The rational and irrational are in conflict at every level, and language and imagery are haunted by death and entropy.
But the "things that bind us together", as Fraser puts it, can also be the source of irrational beliefs and intercommunal conflict, as the history of religion amply demonstrates.
According to psychological monism, motivational conflict and irrational action do not result from a 'struggle' between the rational and the non-rational aspects of the soul; what we call irrational must be understood as (bad) states of the rational soul.
Such an essentialist account of real and irrational numbers seems to conflict with the actual freedom mathematicians have to extend and invent, with Wittgenstein's intermediate claim (PG 334) that "[f]or [him] one calculus is as good as another," and with Wittgenstein's acceptance of complex and imaginary numbers.
I had never seen such a direct infusion of religion in politics, which has very dangerous potential because it introduces a new irrational element to the conflict.
The collection also affords a capital demonstration of how art can negotiate conflicts of rational and irrational values within its own sphere.
But they can lead to "conflicts of interest, the irrational and unconstructive allocation of resources, or their use by Congressional leaders as carrots and sticks to buy votes for larger measures that clearly lack majority support on the merits".
After all, you are faced with the reality of life in its most desperate forms, corruption, neglected and disenfranchised populations, conflict, senseless killing and mayhem, irrational behaviours, starvation, disease and death to name just a few.
The body becomes the stage on which is acted out this conflict between reason and the irrational.
Such an account would understand irrational human passions to be the source of conflict.
