Deconstructing the Thesis of Human Rationality as the Sole Faculty of Knowledge

Abstract: This study contends that human rationality is not the sole faculty of knowledge. The Affective Sphere with the Heart as the Centre, an Engaged Personality and Human Emotions are also reliable sources of knowledge among others. The excessive credit assigned to rationality as the major tool in the acquisition of knowledge and the dismissive manner in which some philosophers have thought and written about the affective sphere and the human heart has prompted this hypothesis. Plato, Aristotle, Thomas Aquinas, Augustine, R. Descartes, I. Kant and other thinkers, gave human rationality an exhorted position in the history of thought. They emphasized that all our emotions must be subjected to the light and the dictates of reason. Rationality, for them, was indispensable for the flourishing of the human person. Awards at intellectual ceremonies and the criteria for scholarships justifies the above stance. General Point Average (GPA), the product of cognitive skills is King. Our studies testify that the heart, an engaged personality and human emotions are also sources of knowledge. The scope of the heart in the cognitive process is broader than the scope of the intellect. As such, to arrive at a vast spectrum of knowledge, recourse must be made to the heart and the intellect and the will and not just the intellect. This approach also guarantees holistic education. We employed arguments from Dietrich Von Hildebrand, Stephen Darwall, Yunus Tuncel, B. Pascal, B. Spinoza, D. Hume, L. Congiunti, R. Sokolowski and others to deconstruct the supremacy of reason. Also, we underscore the invaluable role of the heart in acquiring knowledge. Consequently, we maintain that rationality is not the sole faculty of knowledge. The pseudo idolatry of reason has to be subjected to critical scrutiny.