The Responsibility of Reason: Tocqueville and the Problem of Modern Transcendence

Abstract

Tocqueville’s brief evocation of a collapse of “moral analogy,” indicates a fundamental defect of modern rationalism and invites us to consider how reason’s responsibility might best be understood in our times. This defect is best understood as a disorder affecting the relation between “theory” and “practice,” one that may present itself either as a radical separation or as a radical fusion. To resist these twin pathologies of “reason,” and thus to take responsibility for connecting our theoretical freedom with our practical belonging, reason must first learn to affirm its own goodness as in some way continuous with the intimations of transcendence that structure our practical existence. Once the dynamics of this separation/fusion of theory and practice are understood, it is possible to discern the Scylla and Charybdis between which we must navigate in seeking conditions for the survival of a moral analogy binding together man’s spiritual freedom and his practical existence, and thus securing their mutual health. Foremost among these conditions is a critical self-knowledge that includes an appreciation at once of the dignity of reason (its inescapable freedom and ruling responsibility) and of reason’s limits (its implication in norms or goods or meanings that cannot be founded in pure autonomy). Tocqueville’s acute moderation provides a touchstone for a self-reflective and responsible understanding of reason that is both theoretically and practically superior to Heidegger’s deconstruction of Western reason and to Leo Strauss’s attempt to restore classical rationalism. Reason’s responsibility today, both to itself and to the common good, must be attuned to the truth of the fundamental aporia that is the deep spring of Western dynamism, the insuperable tension between a horizon of knowable goodness above common human concerns and the religious hope for or revolutionary promise of the redemption or regeneration of our common humanity.