Within the depth-psychology corpus, Reason occupies a contested and multivalent position: simultaneously the highest faculty of the rational soul, a cosmological principle identical with divine law, a faculty whose sovereignty is perpetually threatened by passion and necessity, and—in the modern neuropsychological literature—an instrument whose very reliability is called into question by the hemisphere that wields it most confidently. The Stoic tradition, represented here through Inwood and Sorabji, identifies Reason with the immanent logos of Zeus, the normative standard against which every impulse is measured and to which the sage freely submits. Chrysippus insists that the human being is by nature constituted to follow Reason in every situation, yet passion arises precisely when a violent counter-motion overrides that commitment. Plato’s Timaeus, via Cornford, introduces the complementary tension between Reason as purposive cosmic design and Necessity as an irreducible irrational residue that Reason can persuade but never wholly eliminate. Aristotle, through Lorenz, treats Reason as that which can progressively civilize the non-rational parts of the soul, though appetite and spirit each relate to it differently. John of Damascus systematizes the soul’s faculties into those that obey Reason and those that do not, grounding moral anthropology in this structural distinction. McGilchrist, finally, subjects the entire tradition to hemispheric critique: the left hemisphere’s mode of rationality is itself only a partial and retrospective representation of the full living process of reasoning, which exceeds any post-hoc logical reconstruction.
Chrysippus defined fate as the Reason and ‘Law of the events in the cosmos governed by providence’. The Law governing events is the same as that which guides men.
Inwood demonstrates that for Chrysippus Reason is not merely a human faculty but the cosmic law identical with fate and divine providence, making ethical life a matter of aligning personal impulse with universal rational order.
, Ethics and Human Action in Early Stoicism, 1985thesis
‘Although the rational animal has a nature such as to use Reason in every situation and to be guided by it, we often turn our back on it, when we are subject to another more violent motion.’
This Chrysippean fragment, cited by Inwood, articulates the central Stoic problem: man’s natural rational vocation is perpetually subverted by the passionate counter-motions that constitute pathē.
, Ethics and Human Action in Early Stoicism, 1985thesis
The Right Reason of Nature issues for agents a set of commands, one after another… If our impulses stay within the symmetry laid down by Nature, we will be able to adapt to events.
Inwood shows that Right Reason functions as the normative regulator of impulse-intensity, setting the proper measure against which excess or deficiency in desire is judged.
, Ethics and Human Action in Early Stoicism, 1985thesis
‘the works of Reason’ in contrast with ‘what comes about of Necessity’… the lower type of causation subordinated to the higher… there is the necessity which Aristotle calls ‘hypothetical’.
Cornford’s Timaeus commentary establishes Reason as purposive cosmic design necessarily constrained by an irreducible material Necessity, a tension foundational to all subsequent Western accounts of rational causation.
, Plato’s cosmology the Timaeus of Plato, 1997thesis
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 reframes the classical reason/rationality distinction through Kant, arguing that reason must both ground and ultimately adjudicate the products of rationality in a circular, hemispheric-mirroring process.
, The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World, 2009thesis
appetite and spirit can be affected and improved by reason over time, as a person cultivates good habits of attention, response, and behaviour.
Lorenz argues that for Aristotle reason does not merely command the non-rational soul but progressively transforms it through habituation, making virtue a function of reason’s educative penetration into appetite and spirit.
, The Brute Within: Appetitive Desire in Plato and Aristotle, 2006thesis
The representation of reason given by retrospective analysis is bound to be only a partial account of the true reasoning process… frequently we do not recognize our sensations and ideas, when put into words ever so carefully.
McGilchrist, drawing on Newman, argues that the formal reasons we explicitly articulate are merely symbolic specimens of the actual living grounds of reasoning, which exceed any left-hemispheric post-mortem analysis.
, The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World, 2021thesis
The representation of reason given by retrospective analysis is bound to be only a partial account of the true reasoning process… hints towards, and samples of, t
This passage (duplicate edition) reinforces McGilchrist’s claim that formally adduced reasons are indicators rather than foundations, pointing to a reasoning process that exceeds conscious rational reconstruction.
, The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World, 2021thesis
the soul are divided into that which has reason, and that which is without reason… That which listens to and obeys reason… is divided into anger and desire.
John of Damascus systematizes the tripartite soul by making obedience to reason the structural criterion that distinguishes the morally tractable appetitive faculties from purely vegetative functions beyond reason’s reach.
, An Exact Exposition of the Orthodox Faith, 2021thesis
anger (which is a passion) ‘never occurs except where there is a place for reason’. An animal may have something analogous to a passion, since it has impulses.
Inwood, citing Seneca, clarifies that passions as perversions of rational behaviour are exclusively available to rational beings, making reason the very condition of both virtue and its characteristic failures.
, Ethics and Human Action in Early Stoicism, 1985supporting
something else in her struggles and exerts itself against reason, impelling her to act in a way that reason opposes… the non-rational part of her soul
Lorenz reconstructs Aristotle’s account of self-controlled action to show that the non-rational part genuinely contests reason rather than simply failing to hear it, establishing a real intra-psychic opposition.
, The Brute Within: Appetitive Desire in Plato and Aristotle, 2006supporting
it is not merely in virtue of accepting reason’s report about a particular insult or slight that spirit can rightly be said to follow reason in whatever way it is that spirit does.
Lorenz distinguishes the unique mode in which spirit follows reason from the mere informational obedience available to appetite, articulating a qualitative hierarchy in the non-rational soul’s relationship to rational guidance.
, The Brute Within: Appetitive Desire in Plato and Aristotle, 2006supporting
there is usually a tug-of-war between the heart’s calling and the mind’s plan, a conflict within each human replicating Plato’s two principles of nous and ananke, reason and unreasonable necessity.
Hillman appropriates the Platonic opposition between nous and ananke to describe the recurring existential conflict between the daimonic soul’s fate and the rational ego’s planning, privileging necessity over reason.
, The Soul’s Code: In Search of Character and Calling, 1996supporting
emotion had a role to play in intuition, the sort of rapid cognitive process in which we come to a particular conclusion without being aware of all the immediate logical steps.
Damasio’s somatic marker hypothesis demonstrates that emotion underwrites rather than undermines reasoning, delivering intuitive conclusions that rationality cannot fully reconstruct from its own explicit premises.
, Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain, 1994supporting
sober reasoning [logismos] that searches out the causes of all pursuit and avoidance and drives out the beliefs from which a very great disturbance seizes the soul.
Nussbaum presents Epicurus’s therapeutic claim that sober rational inquiry, not pleasure or abstinence, is the genuine curative agent against the soul-disturbing false beliefs that produce passion.
, The Therapy of Desire: Theory and Practice in Hellenistic Ethics, 1994supporting
rational design came into contrast with factors in the visible world that are ‘incapable of any plan or intelligence for any purpose’… We must now start afresh upon a study of these irrational factors.
Cornford’s commentary charts the Timaeus’s structural pivot from the products of Reason to the study of Necessity, identifying the irrational material causes as the permanent counterpart and limit of rational cosmological order.
, Plato’s cosmology the Timaeus of Plato, 1997supporting
the other characteristics which a passion is said to have, irrationality and unnaturalness… a reaction to something which is erroneously judged to be good… is an attraction to it in excess of what is natural.
Inwood details the Chrysippean analysis of passion as simultaneously irrational and unnatural, two deficiencies that are correlative consequences of reason’s displacement by erroneous value judgment.
, Ethics and Human Action in Early Stoicism, 1985supporting
this, this kind of vision, is what the rationality he has embraced leads to. Not by mere chance, not by a momentary caprice, but by the inexorable logic of the rationality to which he is committed.
McGilchrist argues that Cartesian hyper-rationality is not an accidental pathology but the logical terminus of a rationality untethered from reason’s fuller embodied ground, producing a vision indistinguishable from madness.
, The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World, 2009supporting
the Stoics defined the appropriate act, they did so in terms of reasonableness or probability (to eulogon)… no more than a general guide to what will be appropriate in any one case.
Inwood shows that Stoic practical reason operates probabilistically rather than with certainty, requiring agents to form general rules while remaining open to their revision in particular circumstances.
, Ethics and Human Action in Early Stoicism, 1985supporting
Not to make use of them is not to make use of one’s reason… for a considerable period in the development of human beings, the immortal parts of their souls are not… in functioning order.
Lorenz, reading the Timaeus, notes that reason’s circular celestial motions are the defining characteristic of the immortal soul, and their neglect or incapacitation marks a descent toward animality.
, The Brute Within: Appetitive Desire in Plato and Aristotle, 2006supporting
reality is neither undiscoverable, nor discoverable by the intellect alone, but by the whole embodied being, senses, feeling, intellect and imagination.
McGilchrist, aligning with Whitehead and Schelling, argues that reason or intellect is a necessary but insufficient organ of reality’s disclosure, which requires the full participation of embodied sensory and imaginative experience.
, The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World, 2021supporting
reality is neither undiscoverable, nor discoverable by the intellect alone, but by the whole embodied being, senses, feeling, intellect and imagination.
This edition variant of McGilchrist’s argument confirms that the adequacy of reason depends on its integration within the total cognitive economy of the embodied person rather than its autonomous exercise.
, The Matter With Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions and the Unmaking of the World, 2021supporting
The law it follows is Necessity, which wanders erratically… this determinism is indeterminate. Unpredictable.
Hillman characterizes the principle opposing reason in the soul as an irrational, erratic Necessity whose indeterminate determinism continuously disrupts the rational ego’s plans and intentions.
, The Soul’s Code: In Search of Character and Calling, 1996aside
the new product which the crucible gave forth was the rational, the concept… the noun conquered more and more territory.
Snell traces the historical emergence of rational conceptual thought from the fusion of noun forms in Greek, locating the birth of ‘the rational’ in a linguistic-developmental transformation of mind.
, The discovery of the mind; the Greek origins of European, 1953aside
The action of rational, morally responsible agents is not only more complex and philosophically interesting; it is also the sort of action which matters most in ethics.
Inwood notes that the Stoic corpus disproportionately documents rational action because their ethical interest in moral responsibility made the psychology of fully rational agents the primary theoretical object.
, Ethics and Human Action in Early Stoicism, 1985aside