Is Reason Losing Out To Instinct And Emotion

It is part of the human condition to have a tendency of going through drastic measures to obtain an ideology that has been accepted as a “natural fact.” Through Anthem, Ayn Rand warned of the dangers of blindly and unquestionably following an ideology; the dangers to society that loyalty to a belief system pose are strict limitations on personal comforts, lack of individualism, and the formation of an irrational government.

He adds to this by introducing the concepts of rational and irrational authority, explaining that rational authority would be equivalent to that of a teacher and student whereby there is mutual benefit, while irrational authority would be identified by the likes of a slave and his owner who demonstrates complete disregard of the slave’s happiness or well-being, his only interest being how the slave will benefit him.

almost polar opposite of reason is showed in the numerous philosophers he references in the

Different opinions concerning religion, government, attachment to different leaders or to persons whose fortunes have interested human passions support the claim that “the latent cause of faction are …sown in the nature of man.”

Human reason has been one of the guiding principles in our society since the beginning of time and because action is preceded by thought, these two go hand in hand. Every choice we make is based on our thinking process, differentiating between what is good or bad, and contemplating cause and effect. Machiavelli, Locke, and Marx all have distinct conceptions of human nature, which has led to a variety of conclusions regarding the political structures of society that still have resonance today, which goes to show how much of an impact their theories have.

In the polis, the conflicting nature of opinions is not unique to equality. Deborah Stone believes that people’s ideas and “passion in politics comes from conflicting senses of fairness, justice, rightness, and goodness” (Stone 2012: 36). Although “people want

Deborah Stone compares the market and polis models of policy making with the intent to show that the original origin of the public policy discipline was to be grounded in a practical science, economics, but to also show how and why the economic approach to policy making has significant limitations. Stone is arguing against the view that policy decision making is rational decision making. Deborah Stone’s main reason for comparing the two models of policy making is to identify and critique the simplistic assumptions that have been used in the market and rationality project. Stone is attempting to point out the paradox that exists between the two because the two models are evidently contradictory, the market being ground in rationality and the polis being based on emotion. Stone compares the two policies in order to show that economics cannot be solely used to understand policy making because the two are fundamentally different. She also points out that policy is made in a political society and because of this the polis model seeks to explain public policy as it actually happens in reality since the field and study of public policy was created to allow government to make decisions that would best benefit their citizens.

The Course of human events has once again arrived at a time when consideration must be given by the people to dissolving the political bonds connecting them with another, and to again assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Natural Laws entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that the people should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

In "The Politics", Aristotle would have us believe that man by nature is a political animal. In other words, Aristotle seems to feel that the most natural thing for men to do is to come together in some form of political association. He then contends that this political association is essential to the pursuit of the good life. Finally he attempts to distinguish what forms of political association are most suitable to the pursuit of this good life. In formulating a critique of "The Politics", we shall first examine his claims as to what is natural to man and whether the criterion of the natural is sufficient to demonstrate virtue. We shall then examine what it is about political association that

For example, you have an inner problem in your household and want to resolve it; do you ponder that leaving your house may help you answer it? No, it isn’t likely; therefore he was a fool. This isn’t the simple reason that convinced me that he was irrational; disregarding his faithful family and a great degree is another element.

This definition can be extended to a definition of politics. Indeed, the idea that “human values” and the “search for orienting theories” (lines 4 and 5) are entangled is clearly expressed. The vision of man that is given suggests that society should promote his innate capacities and put them at the chore of political decisions. “Participation in decision-making” (line19) conjures up the idea of a Participatory Democracy, which was a major theme for elements of the American Left in the 1960’s. This implies a more important influence of the people in the decisions of their society.

Since its conception as a formal academic discipline, Politics has existed on the fault line between two great fields of enquiry, the sciences and the arts. During the mid 20th century, with the rise of the behavioural movement, a general trend towards the “scientification” of the study of politics could be observed. The origins of this movement can be traced back to the logical positivism of the Vienna Circle and the writings of Auguste Comte in the nineteenth century (Sanders, 2010). However from the 1970s, there emerged a growing dissatisfaction with behaviouralism and a revival of interest in normative questions, as seen in the writings of theorists such as John Rawls and

Rational choice theory is actually more than one theory per se, but the basic similarities among its variants mean that they can be intelligibly amalgamated for the purposes of critiquing its implementation in political science. Therefore public choice theory, positive political science, rational actor models, and the economic approach to politics, among others, refer to what we may call rational choice theory for the purposes of this essay. (See Green and Shapiro 1994, xi.

By looking at the readings of Machiavelli, Hobbes, and Locke, there are a few distinctions between how the modern thinkers viewed politics versus the way the ancient thinkers believed politics should be. There are many topics both modern and ancient thinkers discuss in their writings, such as the purpose of politics, the science of politics, human nature, as well as the ideal regime. By doing so, these thinkers’ views on political topics such as these illuminate how they thought politics should work and who should be able to participate in the activity of politics.

Empiricism is the theory that experience, rather than reason, is the source of knowledge, and in this sense it is opposed to rationalism. This general thesis can receive different emphases and refinements; therefore, philosophers who have been labeled empiricists are united generally and may differ in various ways. The Empiricist Revolution helped facilitate discussion on real world, political problems. Since this revolution, philosophers and political theorists have developed two different ideas on what politics should be about and how a government should be ran: politics should be about making citizens more virtuous vs politics should be about the “basics” like security and property rights. Throughout this paper, I will be analyzing these two different outlooks on politics and presenting a case for both.