Affectivity, vulnerability and limits of scientific reason

Abstract

The present paper analyzes the notion of rationality typical of our culture, marked by the
scientific paradigm. According to this paradigm, reason has the ability to decipher the laws
imprinted in reality in a ‘clear and different’ way in order to dominate that same reality and
transform what it reads. This formulation leads to the non-recognition of the human being’s own
limit. The first goal of this paper is to understand reason from a new paradigm. The second one is
to study the connection of the question of affectivity with the essential vulnerability of the human
being and the consequences of this in moral action. The writing is structured in 5 sections. In the
first one, the notion of reason will be analyzed as it is conceived from the scientific model. The
second one will focus on the consequences that this notion has had on our culture. The third
section studies the question that meshes with all the others: the recovery of the cognitive value of
affections, in order to rethink, in the fourth section, the question of the practical use of reason and
moral action. Finally, a model of a work of art is proposed as a possibility of reencountering the
dimensions of the human being silenced by the scientist notion of truth.