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Show Rationality and the Structure of the Self, Volume I: The Humean Conception 25 In the end, however, it is only philosophy's original identification with the systematic rational inquiry of Socrates - Epictetus' injunction to transgress in nothing the clear pronouncement of reason ... to live as one who is mature and proficient, and let all that seems best to you be a law that you cannot transgress. ... [to] attend to nothing but reason in all that [you] encounte[r]. ... to live as one who would wish to be a Socrates9 that remains impervious to defection, attack, or nonrational alternatives. It is impervious to defection because emerging fields that have defected have taken rational Socratic inquiry with them as their minimal foundations. It is impervious to attack because any such attack must presuppose its methods in order to be rationally intelligible. And it is impervious to nonrational alternatives because no such alternative competes with it on its own ground. Philosophy's greatest challenge, then, is to live up to its traditional, Socratic self-conception: conduct in all spheres that accords centrality to the character dispositions of transpersonal rationality. Under the historical circumstances earlier described, it is impossible to avoid calling into question the present-day adequacy of philosophy to meet this challenge, and so its right to insist on its self-definition as an exemplar of transpersonal rationality. Hence it is impossible to avoid questioning whether the character dispositions of transpersonal rationality can be as central to the structure of the self as they seemed to have been for Socrates and Epictetus. The problem would seem to be not that we so often violate Epictetus' injunction to "transgress in nothing the clear pronouncement of reason;" but rather that we so often transgress that clear pronouncement in precisely those areas of conduct in which reason is purported to reign supreme. One explanation would be Keynesian: that philosophers have been guilty of selfserving pretensions to rationality all along; and that philosophical practice has never consisted in anything more than psychological intimidation and the flouting of power imbalances under the guise of rational dialogue. According to this view, Epictetus' entreaties would be addressed precisely to those in need of transpersonal rationality as an inspiring ideal by which to moderate largely egocentric behavior. But another possibility is that we must rather take special care now, at the turn of the twenty-first century, to defend the centrality to philosophy of those character dispositions of transpersonal rationality the exercise of which have been so traditionally definitive of its practice. It might be that these dispositions, and so the traditional practice of philosophy itself - and so its adequacy as an exemplar of transpersonal rationality - are now under particularly severe attack, from both inside and outside the discipline, by concerted attempts to defend traditional power relations against the radically destabilizing effects of rational Socratic interrogation. The displacement of Op. cit. Footnote 1. 9 © Adrian Piper Research Archive Foundation Berlin |
