Unreasonable rationality
Sir: I fully agree with the blunt but accurate observations of Melanie Phillips in her piece ‘Welcome to the Age of Irrationality’ (1 May). It is a good measure of the Western mind’s fall into murky confusion, and witless denial, that words like ‘rational’ and ‘secular’ have become prone to a transformation of their authentic meaning. But two points made by Phillips trouble me.
Is it really reasonable to saddle ‘the left’ with ‘distortions, fabrications and bullying’ in the same breath as she lauds ‘the right’ for their ‘attempt to uphold truth, reality and liberty’? Two, is it not too far-fetched to claim that Britain was ‘first into the Enlightenment’ but is ‘now first out’? Maybe we are all falling into the subtle trap of allowing our own rationality to be not quite as reasonable as it should be.
Alfred P. Zarb
Australia
Sir: On reason and religion (Melanie Phillips, 1 May), this verse by Abraham Cowley might help.
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