Monday, January 15, 2018

Productive Reason, Unproductive Reason, Re-inversion

There can be little doubt of the value of Productive Reason--the immediate product of which is intelligent action, with the fruits of intelligent action among its mediate products.  In contrast, Philosophers have struggled to not only justify Unproductive Reason, e. g. Contemplation, but to elevate it over Productive Reason, e. g. Techne.  Nevertheless, their preference for that variety of mental process is susceptible to Marx' charge of Classism, i. e. that it expresses the privilege of the leisure class, and to Nietzsche's diagnosis that it is a symptom of the Ressentiment of the Weak, e. g. the insularity of the concept of Necessity in Deductive Logic.  So, as is the case in Marx's concept of the relation of Materialism to Spiritualism, and in Nietzsche's concept of the relation of the Morality of Strength to the Morality of Weakness, the concept of the relation between Productive Reason and Unproductive Reason constitutes a re-inversion of a usurpation that has characterized much Philosophy over the centuries.

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