Scientific Realism and the Romantic Reaction Against Reason

Abstract

A so-called Romantic counterpoint to the proclamation of the hegemony of reason by Enlightenment thinkers blossomed in the nineteenth century in the form of philosophies that explicitly challenged the rationalist domination of Western philosophy and the truth claims of modern science. Thinkers such as Kierkegaard, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and Bergson formulated philosophies in which reason played only a limited role either in understanding human affairs or in apprehending reality. For Kierkegaard, reality transcended reason, while for Schopenhauer, human will was the ultimate reality. For Nietzsche, will was the dominant feature of humanity, which guaranteed that reason could not achieve a synoptic understanding of experience, let alone apprehend reality: reasoning could at best achieve partial perspectives on human experience. Bergson offered the most developed alternative to reason, especially modern science-based reasoning, to penetrate experience to reality.