Rationality

“This metaphysical ideal is actually an anarchistic ontology, because it presupposes that, as language users (involved in the exchange of declarative sentences), we are all ultimately plugged into the emergent rationality that results from the discovery that we can refine and standardize our declarative sentences so as to orient them toward the truth (i.e., logic and the dismemberment of reality into discrete parts). Anything that interferes with ascension into the rational sphere can be treated as a dysfunction or malfunction to be eliminated by the very rational means being developed, but, otherwise, all human beings are prepared, as human beings, to enter the free discursive marketplace.”

“The Axial Age can be defined as a new mode of rationality transcending ritual or a kind of secularization in which new modes of universal understanding transcend narrow or “compact” social groupings, drawing upon the simultaneous emergence of Greek Philosophy, the Hebrew prophets and Asian phenomena like Buddhism and Confucianism.”