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This article reflects on the real world relevance of rational approaches to grantmaking. The characteristics and environment of foundation work are outlined, then both traditional and newer funding practices are analysed. Unpacking implicit assumptions of a rational approach, eight costs to foundations and their grantees are identified. The final sections of the paper consider what grantmaking for a complex and disorderly world might encompass. In conclusion, while rational approaches to grantmaking provide a comfortable aura of certainty, funders need to adapt to a little discomfort.

Between the 18th and the 20th centuries, modernity was built on rationalism, individualism (the individual seen as a unit) and on the social contract of the Republic, united and indivisible. The mo...

Although he is often included in the Pantheon of Conservative thinkers, Oakeshott has much to teach the modern left, says Andrew Gamble. He examines Oakeshott's politics of scepticism, whereby sustainable and well-adapted state institutions arise from experimentation and contingency rather than any grand political project.

In this paper, we argue that ‘Weak Modal Rationalism’, which is the view that ideal primary positive conceivability entails primary metaphysical possibility, is self-defeating. To this end, we outline two reductio arguments against ‘Weak Modal Rationalism’. The first reductio shows that, from supposing that ‘Weak Modal Rationalism’ is true, it follows that conceivability both is and is not conclusive evidence for possibility. The second reductio shows that, from supposing that ‘Weak Modal Rationalism’ is true, it follows that it is possible that ‘Weak Modal Rationalism’ is necessarily false, and hence that ‘Weak Modal Rationalism’ is false. We then argue that adopting a weaker position according to which conceivability is merely prima facie evidence for possibility provides limited protection from our criticism of conceivability arguments.1

The relationship between life, death, and personhood is articulated by the body, without which there would be no such relationship to begin with. How do secular institutions and modes of knowledge understand, produce, and manage this relationship? What can this tell us about the secular and the body in its purview? As part of a larger ethnography of “American Immortalism,” I tackle these issues through a case study of “neuropreservation” in cryonics, the practice of preserving people at very low temperatures at the time of legal death with the hope that they might be revived in the future. Cryonicists are scientifically oriented secularists, and yet find themselves in frequent conflict with secular medical and legal institutions over the categories of life, death, and personhood. Whilst recent critical reevaluations of secularism focus on its entanglements with religion, these differences serve to highlight some tensions internal to the secular as they are played out in the United States. I will use the figure of the cryopreserved patient to focus on the secular body as a body produced institutionally in the interplay between law and medicine, suspended in the indeterminacies of the mind–body problem and caught in the tensions between two secular epistemologies, rationalism and materialism. What appears in this midst is speculative matter, matter that has indeterminate speculative status, but serves as a medium for speculation.

Rationalism is ‘the stylistic criterion of all respectable politics’. So lamented political philosopher Michael Oakeshott in a series of essays published in the 1940s and 1950s. Rationalism, for Oakeshott, is shorthand for a propensity to prioritise the universal over the local, the uniform over the particular and, ultimately, principle over practice. It culminates in the triumph of abstract principles over practical knowledge in a manner that erodes our ability to engage in political activity. Although Oakeshott’s critique was made with the practice and study of politics in mind, it has a wider relevance. For rationalism, as we see it, has become the dominant style in public law. We draw upon Oakeshott’s critique to elucidate the risks associated with rationalism in public law and call for a renewed engagement with practical knowledge in the study of the constitution.

I begin by offering a brief definition of the term “rationalism”, first in its strictly philosophical sense as denoting preference for the use of reason over other means of acquiring knowledge, and then in its broader sense as a term denoting patient reasoning, scepticism and reappraisal of received opinions. In this latter sense rationalism informed the critical movement in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century European thought which challenged dogmatic theology, weakened ecclesiastical power and secularized culture. Next, I briefly examine the currency and characteristics of Russian rationalism, particularly as the radical intelligentsia of the 1860s understood the concept (which they often described as “realism”). I then turn to the work of Petr Tkachev, who is chiefly remembered as an emigre revolutionary strategist of the 1870s, an advocate of seizure of political power by a conspiratorial minority and therefore a possible forerunner of Lenin, but who was also a prolific writer on social and philosophical matters before he was arrested and imprisoned in 1869 in connection with the Nechaev affair. I focus on an article, “Essays from the History of Rationalism” and associated fragments, which were seized by the police in 1866 and which were not published in Tkachev's lifetime. Tkachev's article describes and discusses the history of religious dogmatism and persecution in medieval and early-modern Europe. Scholars have often taken it to be a significant original work. In fact, I claim, it is heavily dependent on a contemporaneous book, the History of the Rise and Influence of the Spirit of Rationalism written by the Irish historian William Lecky. Tkachev did acknowledge his debt to Lecky, but not the extent or nature of the debt; indeed he distanced himself from Lecky. And yet he not only plagiarized the greater part of his article from Lecky (who wrote far more elegantly than Tkachev himself) but also drew from Lecky, no less than from Marx, his thesis that economic considerations underlie ideas and values, as well as the dense factual information for which he admitted Lecky was his source. In this respect Tkachev's article illustrates the derivative nature of Russian rationalism and also indicates the extent to which British influence was overtaking French and German influence in the radical intelligentsia in the 1860s. At the same time, Tkachev's “rationalism” lacks the broad humanism and toleration that infuses the spirit of rationalism as Lecky conceives of it. His article thus reveals the transformation and impoverishment of a European body of thought when it was transplanted to Russian soil and exemplifies features of the cast of mind of the pre-revolutionary Russian radical intelligentsia on which Sergei Bulgakov remarked in a passage in his contribution to the Landmarks volume that I have taken as my starting point.

The Mu‘tazila was a current of thought that flourished in Iraq in the third/ninth century, but whose creative influences continued at least into the twelfth century. It had a fundamental role in Islamic history and thought, particularly in the early period when it became the state theology under the ‘Abbasid caliph al-Ma’mun. The Mu‘tazila developed a type of rationalism, partly influenced by Greek philosophy, based around three fundamental principles: the oneness and justice of God, human freedom of action and the creation of the Qur’an. During the history of Islamic thought, these ideas were challenged and then abandoned in the name of an orthodoxy that found expression particularly in Ash‘arism. Despite this crisis, the Mu‘tazila survived in Islamic thought, most importantly in relation to Shi‘ite theology. In modern times it has seen a revival, at a moment when the evolution of Islamic history has been obliged to confront the modern world. Many contemporary Islamic thinkers have looked to the rationalism of the Mu‘tazila and its principles in an attempt to give new life to Islamic thought, seeking to equip it to face the challenges of history.

Manfred Buhr ( 2007 ) suggested a powerful and subtle critique of European nations. He observed that their histories reveal “a painful process”. His antidote is a universalism that takes a deeper understanding of the Enlightenment project of reason. Buhr endorsed emancipation and human dignity through the Enlight-enment rationalism of Kant. He allowed for cultural difference in attaining human dignity. Martha Nuss-baum devised the Capabilities Approach along Aristote-lian lines, to provide a normative account to evaluate human functioning. Capabilities have real life poten-tial for programs that reassess and empower women in the developing world. The literature inspired by this capabilities approach addresses specifi c communities where women were empowered by giving them choices about the quality of their lives in such areas as educa-tion, gender relations, activities outside the home, mi-crocredit, and training. Introduction In one of his last writings, Manfred Buhr ( 2007 ) sug-gested a powerful and subtle critique of European na-tions. He observed that their histories reveal “a painful process” (

This paper considers whether having an obligation to do something involves having a special kind of reason to do it. I focus on those obligations which arise from the exercise of normative powers e.g. commands and promises. Various theories of obligation are examined, particularly that of Joseph Raz. I conclude that rationalism fails, at least with respect to promissory obligation.

Poor Oxford, torn first by Romanism scarcely disguised, and next by Rationalism quite as naked! Church of the Reformation, ancient bulwark of the Protestant faith! Strange children are nurtured in thy bosom.British and Foreign Evangelical Review (Jan. 1856).

In the last decade or so, security scholars have paid attention to non-material factors in trying to make sense of the varied behavior of states in Pacific Asia. Although they do not totally reject material rationalism, constructivists have found it inadequate or misleading and sought to prove that ideational factors help shed better light on states' security policies. Constructivism on security in Pacific Asia has at least three variants: Cultural realism, social interactionism, and historical culturalism. Cultural realists build their theories on the concept of strategic culture, emphasizing the role of central decision-makers; social interactionists stress the importance of socialization; historical culturalists pay considerable attention to cultural change in domestic political attitudes. This paper asks whether constructivism, one of today's most influential competing paradigms, has supplanted or supplemented realist perspectives on national security. As the latest challenger in security studies, constructivism has become a general approach in security studies, but still needs to prove itself further before it can claim to be superior to realism. This paper also suggests what its proponents should do to improve their social theories and farther shows that constructivism should be treated essentially as a theory of difference, which implies that states are most likely to behave in ways that conform to balance-of-threat logic.

The charged debate on the ‘C-S-R-ization’ of organizational practices seems to have produced two opposing and seemingly incompatible explanations for why organizations should engage in corporate social responsibility (CSR): one, the normative rationale based on an appeal to ethics; and the other, the instrumental rationale, based on an appeal to business pragmatism. This paper argues that a missing link in this debate is the failure to recognize that the normative and instrumental approaches to corporate social responsibility are underpinned by substantively, differentiating, relative logics of emotional rationalism on the one hand, and instrumental rationalism on the other. The paper makes a case that for CSR as a management practice to be practicable and actionable within a sustainable business agenda, it will need to be stripped of its current normative undertone and reconstructed in the instrumentally, pragmatic (utlish) language of business. Otherwise, the whole concept of CSR may continue to dwell in the realm of abstract theorizing without yielding many beneficial and practicable outcomes. The paper concludes that such an approach that situates CSR within a pragmatic business lingua, rather than a non-business lingua, will help in legitimizing CSR as a ‘neutral’ management practice.

Rationalism in the Netherlands is characterised by pragmatism. As Charles Rattray explains it is a practical bent that was driven in the 20th century by the exigencies of building cheaply and quickly a large amount of social housing on a relatively small amount of land. It is a strand that has been underscored by a belief in reason across time and a confidence in an analytical approach. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Akos Moravanszky explains why for him ‘the traces of Mediterranean Rationalism in the new Swiss-German architecture are like the imitation stitching on the moulded plastic dashboard of a new car’. It is an influence which, despite the undeniable impact of Aldo Rossi and the Ticino School at ETH Zurich in the 1970s, remains skin-deep, sharing little with the present in terms of ideology or the interpretation of the historic past. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

What use is a policy cycle? Plenty, if the aim is to help public servants make sense of the policy task. Setting out a sequence of steps to turn ideas into Cabinet recommendations can provide structure in the otherwise dizzying world of policy-making. It would be a mistake, though, to see a policy cycle as other than a first step, a guide amid complexity. To read the policy cycle as rationalism revived is to misjudge both form and intent. Debate is a wonderful thing, and we are pleased the policy cycle described in The Australian Policy Handbook (Bridgman and Davis 2000) has stimulated a response. Although we believe a critique in the June issue of the Australian Journal of Public Administration (Everett 2003) is misguided, it invites reflection on the purpose - and limitations - of a policy cycle approach.

Discussion on policy-making and of effective policy-making mechanisms is once again emerging in the policy literature. Much of the debate in the past focused on whether the method applied in the physical sciences was appropriate for policy and policy-making. Current debate appears to be reverting to some form of rationalism in so far as good policy processes are seen to yield the most effective results. This article discusses what appears to be a revival of rationalism — the process-oriented policy cycle. The article argues that there is little doubt that effective policy-making requires good process but it is erroneous to suggest that the content of policy, particularly in the case of contentious decisions, is derived from the policy cycle itself. It is argued further that the policy cycle is not a substitute for the actual making of decisions but an administrative and bureaucratic mechanism for effectively setting in place a process once the difficult decisions have been made.

Much of Western speculative metaphysics has subscribed to what has been called “explanatory rationalism,” which holds that there is a reason for everything that is and for the way everything is. Theodicies, or metaphysical attempts to solve the problem of evil, have relied on a special application of this principle of explanatory rationalism, namely, the principle of plenitude, which holds that the evil in the world is a necessary ingredient in the world's overall perfection or degree of reality. This essay argues that the principle of plenitude is aesthetically motivated, and that only in art and perhaps in revealed religion can the demands of explanatory rationalism be satisfied.

Decision-makers are sometimes depicted as impulsive and overly influenced by ‘hot’, affective factors. The present research suggests that decision-makers may be too ‘cold’ and overly focus on rationalistic attributes, such as economic values, quantitative specifications, and functions. In support of this proposition, we find a systematic inconsistency between predicted experience and decision. That is, people are more likely to favor a rationalistically-superior option when they make a decision than when they predict experience. We discuss how this work contributes to research on predicted and decision utilities; we also discuss when decision-makers overweight hot factors and when they overweight cold factors. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Popper's attitude to traditions is fundamentally rationalistic. He analyses traditions, along with other institutions and practices, in terms of their efficiency in promoting goals which can be specified independently of the traditions themselves. Hayek, by contrast, looks at traditions in terms of their contributions to the survival of the culture in which they are embedded, something whose evaluation may be opaque even to people within the culture. Both these approaches are flawed compared to Oakeshott's insistence that traditions are not goal-oriented, and that goals cannot be specified independently of agents’forms of life. Oakeshott's views constitute a via media between Popperian rationalism and Hayekian anti-rationalism.

This paper examines the current endeavours to render the Australian economy more economically efficient. While the case for microeconomic reform is clear in economic theory, Australian public policy analysts are less sanguine about the possibilities for its long-term success. This paper seeks to develop the parameters of a simple general model to explain both why microeconomic reform proposals are dominant today on the Australian policy agenda and, more importantly, what the conditions are for their success or failure. This general model provides a framework that will allow further elaboration in case studies of particular episodes of microeconomic reform. The paper concludes pessimistically; micro-economic reform has been subsumed into the normal political agenda contests of Australian party politics. The pressures of such “politics” inclines Australian reforming towards incrementalism, rather than the Simon-style rationalism implicit from micro-economics. This mode of policy implementation will inhibit microeconomic reform in the longer term.

What passes for constitutional, Robert Miller, editor of Economic Affairs, argues against such ‘constructivist rationalism’ and for piecemeal reforms. He urges would-be reformers to look again at the Parliament Act 1911 and to follow the wise advice of Hayek and Popper.

At one time, the prevailing view amongst Christian clergy in Britain would have been sympathetic towards the spontaneous order of the market economy and not sympathetic towards socialism. The spontaneous order, would, of course, have included the rich tapestry of philanthropic organisations and mutual societies that used to provide welfare for the poor. The clergy today are not generally sympathetic towards the market order. An understanding of Austrian ideas takes us to the view that, at the very least, socialist rationalism is the common enemy of Christians and those who support a free market order.