... The Human Cycle Chapter XIX The Curve of the Rational Age The present age of mankind may be characterised from this point of view of a graded psychological evolution of the race as a more and more rapidly accelerated attempt to discover and work out the right principle and secure foundations of a rational system of society. It has been an age of progress;... impinging on the same right in others. This is a necessary corollary of the primary principle on which the age of reason founds its initial movement. It is sufficient for the first purposes of the rational age that each man should be supposed to have sufficient intelligence to understand views which are presented and explained to him, to consider the opinions of his fellows and to form in consultation... total common judgment by which society must be ruled, his little brick in appearance insignificant and yet indispensable to the imposing whole. And it is sufficient also for the first ideal of the rational age that this common judgment should be effectively organised only for the indispensable common ends of the society, while in all else men must be left free to govern their own life according to their ...
... customary response to desire, need and circumstance,—it is these things that are canalised or crystallised in their social institutions. Man proceeds by various stages out of these beginnings towards a rational age in which his intelligent will more or less developed becomes the judge, arbiter and presiding motive of his thought, feeling and action, the moulder, destroyer and re-creator of his leading ideas... in its habit of mind, though perhaps it may still keep in capacity an enlivened intelligence or a profound or subtle spiritual receptiveness as its gain from the past. So long as the hour of the rational age has not arrived, the irrational period of society cannot be left behind; and that arrival can only be when not a class or a few but the multitude has learned to think, to exercise its intelligence... must take the form of an attempt to universalise first of all the habit of reason and the application of the intelligence Page 190 and intelligent will to life. Thus is instituted the rational age of human society, the great endeavour to bring the power of the reason and intelligence to bear on all that we are and do and to organise in their light and by their guiding force the entire existence ...
... right in others. This is a necessary Page 4 corollary of the primary principle on which the age of reason founds its initial movement. It is sufficient for the first purposes of the rational age that each man should be supposed to have sufficient intelligence to understand views which are presented and explained to him, to consider the opinions of his fellows and to form in consultation... total common judgment by which society must be ruled, the little brick in appearance insignificant and yet indispensable to the imposing whole. And it is sufficient also for the first ideal of the rational age that this common judgment should be effectively organised only for the indispensable common ends of the society, while in all else men must be left free to govern their own life according to their... ostentatious grossness and the magnitudes of its gulfs and distances. These have been the last results of the individualistic ideal and its democratic machinery, the initial bankruptcies of the rational age." Page 9 ...
... book The Human Cycle, Sri Aurobindo has expounded the psychology of social development and shown how human society has not only crossed over the infra-rational age of human development but has also traversed a long path on the curve of the rational age and stands today at the end of the curve of the Reason. Speaking of the modern society, Sri Aurobindo points out that it has discovered a new principle ...
... response to desire, need and circumstance, — it is these things that are canalised or crystallised in their social institutions. Man proceeds by various stages out of these beginnings towards a rational age in which his intelligent will more or less developed becomes the judge, arbiter and presiding motive of his thought, feeling and action, the moulder, destroyer and re-creator of his leading ideas... its habit of mind, though perhaps it may still keep in capacity an enlivened intelligence or a profound or subtle spiritual receptiveness as its gain from the past. So long as the hour of the rational age has not arrived, the irrational period of society cannot be left behind; and that arrival can only be when not a class or a few but the Page 267 multitude has learned to think, ...
... evolution. The fact that from Aristotle onwards Western philosophy considered it to be the highest level limits its outlook even in the present times. The transition from the mythological to the rational age in ancient Greece took place at the time of Pericles, in Greece’s Golden Age. The instruments of this transition were the sophists – Protagoras, Gorgias, Prodicos, Hippias, Critias, and others – ...
... of liberty, equality and fraternity. He finds that these three ideals served the purpose of motivating the Page 125 great experiments that humankind conducted during the curve of the Rational Age, the Age which was ushered in by the Renaissance in Europe, the age through which humankind is at present passing, and which has now reached a kind of an end and which has the possibility of opening ...
... infra-rational, and that even he has some kind of implicit reasoning and a more or less crude supra-rational element. And it is not unlikely that at a certain stage of development, the infra-rational age may arrive at a lofty order of civilization. It may have great intuitions of the meaning of general intention of life, admirable ideas of the arrangement of life, a harmonious, well- adapted durable ...
... implicit Page 2 power of reasoning and a more or less crude supra-rational element. It has also been argued that it is not unlikely that at a certain stage of development, the infra-rational age may arrive at a lofty order of civilization . 4 It may have great intuitions of the meaning of general intention of life, admirable ideas of the arrangement of life, a harmonious, well-adapted ...
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