Rationalism occupies a contested, often adversarial position within the depth-psychology corpus. The library’s major voices do not reject reason as such, but they mount a sustained critique of rationalism as an exclusive or dominating epistemological stance — one that crowds out intuition, the unconscious, embodied knowing, and the numinous. Von Franz traces the genealogy of this pathology to the Sophists and their declaration that the older gods were mere illusions, identifying in that moment the birth of an ‘enlightened rationalism’ driven by fear and the power-complex. Jung himself, through the architecture of Psychological Types, situates rationalism within the broader problem of the one-sided directed function — socially adaptive but psychologically impoverishing. Tarnas indicts the ‘objectifying ascetic rationalism’ of the Enlightenment as a rigidly undeveloped inheritance that constrains perception and disenchants the cosmos. McGilchrist frames the matter neurologically and philosophically: the left-hemisphere’s compulsion toward structural, impersonal explanation masquerades as rationalism, and its unchecked dominance produces systematic misunderstanding. Hollis offers a more ambivalent historical reading: rationalism once served as a ‘stay against tyrants and bigotry,’ yet has also generated monsters. Otto and Armstrong preserve space for a legitimate rational dimension in religion while insisting it cannot exhaust the sacred. The term thus functions as both diagnostic category and cultural-historical marker throughout the corpus.
This was the birth-moment of enlightened rationalism, which still haunts us, because it means robbing the world of its divine and psychic qualities. The basic motivation behind this way of thinking is fear.
Von Franz locates the origin of rationalism in the Sophists’ demythologizing move and diagnoses it psychologically as a fear-driven and power-seeking strategy that strips the world of soul.
, Psyche and Matter, 2014thesis
Rationalism, therefore, destroyed one article of faith after another, first in Protestant countries, then more and more in the Catholic realm … Today, Freud, who declared religion a neurotic illusion, seems to have won out.
Von Franz traces rationalism’s historically corrosive effect on religious life, culminating in Freud’s reductive dismissal of religion, and sets this against romantic and Jungian counter-movements.
, Psyche and Matter, 2014thesis
The objectifying ascetic rationalism and empiricism that emerged during the Enlightenment served as liberating disciplines for the nascent modern reason, but they still dominate mainstream science and modern thought today in a rigidly undeveloped form.
Tarnas argues that Enlightenment rationalism, once emancipatory, has calcified into a myopic constraint on perception and calls for an expanded empiricism and rationalism adequate to full human experience.
, Cosmos and Psyche: Intimations of a New World View, 2006thesis
the danger with rationality, or rationalism, is that it places the reasoning self at the centre; it entails an egoistic or egocentric view of the world, and that entails the illusion that here on earth it is possible to transcend the fragmentariness of
Florensky, via Louth, identifies rationalism’s fundamental flaw as egocentric self-enclosure — a spiritual as well as epistemological error that forecloses genuine access to truth.
, Modern Orthodox Thinkers: From the Philokalia to the Presentthesis
Much philosophical reasoning is of the first kind – for two thousand years in the West, between Plato and Kant, it was more or less exclusively so … this kind of thinking, the kind associated more with the left hemisphere than the right, has been considered of only limited use.
McGilchrist maps the Western rationalist tradition onto left-hemisphere dominance and argues that its exclusive sway has been a historically specific, not universal, pathology of mind.
, The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World, 2021thesis
Much philosophical reasoning is of the first kind – for two thousand years in the West, between Plato and Kant, it was more or less exclusively so … this kind of thinking, the kind associated more with the left hemisphere than the right, has been considered of only limited use.
Duplicate passage: McGilchrist identifies the Western rationalist tradition with left-hemisphere epistemology and its well-documented limitations across cultures and historical periods.
, The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World, 2021thesis
the dreams had touched the split-off problem of his feeling and the religious problem of evil … they already sketch, in a nutshell, the actual problem of the man of our time, the heir to that epoch of eighteenth-century rationalism, at the dawn of which Descartes stands.
Von Franz reads Descartes’ own dreams as an unconscious counter-movement to the rationalist program he inaugurated, anticipating the individuation crisis that eighteenth-century rationalism would bequeath to modernity.
, Dreams: A Study of the Dreams of Jung, Descartes, Socrates, and Other Historical Figures, 1998supporting
We have less faith in rationalism. While rationalism for each of them was a stay against tyrants and bigotry, we have also seen rationalism create monsters.
Hollis frames modernity’s ambivalence toward rationalism as historically earned: it was once liberating but has proven capable of producing its own horrors, forcing a reckoning with the unconscious.
, Creating a Life: Finding Your Individual Path, 2001supporting
a religion which recognizes and maintains such a view of God is in so far a ‘rational’ religion … we have to be on our guard against an error which would lead to a wrong and one-sided
Otto acknowledges the legitimate rational dimension of religion while warning against the one-sided error of reducing the divine to rational categories, framing rationalism as necessary but insufficient.
, The Idea of the Holy: An Inquiry into the Non-Rational Factor in the Idea of the Divine and Its Relation to the Rational, 1917supporting
Rationalism continued to influence future thinkers throughout the medieval period, but it remained a minority pursuit, and most Muslims came to distrust the whole enterprise.
Armstrong charts the historical limits of rationalism within Islamic theology, showing that Greek-derived rational method remained contested and largely rejected by the faithful despite its intellectual prestige.
, A History of God, 1993supporting
It can’t be reasoned towards, because reason is exactly what we are trying to evaluate, and it can only carry on unpacking what it is given; intuition, though far from fool-proof, is probably a better guide.
McGilchrist argues that reason cannot self-validate and that intuition, as a holistic faculty, offers a more epistemically humble corrective to rationalism’s circular self-endorsement.
, The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World, 2021supporting
It can’t be reasoned towards, because reason is exactly what we are trying to evaluate, and it can only carry on unpacking what it is given; intuition, though far from fool-proof, is probably a better guide.
Duplicate passage: McGilchrist underscores the self-referential limitation of reason and the superior epistemic modesty of intuition as a counterweight to rationalist overreach.
, The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World, 2021supporting
The eighteenth century takes reason in a different and more modest sense [than the seventeenth-century Rationalists]. It is no longer the sum total of ‘innate ideas’ given prior to all experience, which reveal the absolute essence of things.
Sharpe and Ure, citing Cassirer, trace the historical modulation of Rationalism from its seventeenth-century apotheosis in innate-ideas doctrine to the more energetic and experiential conception of the Enlightenment philosophes.
, Philosophy as a Way of Life: History, Dimensions, Directions, 2021supporting
The eighteenth century takes reason in a different and more modest sense [than the seventeenth-century Rationalists]. It is no longer the sum total of ‘innate ideas’ given prior to all experience, which reveal the absolute essence of things.
Duplicate passage: the Enlightenment’s revision of Rationalism away from innate-ideas absolutism toward an empirically inflected conception of reason is documented as a key intellectual transition.
, Philosophy as a Way of Life: History, Dimensions, Directions, 2021supporting
The spiritual qualities of Socratic rationalism are sometimes overlooked. Socratic spirituality is explained at length in the Republic … His secular rationalism is stated in its most compact form in the early and middle sections.
Alexander draws attention to the spiritual dimension embedded within Socratic rationalism, resisting reductive secular readings and pointing to the Republic’s rationalist ethics as a resource for understanding psychosocial integration.
, The Globalisation of Addiction: A Study in Poverty of the Spirit, 2008supporting
I believe that the Republic would have been more consistent, and ultimately more valuable, if he had concluded rationalistically and politically, arguing that people can understand dikaiosunê and work together to create a society that fosters it.
Alexander registers a constructive preference for a rationalist-political conclusion to Plato’s Republic over its mystical ending, valorizing rationalism as a basis for social ethics and collective action.
, The Globalisation of Addiction: A Study in Poverty of the Spirit, 2008supporting
Reason is indeed required to give the intuitive, inductive foundation to rationality, but rationality needs in turn to submit its workings to the judgment of reason at the end (Kant’s regulatory role).
McGilchrist uses Kant’s critical philosophy to articulate a bidirectional, hemisphere-parallel model in which rationality must be grounded in and returned to reason, preventing rationalism’s autonomous overreach.
, The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World, 2009supporting
Truth had to be sought in scientific rationalism as well as esoteric mysticism; sensibility must be educated and informed by the critical intelligence.
Armstrong, describing Suhrawardi’s Ishraqi philosophy, presents rationalism and mysticism as complementary rather than competing paths to truth, with neither sufficient alone.
, A History of God, 1993supporting
“rationalism” in, 56, 86 … Rational thought birth of, 10, 11, 102, 130 and intellectual revolution, 103-104, 107, 119 and political “rationalism,” 56, 86
Vernant’s index entry situates the birth of rational thought and political ‘rationalism’ as co-originating phenomena in the Greek intellectual revolution, relevant to the corpus’s historical framing.
, The Origins of Greek Thought, 1982aside
epistemologically, this philosophe is no Rationalist. When he seeks out the principles and causes of things, his principal means are the senses … not any lumen natural.
Sharpe distinguishes the Enlightenment philosophe’s empiricism from formal Rationalism, clarifying that the rejection of innate illumination marks a break with classical rationalist epistemology.
, Philosophy as a Way of Life: History, Dimensions, Directions, 2021aside
they are, as a rule, much more convincing than results established by mere logic ever are.
James contrasts the existential convincingness of religious experience with the comparatively weaker hold of purely logical-rationalist demonstration, implicitly subordinating rationalism to felt reality.
, The Varieties of Religious Experience Amazon, 1902aside