Historical Types of Rationality :: Culture History Essays

ABSTRACT In this paper we suggest that the contemporaneous global intellectual crisis of our (Western) civilization consists in the fundamental transformation of the pure (both Ancient and Modern) tokens of rationality towards the nonclassical one. We give a brief tale of those classical types of rationality and focus on the more than detailed definition of the con temp process of the formation of the new HTR which we label as nonclassical. We cerebrate it to be one of the historical possibilities that might radically transform the fundamental principle of our benevolent world in fact, this process has already begun. The paper mentions nearly of the main features of this process, such as formation of a new type of scientific object new conceptual schemes new logical and methodological equipment of scientific research and new understanding of human nature, human mind, human action, and social order. IntroductionApproaching the end of our millennium it becomes more and more e vident that the modern type of rationality-which has dominated Western culture since the seventeenth century-is in crisis that it has reached the limits of its potentialities and something new is being created. We seem to be experiencing the global crisis of thought which perhaps concerns fundamental questions of our cultural identity and signals total social crisis of our civilization. This raises a question about the nature of our current cultural this identity Is it comfort modern or already postmodern? Or are we completely experiencing the continuation from classical to modern (Krl 1994)? Is the crisis of modernity a permanent state from which there is no way out and where we can do nothing other than to endure bravely the fate of our time (Weber 1983)? Should we admit with its anamnesis as deconstruction and thus to acquiesce to the extremes of its dichotomies (Lyotard 1993, Derrida 1993)? Or is this crisis something temporary? Should we believe in the future and hope that renovation of the past go away take place in our pluralist society (Ricoeur 1992)? Do we face a decisive turnabout consisting in a return to the past, a reevaluation of the signal and a valorization of ecology (F. Capra 1983)? Should we seek an alternative in resplendence of nature and desacralization of culture (Griffin 1988)? Does the way to rescue civilization lead through deliverance of the individual self from the oppression of blunt rationality? Or does it lead through enforcement of the principles of fundamentalism whether with a capital F (radical, aggressive, insisting on the upholding of the essential articles of faith, e.