Historical Types of Rationality :: Culture History Essays

ABSTRACT In this paper we suggest that the contemporary orbicular intellectual crisis of our (Western) cultivation consists in the fundamental trans formation of the classical (both Ancient and Modern) types of ground towards the nonclassical one. We give a brief account of those classical types of rationality and focus on the more detailed description of the contemporary process of the formation of the new HTR which we label as nonclassical. We consider it to be one of the diachronic possibilities that might radically transform the fundamentals of our tender world in fact, this process has already begun. The paper mentions some of the main features of this process, such as formation of a new type of scientific object new conceptual schemes new logical and methodological equipment of scientific research and new understanding of human nature, human mind, human action, and social order. IntroductionApproaching the end of our millennium it becomes more and more evident that the mod ern type of rationality-which has dominated Western elaboration since the 17th century-is in crisis that it has reached the limits of its potentialities and something new is being created. We seem to be experiencing the global crisis of consciousness which perhaps concerns fundamental questions of our cultural identity and signals total social crisis of our civilization. This raises a question about the nature of our current cultural this identity Is it still modern or already postmodern? Or are we only experiencing the subsequence from classical to modern (Krl 1994)? Is the crisis of modernity a permanent state from which there is no way out and where we can do nothing opposite than to endure bravely the fate of our time (Weber 1983)? Should we comply with its anamnesis as deconstruction and thus to acquiesce to the extremes of its dichotomies (Lyotard 1993, Derrida 1993)? Or is this crisis something temporary? Should we believe in the afterlife and hope that renovation of the past will take place in our pluralist society (Ricoeur 1992)? Do we face a decisive turnabout consisting in a return to the past, a reevaluation of the Orient and a valorization of ecology (F. Capra 1983)? Should we seek an alternative in glorification of nature and desacralization of culture (Griffin 1988)? Does the way to rescue civilization lead through deliverance of the individual self from the oppression of blunt rationality? Or does it lead through enforcement of the principles of fundamentalism whether with a capital F (radical, aggressive, press on the upholding of the essential articles of faith, e.