The Irrationality of Rationalism

“This condition, Epidermolysis bullosa, with which I was diagnosed after birth, is as painful as described. Singer’s language is compassionate, but what he advocates for is infanticide.”

To be rational is held as life’s main goal by those invested in science as the preeminent explanation of (and guide to) life and how to live. Rationality means taking reason over experience or revelation as the basis for certainty in knowledge. The arguments around it go back to the ancient philosophers in Greece and Rome, seeing its epistemic apogee with the work of Thomas Aquinas. The 20th century philosopher Leo Strauss argued for a tension between the rationality of Greek philosophy and the revelation of Judaism’s home of Jerusalem. The tension between the two must always be kept in check, lest one side win out to ill effect, leading to what Samuel Gregg calls pathologies of reason and faith.

Those who come down on the side of rationalism to the exclusion of all else find their hero in Peter Singer, the world’s leading utilitarian and bioethicist. One only needs to listen to his thoughts on disability, euthanasia, and the way to achieve the greatest happiness for the greatest number to realize the insanity and danger of his thought.

Singer’s heroism to the world’s right-thinking people is confirmed by his institutional status and the accolades attached to his name. The positions of men and women like Singer point to what we value as a society, the status attached to them and to the thoughts they express, touching something in our cultural psyche that we accede to by accepting their ideas. Ideas and beliefs matter when held by enough people in institutions to apply them in real life. Singer’s ideas matter.