Values of modern culture: evolution of rationality

In the contemporary European philosophy and culture the understanding of the limits and contradictory nature of the classical type of rationality is formed. The classical concept of rationality is based on the interpretation of knowledge as the result of reason activity. Reason was considered as a natural ability of human nature. The crisis of the classical concept of rationality is caused by the following motives: 1) vague interrelationships of three classical paradigms (rationality as reason, as a system of methodological norms, as a feature of a cultural system 2) abstraction of the notion of reason; 3) specification and fragmentation of the sphere of reason. The image of the universal reason, which is present in the human being, in nature in its adequate and expedient form of the highest value, is destroyed. Real reason is limited, sometimes governed by unconsciousness impulses and inclinations. All spheres of culture, cognitive activity, mental production have their own specific forms of rationality. Criticism of scientific rationality is concerned with the intention to broaden scientific rationality by adding other types of rationality: myth, beliefs, religion, philosophy, art. Theoretical debates on this problem have different appraisals: from attempts to keep some features of classical rationality in a new form of rationality to attempts of creation of an entirely different type of rationality. After the collapse of classical rationality the search of a new rationality is directed to reinterpretation of the classical scheme (for example, the program of decentration, anti-foundationalism). Researches do not speak about the refusal from the classical scheme, but about its broadening and supplementing. One of the examples of rationality broadening is the refusal from reductionism: such an approach creates a lot of anti-reductionist interpretations based on the idea of the value of the Universe. The discrepancy of the cognitive situation of search of a new rationality is complicated by the growing tendency to irrationality which manifests in two forms: 1) theoretical (philosophy of life, existentialism, post-Freudism, etc.); 2) common discourse (analysis of non-traditional practice of communication; mystic, religious experiences, etc). As a result a paradoxical situation is formed: on the one hand, the criteria of rationality become more specific and precise (for instance, in sciences), on the other hand, these criteria become vague under the influence of irrationality. A narrow concept of rationality (criticism (K. Popper), explanation (S. Toulmin), standard within the boundaries of a scientific paradigm (T. Kuhn)) and a broad concept of rationality as a universal phenomenon which regulates human activity (D. Keens) are formed. In the present-day debates one can find a growing tendency to the homology of postmodernism which manifests in the representation of the plurality of reasons.

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