I learned about philosopher Krista Lawlor’s book, Being Reasonable: The Case for a Misunderstood Virtue, from a New Yorker article by Nikhil Krishnan. “In Defense of the Moderate” appealed to my sense of moderation, but I was conflicted about the degree I wanted to be reasonable in what so often seems to be a highly unreasonable world. Here’s a PDF file in case that link doesn’t work for you.
In Defense of the Moderate | The New Yorker
Reading Krishnan’s article, I wondered if being reasonable amounted to surrendering to the most extreme political, religious, and other sorts of factions that bedevil modern societies. Meaning, if people I consider to be narrow-minded zealots are going full speed ahead on trying to inflict their views on others, isn’t the proper response to fight that zealotry with every tool at my disposal — which didn’t seem to include reasonableness?
In the end I decided to buy Lawlor’s book, even though I had some qualms when I saw on the Amazon listing that it was published by Harvard University Press, cost $35 for only 224 pages, and the author is a Professor of Philosophy at Stanford University. Images of indecipherable academic-speak danced through my head, but I ordered the book anyway.
I’m glad I did. After reading the Introduction and first chapter, it’s clear that Lawlor is a gifted writer with a lot of skill in presenting philosophical ideas in a clear, entertaining fashion. She makes the, well, reasonable point that most of us have little difficulty describing a courageous person, or a loving person, or a rational person, but a reasonable person is more difficult to pin down.
Lawlor considers the easy way out: that reasonableness is just how an average person acts reasonably. This seems to be how the law looks upon a reasonable act. However, other virtues like courage aren’t like this. We don’t consider that a courageous person merely has the average amount of courage among the general population. So she sets out in her book to describe the qualities of a reasonable person.
The Introduction provides a glimpse of where her quest will lead.
Being reasonable is a positive human trait, involving among other things being sensitive to another’s situation, seeing their point of view, and being ready to see reason. As with other positive traits — say, being generous or courageous — the question of whether you possess or show the trait is not subjective, or in the eye of the beholder. And the idea of a reasonable person is not the idea of the average or typical person.
When you count on your neighbor, or your boss, or your spouse to be reasonable, you are not counting on them to do what everyone typically does. You are counting on them to be sensitive to your situation, to be fair, to see reason, and so on. These qualities may not make your neighbor, boss, or spouse a typical member of society, but instead may make them stand out from the herd.
One natural idea is that “reasonable” is synonymous with “rational,” and a reasonable person is just a rational person. Offhand, you might think that anything a reasonable person could do, a rational person could do, and vice versa. We can call this the “rationality hypothesis” about reasonableness. There is nothing more to being reasonable than being rational… One theme of this book is that the rationality hypothesis is wrong. Being reasonable is not just a matter of being rational.
So far, what I most enjoy about the book is how Lawlor emphasizes the importance of doing our best to see another person’s point of view. This seems to be a key dividing line between rationality and reasonableness.
It might be rational for a car salesman to try to get me to pay the highest possible price for a vehicle, because this would get him the most money on a commission and also the largest dealer profit. But that isn’t reasonable, since I have a desire to pay a fair price, and the deal we reach shouldn’t be tilted too strongly either toward the dealership or me, but end up somewhere in a reasonable middle ground.
To accomplish this, the salesman needs to try my understand my point of view, just as I need to try to understand his point of view. Lawlor writes:
When you count on your neighbor, or your boss, or your spouse to be reasonable, you are counting on them to be sensitive to your situation, to be fair, to be ready to see reason, and so on. Why does a reasonable person have these qualities? We might start by saying that what is essential to reasonableness is an ability to see other people’s points of view.
This is a good start, though only a start, first because seeing a point of view is a metaphor that needs explaining. Moreover, seeing others’ points of view is far from the whole story: A reasonable person does not see others’ points of view in a cold, calculating way — there are positive social motives that move a reasonable person. Also, a reasonable person does not try to see everything from another’s point of view, but instead focuses on certain things.
And a reasonable person is not a pushover, uncritically taking up the perspective of others. There are critical abilities involved in being a reasonable person. If you are a reasonable person there is a special way you see another’s point of view.
These are just quotations from the Introduction to her book, so naturally Lawlor has much more to say about how a reasonable person behaves. I aspire to being such a person, though I often fall short of being as reasonable as I’d like to be. Hopefully her book will help me in that regard. I’ll share more ideas from it as I get further into the book.
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Do you think it’s reasonable that sevadors work their butts off for free ?Has the word reached you that a fellow died in the bathroom of the local sangat while doing seva. And apparently had this wish. Maybe there’s a lawsuit for his heirs. He was a nice guy only 60 years old, a freak accident maybe. A heart attack it was last Saturday. He went out like Elvis .Then there’s this
https://www.reddit.com/r/Sikh/comments/1sgtfgd/cult_of_radha_soami_satsang_beas_head_meets_drugs/
@ Ronald
The same facts can be seen from different angles by different people and given different meaning and value.
In the bygone days I was quite active as sevadar in various capacities.
In doing so I came to learn many people from many different classes in society, characters and professional skills etc all people I would have otherwise never met.
In doing so I developed also skills I would otherwise never had to develop, psychological, social and of course the different practical skills certain sevas demanded..
It would be shameful fir me, to say the least, if I would look upon it with other emotions than gratitude etc.
That said what every I did and was done by others, can also be seen as the exploitation of naive gullible people that, to use your words, worked their butts off for free.
Not a single hair on my body regrets those days
Whether I could and would do the same these days remains an open question ..as … “the causes and conditions” .. to use the words of a Zen teacher .. have changed dramatically in such an way that would make it impossible for me and others to work together.
To be frankly .. in those days, we, my dear late friend and the writer, never looked upon our activities as seva .. we just loved the whole thing.
And Ronald .. We had not to pay for our volunteer work, we could enjoy ourselves for free … in contrast to the rumors that have come to me lately that more and more organisations have their volunteer workers pay their stay
And I should not forget to honour the people that for years prepared good food, made delicious apple pies and endless amounts of coffee …all for free …. hAHAHAHA
Well I’m told being a guru is the greatest seva of all .Then there’s this :
Religious group fined after volunteer died after fall from unsafe scaffold tower https://share.google/ch9EZ4YwN73Y7D9vB
@ Ronald
Yes, yes .. I know and many other things too.
Yes, yes .. being a guru is not simple, if only that they are not free to accept or refuse it and act as they deem fit.
Fortunately for them … as far as I am able to see … the proces they have to go through sets them psychological free from everybody .
What I write is just an psychological assesment of their human behaviour and has nothing to do with their spiritualn attaiments if at all
There is most certainly and often a conflict between what helps or hurts others and what would benefit ourselves, in both the short term, and possibly the long term. Do we not see it? Or do we deny even seeing it?
Unless we are linked to a higher standard of ethics, one that refuses to allow us to turn away, we may never fully understand others, but perceive we understand them perfectly. Such is the corruption of self-interest at work, reinventing reasonableness moment by moment.
Hello Spencer,
I would like to communicate with you other than on churchofthechurchless.com l received Nam in the 1970’s. If you are prepared to communicate, I can provide an email address.
Reason and Doubt come from same pool.
Smart souls pick the doubt so as to move forward
Reason can give you knowledge but not energy.
Doubt is subconscious mind
operating.
I have to wonder whether being reasonable is not something we acquire or aspire to, but something we are either born with or formed by our upbringing and culture. I can’t imagine someone like Trump being reasonable, primarily because his genetic makeup is fixed toward being a narcissistic sociopath and is no doubt compounded by his formative years.
The same goes for all of us (in less extreme ways), as we are all products of our genes and culture. What is considered reasonable in one culture is not seen as such in another. The human race can be seen to be collectively both unreasonable and irrational. A reasonable species, seeing the way it is contaminating their environment, the seas and atmosphere, would collectively collaborate to stop and reverse the situation.
I have just watched Kyiv being bombed again, and off the coast near me, tons of rubbish have been regularly tipped over a coastal cliff, killing wildlife and washing out to sea. Totally unreasonable, but the perpetrators probably believe they are being rational – in their own way.
We ‘reasonably’ want to maintain a certain standard of living; we want our often-divisive beliefs and opinions to remain; basically, we don’t want (or can’t) change. Other creatures do not have the mental capacity to affect their environment in the way we do; their lives are dictated by natural laws, whereas we think and rationalise our way into situations and conditions that circumnavigate (to a large extent) the balancing laws of nature.
It should come as no surprise if we make the planet uninhabitable for ourselves and sadly, other species. Perhaps only those individuals and groups with huge resources will be able to exist somehow; perhaps believing that, as they are so important, it is reasonable and rational that they should survive!