THE Portuguese poet-philosopher, Fernando Pessoa (1888-1935), makes an observation about rationalism that the great master of paradox, G.K. Chesterton (1874-1936), would surely have been proud of. In his Philosophical Essays, written between 1905 and 1912, Pessoa explains that rationalism

“holds that the only things that can be affirmed as facts are those which reduce experience by reason to the co-ordination called science.”

In other words, that if something cannot be proven by way of intellectual deduction then a rationalist will accept that something is unknown. If something cannot be proven, however, it just as easily cannot be disproven. This, he tells us, is precisely why rationalism is different to atheism, and

“no atheist can describe himself as a rationalist unless he ignores the meaning of rationalism, of atheism, or of both. The truth is that atheism is not a form of disbelief, but of belief.”

Indeed, whilst you would expect an atheist to disbelieve in the existence of God he actually believes in the existence of not-God. Interestingly, Richard Dawkins (b.1941), one of life’s more outspoken atheists describes himself as a “passionate rationalist,” but as Pessoa’s remarks from over a century ago make clear you can’t have it both ways.

Pessoa goes on to describe rationalism as “knowledge bounded by ignorance” and insists that it is even more dangerous than the intolerance of atheism. This, the Portuguese explains, makes it less democratic in the sense that what it fails to understand it ignores completely. The inference being, it seems, that to dismiss something so readily allows for the rise of all kinds of belief-systems that threaten the well-being of society.

For me, this is something positive and ultimately demonstrates that those factors which cannot co-exist must go their separate ways. Modern advocates of democracy, of course, are far more knowledgeable about such matters and will only tolerate those belief-systems which help to reinforce the tenets of their own benevolent dictatorships.

Elsewhere, Pessoa mentions that we cannot assume that rationalism and agnosticism are the same thing, either, on account of the fact that

“agnosticism directly implies the affirmation that the unknown is unknowable [whilst] rationalism cannot say of the unknown that it is so far known as to be known to be unknowable.”