eugene Callahan teaches at New York University.He is the author of Economics for Real People (2002), Oakeshott on Rome and America (2012), and co-editor of Tradition v. Rationalism (2018).
Kenneth B. McIntyre is Professor of Political Science at Sam Houston State University. He is the author of The Limits of Political Theory: Michael Oakeshott on Civil Association (2004) and Herbert Butterfield: History, Providence, and Skeptical Politics (2012).
This book provides an overview of some of the most important critics of “Enlightenment rationalism.” The subjects of the volume—including, among others, Burke, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, T.S. Eliot, Wittgenstein, Heidegger, C.S. Lewis, Gabriel Marcel, Russell Kirk, and Jane Jacobs—do not share a philosophical tradition as much as a skeptical disposition toward the notion, common among modern thinkers, that there is only one standard of rationality or reasonableness, and that that one standard is or ought to be taken from the presuppositions, methods, and logic of the natural sciences.
The essays on each thinker are intended not merely to offer a commentary on that thinker, but also to place that thinker in the context of this larger stream of anti-rationalist thought. Thus, while this volume is not a history of anti-rationalist thought, it may contain the intimations of such a history.