Voltaire's Bastards: The Dictatorship of Reason in the West by John Saul

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Author: John Saul
Release date: November, 1993
Media: Paperback
ISBN: 0679748199

Siding with what is human.

For as long as I can remember, pretty well every serious book that I have read, books from many different areas and often by outstanding scholars, has reached the conclusion that the world is headed for catastrophe because it is fundamentally in error about so many things. And now Saul comes along to make matters even worse by offering a mass of evidence that serves to confirm the truth of what all of those other writers were saying.

And he's certainly right about the ideology of the supremacy of Reason having assumed the form of a ruthless and intolerant Dictatorship. The signs of this are everywhere in evidence, and only someone very naive could believe otherwise.

One of my favorite writers is Montaigne, and I think that what makes Montaigne so important and valuable, especially to us today, is that he was characterized above all, not merely by reason, which is common enough, but by a REASONABLE, AND NOT EXCESSIVE, USE OF REASON. In other words, he knew that reason had its limits, that it was a tool limited in its applicability and useful only for certain purposes, and he had the good sense to know when we should stop.

There is in Montaigne a sanity, a balance, an affability, and a modesty and tolerance that I've found in no other European thinker, and that reminds one more of the Chinese sage. But instead of fastening on the truly civilized pattern established by Montaigne, Europe instead chose Descartes, Apostle of the Excessive Use of Reason, with the massive and depressing consequences Saul so eloquently describes.

The Cartesian ideology of Reason fueled and continues to fuel the relentless Juggernaut of Reason now underway that threatens to end up crushing everything beneath its wheels. Montaigne would have been appalled. He stood for something more human, as does Saul. - an Amazon customer review

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