Introduction

Symposium: Irrationalism in the Eighteenth Century Introduction Ralph Cohen* WE LIVE TODAY hypnotized by the imagination of disaster, the threat of catastrophe, and visions of tragedy. This helps ex­ plain our hospitality for irrationalism and the ambiguous delight we take in the dark side of the soul. It explains too the recurrent choice of subject among many of the papers given at this con­ ference and the subject of this symposium—irrationalism in the eighteenth century. If scholarship were immediately rather than distantly responsive to contemporary experience, scholars would long ago have made evident the distrust which many eighteenthcentury thinkers had for reason and for rationality. Still, it is for­ tunate that we have our prejudices and our preferences, because some of these, like the preference for irrationality, help us to as­ sess those held by our predecessors. If we have any faith at all in the hypothesis that the eighteenth century has given us legacies, then one legacy must surely be the distrust of some kinds of rea­ soning. For more than a century, interpretations of this distrust have been categorized as reason versus enthusiasm, orthodoxy ver­ sus unorthodoxy or paganism, peace versus revolution, general na­ ture versus eccentricity; and each of us here can continue to add contrasts, antitheses, and paradoxes. But we can recognize that the pairing of opposites, and sometimes the resolution of con­ traries, belong to a post-Kantian or dialectical analysis of our ex­ * Professor Cohen was chairman of the section devoted to irrationalism in the eighteenth century at the Society’s second annual meeting. The papers following his introduction in the present volume were delivered at that sec­ tion meeting. Ed. 223 Irrationalism in the Eighteenth Century perience of the world. This position has been changing, and the evidence for the change imposes itself upon our consciousness wherever we turn. We find, for example, that in multiplying our­ selves we subtract from the human race. We find that in reason there is madness, in peace there is war, in eccentricity there is gen­ eral nature. We are prepared to reject the earlier and antitheti­ cal categories because we find that each member of the antithesis is a complex more difficult and less consistent than we imagined. This inquiry into irrationalism, therefore, beginning as I believe it does with the rejection of earlier approaches, is consistent with the assumption that for us the irrational is as accessible as, if not more accessible than, the rational. Precisely because our experience of disaster prepares us to aban­ don old cliches about reason and enlightenment, we wish to avoid new cliches about irrationality and emotion. To seek ways of ex­ ploring such new interpretations is the purpose of this symposium. The participants have not been given a definition of irrationalism or of rationalism, but they have been asked to define the subject in ways they find appropriate to their argument. If it turns out that there are various definitions present, this procedure ought to be considered a necessary part of our exploration, because, indeed, this symposium ought to be seen as exploratory. Only two of the papers have been read by us. The others we shall be hearing for the first time. Thus we hope to develop a discussion of the subject with you rather than before you. 224 ...