WALKING THE TIGHTROPE OF REASON: The Precarious Life of a Rational Animal

Taking on the "problems that make reasoning itself a precarious activity," Dartmouth philosopher Fogelin offers an admirably clear, concise, provocative approach to avoiding pitfalls "inherent in the rational enterprise." When people reason seriously and philosophically, he argues, they inevitably get into trouble: paradox; belief in either an absolutist metaphysics or a relativist jumble of perspectives (both of which he calls "dialectical illusions"); and abject skepticism. Having analyzed this "trinity of threats" ("inconsistency, illusion, and doubt") he proposes a cure: "becoming engaged in the world in ways that put our thoughts under constraints that are not themselves further thoughts." Essentially, this boils down to not philosophizing so much. Instead, people should accept the dilemma-prone nature of human systems of thought; restrict themselves to questions whose answers can be checked against experiment and experience; and go out and enjoy life when skeptical brooding gets them down. Some of this advice sounds like good common sense, but his approach is itself precarious, with its main pitfall being a tendency to argue from the authority of Wittgenstein, Kant and Hume, all of whom have been shown to have weak points. And there is something dubious about a philosopher saying he philosophizes only to quit philosophizing—like a smoker saying he smokes only to quit smoking. Still, the book is an intellectual pleasure for those who like their philosophy cool and combative. (Aug.)