He treated Macaulay's argument as simply irrational; an attack upon the reasoning faculty; an example of the saying of Hobbes, that when reason is against a man, a man will be against reason (J.S. Mill 1969, 95)." Yet the younger Mill's account of his father's reaction to Macaulay's "famous attack" (as the son later described it) is misleading in at least two respects.
In notes appended to "Mortality," Hitchens observes: "Always prided myself on my reasoning faculty and my stoic materialism.
The main activity of the reasoning faculty is to enquire and to learn.
It is indeed a capability inherent in human nature, for the faculty that perceives and corrects errors of judgment is the reasoning faculty itself.
Specific skills like horsemanship make judgments about their own subject matter; the reasoning faculty judges other things and also its own prior judgments.
Epictetus would reply that autonomy is guaranteed not by the absence of antecedent causes but by the very nature of the reasoning faculty.
But he also believes that grace is needed both to help the natural principles "against those things that tend to stupefy [them] and to hinder [their] free exercise," and to sanctify "the reasoning faculty and" assist "it to see the clear evidence there is of the truth of religion in rational arguments" ("Miscellanies," nos. 626, 628; Edwards 1957–, vol. 18, 155, 156f).
"Colonialism is not a thinking machine, nor a body endowed with reasoning faculties.
So far as I can tell, the White House's proposed "compromise" in the contraception-sterilization-plan B-ella controversy asks the parties involved to compromise their reasoning faculties and play a game of "let's pretend" instead.
They may nevertheless have strongly developed critical reasoning faculties that allow them a high degree of competency to exercise local autonomy skills.
Arendt's defense of opinion is motivated not just by her belief that truth leaves no room for debate or dissent, or for the acknowledgment of difference, but also by her conviction that our reasoning faculties can only flourish in a dialogic context.
