THE SOUL OF REASON

The material presented here is taken from a working paper titled The Soul of Reason:  An Argument for a New Post-Modern Realism in Social Theory and Philosophy.  (D. H. Bowles 2020)

Abstract

The dramatic failure of global neoliberalism’s ‘solution’ to the problem of distribution is giving rise to a new wave of ethnic nationalism and profound authoritarian sympathies around the world.  Prominent neoliberal apologists such as Robert Kagan (“The Strongmen Strike Back”) have undertaken to defend neoliberalism in terms of its commitment to a view of human nature that entails an indispensable social and moral ontology of individual rights and liberties.  Kagan’s argument actually acknowledges the inadequacies of the neoliberal consensus with regard to its libertarian view of human nature, (vis-a-vis the authoritarian) but nevertheless continues to ignore its fatally flawed distributional arrangements.

At the same time, progressive critiques of neoliberalism continue to struggle themselves with the problems of  human nature and relativism:  they fail to articulate an alternative conception of social and moral ontology capable of resolving the enduring tension between both 1) individual and parochial group identity, and 2) competing parochial identities.

This essay seeks to advance the argument that the problems of human nature, relativism, and distribution in our social theory can only be ultimately resolved through a solution of the problem of consciousness, presented here as an effort to provide an accounting of the social and moral ontology of altered states of consciousness, rhetorically characterized as The Soul of Reason.

Conceptual Schematic of the Argument

Table of Contents

Download Working Paper (PDF)