Rationalism

Rationalism, as its name suggests, refers to the movement which advocates the use of reason to make choices or decisions. However, reason is a rather vague word and to try to understand it better, we can perhaps use an example. Imagine the simplest of all situations – two jobs are offered to the same person and they require him to do exactly the same thing, just that one pays more than the other. In this case, we will say that the person is rational if he chooses the job which pays more since he can gain more from doing the same thing, and rationalism dictates that everyone should do things in ways in line with what our rational hero has done. And undeniably, this is useful to progress in many aspects of our society, for example in law whereby reason serves as a common platform for legislators to decide on the rules which are appropriate for a certain territory, based on a balance between justice and utility. But let us look at our simplified situation again and we notice that it does not exist in the real world. If a single factor changes, for example, that the poorer paying job is more interesting to our hero, he will be caught in a dilemma, having to choose between money and his interest. And I do not think any amount of reason can help him decide.