If the house on the lake can become a new iteration of a philosophical retreat, that would pay homage to its first owner much more than any number of… - Julian Baggini

To be truly rational we need to acknowledge the limits of our rationality: nothing is more irrational than an unwarranted faith in reason.

The rehabilitation of reason is urgent because it is only through the proper use of reason that we can find our way out of the quagmires in which many big issues of our time have become stuck. Without a clear sense of what it means for one point of view to be more reasonable than another, it seems that the position one adopts is ultimately based on nothing more than personal opinion or preference.

This point is critical. Reason is often assumed to be by definition disinterested. Disinterested reason has its place, of course, in mathematics and science, but sometimes it can legitimately be very interested indeed. Reason needs to be objective, not disinterested, and this means it can recognise the objective existence of needs and desires, good and bad states.