"Reason itself is fallible, and this fallibility must find a place in our logic"
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A lot of philosophy flatters itself with the fantasy of a pristine referee: Reason, capital R, calling fouls from some neutral perch. Abbagnano punctures that comfort. If reason is fallible, then the real task of logic isn’t to build a crystal palace where contradictions never enter; it’s to design a structure that anticipates cracks, missteps, and revisions without collapsing into “anything goes.”
The line lands with quiet provocation because it treats fallibility not as a scandal but as a datum. “Must find a place” shifts the burden: error isn’t an external threat to be excluded by stricter rules; it’s an internal feature to be accommodated. Subtext: the classical dream of airtight deduction, untouched by history or human limitation, is a category mistake. Humans do the reasoning. Humans bring bias, finitude, incomplete information, and the tendency to mistake coherence for truth.
Context matters. Abbagnano, associated with an Italian current of “positive existentialism,” was writing in the long shadow of systems that claimed absolute rational authority - from grand metaphysical architectures to the political rationalizations of the 20th century. Against both, he pushes a more modest, accountable rationality: reason that knows it can fail, and therefore builds in checks, methods, and openness to correction.
It’s also a sly defense of pluralism in thought. A logic that admits fallibility leaves room for probability, hypothesis, and lived uncertainty. Not irrationalism, but a rationality mature enough to include its own limits as part of its operating instructions.
The line lands with quiet provocation because it treats fallibility not as a scandal but as a datum. “Must find a place” shifts the burden: error isn’t an external threat to be excluded by stricter rules; it’s an internal feature to be accommodated. Subtext: the classical dream of airtight deduction, untouched by history or human limitation, is a category mistake. Humans do the reasoning. Humans bring bias, finitude, incomplete information, and the tendency to mistake coherence for truth.
Context matters. Abbagnano, associated with an Italian current of “positive existentialism,” was writing in the long shadow of systems that claimed absolute rational authority - from grand metaphysical architectures to the political rationalizations of the 20th century. Against both, he pushes a more modest, accountable rationality: reason that knows it can fail, and therefore builds in checks, methods, and openness to correction.
It’s also a sly defense of pluralism in thought. A logic that admits fallibility leaves room for probability, hypothesis, and lived uncertainty. Not irrationalism, but a rationality mature enough to include its own limits as part of its operating instructions.
Quote Details
| Topic | Reason & Logic |
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