Brain Food #511

Men without reason

Thoughts of the day

Good morning.

This is turning out to be a particularly long week, on top of a very long year.

In her seminal essay, A Room of One’s Own, Virginia Woolf wrote:

“Literature is strewn with the wreckage of men who have minded beyond reason the opinions of others.”

If a good proportion of the truths of life are to be found in the writings of some of the world’s greatest thinkers, then what we often witness as a lack of reason - interpreted as the inability of the mind to form logical judgements - is much more common than we think.

Common sense may not be that common. Yet, these are some of the comforts we can find in literature: to know that what we are dealing with is not unique just to us, or to our time.

Thankfully, it takes a quick look at the names on any bookshelf to see that the reasonable mind is the one that prevails.

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