Limitations.

Wyeth, The Sea-Spider, 1914

Richard Harries, former Bishop of Oxford and honorary professor of theology at King's College, London, on the fallibility of reason, from 2010  ...

Albert Camus said that the body is as good a judge as the mind. We know what he means. When we meet someone for the first time the whole of us responds to that person. Later the mind may reflect on the encounter and think that they were likeable, or not, but that first meeting will be an important element in whether we want to follow up the relationship or not. Yet, though there is a great truth in what Camus said, I believe that in the end the mind must be the final judge. The body, with its instinctual response, can orientate the mind in a particular direction or nudge it in another one if it feels it is going wrong, but in the end the mind must decide, using rational criteria.

The same point can be made in relation to what is called conscience. Some people think of conscience as an inner voice making them feel guilty, or telling them what to do. But conscience, as Thomas Aquinas said, is the mind making moral judgements. It is a matter of the mind, not any inner voice. In short it is the considered judgment we make when we weigh up all the pros and cons in the light of our values and overall perspective on life. This is not to say that guilty feelings, or intuitions are unimportant. They are. Sometimes they can stop the mind going down a wrong track altogether. When we make a rational decision it is very good to take into account the totality of what we are feeling. But in the end we must try to think as rationally as possible.

So, in the light of these considerations I regard myself as a rationalist. I try to reflect rationally on all areas of life, and believe that reason must be the final test. But that is very far from saying that reason is always right. The most terrible decisions in history, from the inquisition to modern ethnic cleansing, have been made by rational men (it has mostly been men) on the basis of what they thought of were rational grounds, no doubt with a train of rational reasoning.

John Henry Newman said that the whole man moves, and paper logic is but the record of it. The mind is bound up with our whole being, including our feelings, the values we imbibed when young, our life experience and the decisions we have made in the past. There is no substitute for using our reason to the full, for being as rational as possible. But being rational includes looking at all these other factors which feed into the mind, and asking questions about them, as well as about the current assumptions and presuppositions of the society in which we live, for they also affect our understanding of what counts as reasoning.

William F. Buckley Jr., from Nearer, My God ... 

We do not abandon reason, we merely recognize its limitations. We reason to the existence of God, it is revealed to us that His Son was the incarnation, and that such was His love of us that He endured a torture excruciating in pain, and unique in aspect — the God of hosts, mutilated by His own creatures, whom He dies forgiving, loving. Can we do less? Yes, we do less, but we must try to do more, until we die.

And, finally, Jack London, from The Sea-Wolf

Do you know, I sometimes, catch myself wishing that I too were blind to the facts of life and only knew its fancies and illusions. They're wrong, all wrong, of course, and contrary to reason; but in the face of them my reason tells me, wrong and most wrong, that to dream and live illusions gives greater delight. And after all, delight is the wage for living. Without delight living is a worthless act. To labor at living and be unpaid is worse than to be dead. He who delights the most lives the most, and your dreams and unrealities are less disturbing to you and more gratifying than are my facts to me. I often doubt, I often doubt, the worthwhileness of reason. Dreams must be more substantial and satisfying. Emotional delight is more filling and lasting than intellectual delight by having the blues. Emotional delight is followed by no more than jaded senses which speedily recuperate. I envy you, I envy you.