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superior qualities." Finally, it is another mistake to believe that "ration–
alism" for these thinkers meant nothing but a capacity for abstract,
scientific reasoning or an opportunity for the technical manipulation of
machines and men. On the contrary, rationalism meant that reason may
be employed in the world of human affairs quite differently from
the way it operates in the logic of science; it meant that man is
endowed with freedom and dignity and worth more than the irrational
"market price" put upon him everywhere. "Enlightenment is man's leav–
ing his self-caused immaturity." That is Kant speaking, not Freud.
It is time to reconsider these aspects of the Enlightenment, not to
mention Schiller's aesthetic philosophy or Goethe's pagan classicism
lest we see this movement merely in the simplified, thin version of the
contributors to the
Encyclopedie
or in the distorted image of romantic
visionaries. For if existentialism be nothing but the counter-Enlighten–
ment, then, I am afraid, its critics are right in saying that it is nothing
but another outburst of romantic irrationalism in our time. Mr. Barrett
has his own misgivings on this point. "It may seem strange," he admits
in the end, "that rationalism has been made so much of a target through–
out this book . . . The fact is that a good dose of intellectualism–
genuine intellectualism-would be a very helpful thing in American
life." Unfortunately, this belated and non-specific plea introduces a
note of unresolved discord; for the dominant theme running through
Mr. Barrett's study is that the intellect leads man into a desperate
cul de sac
from which nothing but his irrational powers can extricate
him.
Mr. Barrett leans toward this extreme solution because he deeply
feels the limits imposed upon the powers of the human mind. The
intellect encounters nothing but checks and failures. It cannot com–
prehend the contradictions and sufferings of human existence. It cannot
even make peace in its own house: the logical foundations of mathe–
matics and physics also reveal surds and paradoxes. In short, reason
is a feeble master; and the abyss of the irrational and nothingness looms
everywhere. There is much to be said for this existential thesis that
we hover at the brink of nothingness; but Mr. Barrett again uses this
thesis in a deceptively ambiguous fashion. For it is one thing to say
that man is finite, in body, mind, or any other power-I don't know
anybody who has ever denied this; it is quite a different thing to say
that,
because
the powers of the human mind are finite, there must
be other sources of knowledge which carry us beyond them; or worse,
that there must be a kind of knowledge, not only "beyond reason,"
but "if need be,
against
reason" in the Kierkegaardian sense of being
