Rational vs. Pre-Rational Explanations of Reality
Know the Rational
Animals have an instinctive behavior that is innate. Instincts allow them to meet all their needs. Therefore, it is a practical and concrete knowledge.
Human beings have been branded as rational animals. Reason, imagination, and language give a considerable margin of freedom to be open to different possibilities for action. Humans need to understand and interpret the environment; they need to know.
The Pre-Rational Explanation: Magic and Myth
The first explanation is the irrational: magic and myth. Magic mostly tries to solve practical problems by mastering the supernatural forces that govern nature, by means of hidden and only accessible to certain privileged individuals. The basis of magic is the belief that all things are animated by spirits (animism). Myth is a sacred narrative or symbolic legend which relates important events of natural phenomena.
The myth, to justify the actions, values, and human customs and serve as a model. The narrative is accepted by society on the authority of tradition. The main purpose of myth is to provide a full explanation about the universe and the individual.
Stages in the Mythological Explanation
- Fetishism or animism is attributed to material objects (idol) a life essentially analogous to the human, but more powerful.
- Polytheism: the ultimate explanation is in various supernatural beings (gods), which are superior to men and are able to influence their world.
- Monotheism: all phenomena depend on the will of a single omnipotent supernatural being (god).
Origin and Nature of Rational Knowledge
From the Arbitrariness of Myth to the Need of Logos
In Greece, around the sixth century BC, mythological narratives gradually ceased to serve as an explanatory model. Everything was unpredictable, arbitrary, and contingent. This made it impossible to know the regularities that govern nature.
The ancient Greeks were deeply rooted in the idea of fate. It was an irrational belief that gradually gave way to the idea of necessity, that is, the belief that things happen when and as they have to happen and therefore can be known and predictable. Looking for a rational explanation and immanent.
Human reason wonders what things are (essence) and what produces them (their cause). In reality, there is something permanent and constant (substance) despite the changes that show the way (for example, water is always water, though the senses perceive it as solid, liquid, or gas; this belief in the persistence of identity allowed the right formula to find out centuries after its composition, H2O). Moreover, unlike magic, rational knowledge allows to explain a phenomenon by another phenomenon B, and likewise to reach B from A. This possibility is what is called a method (from the Greek meta odos, ‘path’). A pre-rational explanation does not provide any way to get from a natural phenomenon to another supernatural, so the explanation is arbitrary.
The Senses and Reason
Rational knowledge uses two tools or powers of knowledge: the senses (or sense perception) and reason. The senses perform direct observation of reality. Reason understands and interprets the data supplied by sense and is able to infer a relationship between two phenomena considered cause and effect, i.e. to predict the consequences. However, one of the great philosophical questions is the relationship between sensible knowledge and rational knowledge: it is important to note that we do not know as things in themselves are but as we are.
Periods of Philosophical Inquiry
- Metaphysical Period: Philosophical inquiry focuses on reality, physical and human, and in the search for principle capable of explaining the existing order.
- Epistemological Period: The impossibility of reaching a definitive explanation about reality, thinkers wonder on what we can access it: the power of human knowledge.
- Humanist Period: Philosophy is characterized by a more diversified research changes, although all specifically revolve around a single axis humans.