Return to Reason (Paperback)

by Stephen Toulmin (Author)
Key Phrases: obliging stranger, United States, Solar System, World War (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly
Indictments of contemporary culture often blame its demise on an overdependence on rationality. Since at least the early 17th century, mathematical reasoning has reigned as a model of cultural inquiry, even infiltrating literary criticism in the guise of deconstruction. Yet the natural disasters and human atrocities of the late 20th century call into question reason's efficacy as a beacon for cultural well-being. In elegant prose, Toulmin (Cosmopolis), Henry R. Luce Professor at USC, contends that advocates of pure reason have forgotten "the complementary concept of reasonableness," a model of intellectual practice focused on values and experience rather than facts and theories. His rich conceptual history outlines the ways in which early modern science and philosophy separated reasonableness from rationality, and the resulting imbalance in all academic disciplines. Toulmin uses medical ethics to illustrate how an intellectual commitment to a single moral theory inadequately addresses the practical experiences, limits and values of a given patient and physician. Drawing on Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, William James, Wittgenstein and William Gass, Toulmin argues for redressing the balance between the Ideal (Reason) and the Actual (Reasonableness) in order to respect "the manual skills and practical experiences" of those who have the "right to be the intellectual equals of any system of theory." Although Toulmin is not as thoroughgoing in his denial of reason as Richard Rorty, who once claimed that reading novels best prepares one to do philosophy, he pleads eloquently for a new pragmatism that recovers the values of shared experience and practice for reflecting on the nature of truth.

Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

--This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

From Library Journal
Henry Luce Professor at the University of Southern California after a career at Oxford, Cambridge, and Northwestern, the 79-year-old Toulmin champions "reasonableness" against the imperialistic strictures of formal reasoning. He pursues two distinctions between formal and informal arguments and between the hard sciences and other claims to knowledge. "Horses need plants, and plants need sunlight, so horses need sunlight" is a formal argument depending on logical rules, meanings, and facts. If the facts are right, the conclusion is certain. The suggestion that it is more likely that Caesar first invaded Britain to stop cross-channel raiding than that he was pursuing a runaway mistress is an informal argument depending on historical and cultural contexts. All such arguments are inconclusive, but Toulmin argues that "pragmatism and skepticism are the beginning of a wisdom that is better than the dreams of the rationalists." Toulmin further states that Newtonian physics is a bad model for social science for instance, in trying to be universal, economics has sometimes caused local disasters and he believes that, by getting people together to grasp one another's stories, we can achieve reasonableness. But can we? Everyone could tell the bad guys in Westerns, and Trekkies knew Captain Kirk acted for the best, but not everyone thinks Hollywood got everything right. In a world in which moviemakers, publishers, politicians, and religious leaders influence the stories we get to think about, a little demonstrable proof would be handy. Leslie Armour, Univ. of Ottawa, Ont.
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 256 pages
• Publisher: Harvard University Press (September 30, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0674012356
• ISBN-13: 978-0674012356
• Product Dimensions: 9.1 x 5.8 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #525,313 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Don't agree with tiglath_iii's review, December 10, 2003

By	skeptical of both sides (New Haven, CT) - See all my reviews

My experience in reading this book has been opposite of what tiglath_iii describes. The point of this book is almost too clear, given the author's repeated efforts to summarize it clearly (i.e. "there is too much emphasis on reason and not enough consideration of practical and contextual factors in understanding, a situation that has developed in philosophy only since the seventeenth century and has become cemented in our thinking only in the twentieth"). To say "His name dropping is incessant and intrusive" is unfair: Every source discussed is well-introduced, and he seems to deliberately avoid making his argument too academic or too technical. I will grant that the idea could be expressed more concisely, but it seems to me that the point of the book is to show that concise, streamlined argumentation is very often artificially abstracted, and so its conclusions are very often "useful" in a limited sense. It seems to "practice what it preaches," in that sense. One can hardly fault Toulmin for writing in a sometimes meandering, anecdotal style when his subject is the damaging effects of overemphasizing logical argumentation.
I have been looking for writers (besides Rorty) who address the growing resistance of philosophers to the suggestions of the those in the humanities (in Toulmin's terms, defending "logic" against the "casuistry of rhetoric"), and Toulmin's book was just what I was looking for. I had trouble putting this book down once I started it, and wanted to read more when I was done.

25 of 40 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars A Few Nuggets in Muddy Waters., May 22, 2001

By	Joseph Suriol "Tiglath" (McLean, VA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: Return to Reason (Hardcover)

This is a book that fails to engage the reader. The subject is of immense interest to me, yet I found it hard to keep reading. Toulmin meanders and piles information and thoughts furiously in a way that distracts rather that concentrates the reader's attention. His name dropping is incessant and intrusive. Unlike Bertrand Russel, to whom he frequently refers, and who had a lucid, accessible way to layout complex thoughts, Toulmin, who doubtlessly has a mastery of the subject, joins the ranks of those who know much but can't communicate it well.

If one is prepared to make the crouching effort to pan for gold in this book, however, one doesn't end up empty handed. The book's premise of contrasting rationality and reasonableness deserves attention despite its difficult framing. Although the idea could have been expressed much more concisely. Reading Chapter 13 "Postcript: Living with Uncertainty" would suffice to know the central tenet of the book. The rest is background information delivered as intricate fill.

If I had to summarize the key points of each chapter I would have to read it several times. I read with a pen in my hand ready to mark memorable paragraphs and sentences to aid revision. There is very little I've marked in this book.