Detachment, Involvement, and Rationality: are we Essentially Rational Animals?

• Authors: Hubert Dreyfus
• Languages of publication: EN

Abstracts

EN

Philosophers have long thought that what differentiates humans from mere animals is that humans are essentially rational. The rational nature of human beings lies in their ability to detach themselves from ongoing involvement and to ask for as well as give reasons for activity. According to the philosophical tradition, human action and perception generally should be understood in light of this ability. This essay examines a contemporary version of this conviction, one promulgated by John McDowell. McDowell follows the tradition in suggesting that people are always able to step back and to ask as well as answer why questions about what they are doing, i.e., they always have reasons for their actions. This essay shows that people have no reasons for many of the things they do. They often, instead, simply respond to shifting situational fields of attraction and repulsion. These attractions and repulsions cannot be captured in propositional form-any attempt to describe, or even just name, them turns them into objects and robs them of their motivational force. The demands of the situation are not available as reasons, but exist only as embodied in actions. McDowell, consequently, errs in claiming that conceptual capacities are inextricably implicated in human activity. Nor is the detached, rational way of being any more essential to human life than is involved coping.

Keywords

EN

rationality; reasons for actions; situation; detachment; involvement; coping

• Publisher: Sciendo
• Journal: Human Affairs
• Year: 2007
• Volume: 17
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 101-109

Dates

published

2007-12-01

online

2007-12-17

Contributors

author

Hubert Dreyfus

• Department of Philosophy 314 Moses Hall 2390, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720-2390 USA

References

• Heidegger, M.Logic: The Question of Truth. Trans. Thomas Sheehan and Corrine Painter, Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2007 (forthcoming).
• McDowell, J.Mind and World. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1994.
• McDowell, J. Two Sorts of Naturalism. In J. McDowell. Mind, Value and Reality. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1998, 167-197.
• McDowell, J. Conceptual Capacities in Perception. In G. Abel (Ed). Kreativität. Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 2006, 1065-79.
• Merleau-Ponty, M.The Structure of Behavior. Trans. Alden L. Fisher. Boston: Beacon, 1965.
• Nabokov, V.The Defense. New York: Vintage International, 1990.

Identifiers

DOI

10.2478/v10023-007-0010-0