And rationalism wins.

Rationalism has endured a storm of sustained attacks throughout the twentieth century. The faculty of reason, which Blanshard calls the function of grasping necessary connections, is met by skeptics at every turn - men who deny the nature and use of reason and would severely limit the scope of its application. Amidst these attacks, rationalism has of course had its defenders, as woefully few as they were. Brand Blanshard was one of the most lucid defenders of reason in recent times, and this volume is one of the most powerful defenses of reason as a source of genuine knowledge about the nature of things. (the other volumes in the trilogy, _Reason and Belief_ and _Reason and Goodness_, are also excellent and worth hunting down.)

Blanshard's book unfolds much like a story, covering the cornerstones of Western philosophy's history. He examines the role of reason in western thought and describes the key intellectual events that gave rise to its nemesis, philosophy of analysis (linguistic analysis and logical positivism). This is the framework under which he carries out his defense of reason. After an informative dose of philosophical history, he turns to his critique. Chapters are devoted to logical atomism (the theory that the universe is comprised of particular facts not bound by necessity), the verifiability theory of meaning (the cornerstone of positivism, averring that to ascertain any fact we must appeal to our senses), the positivist account of a priori knowledge (it is analytic; knowledge about own concepts but not things), and early and later forms of linguistic analysis (looking to language to solve philosophical problems). His exposition of his opponents' philosophies is very generous and thorough, careful to understand that which he seeks to unravel. In fact, his thoroughness might be called "overkill" - there is hardly a point on which these anti-rationalist philosophy's are unchallenged. Wittgenstein, Russel, Ayer, Ryle, and numerous other key figures in analytic philosophy are demolished at every turn. Yet, Blanshard's fastidious demolition of their philosophies is carried out with utmost tact and intellectual generosity. Truthfully, logical positivism does not seem to require the attention Brand Blanshard gives to it. Rationalism is vindicated merely by asking what sort of proposition is the central positivist thesis: that all meaningful statements are analytic or empirical, but never both. One is invited to ask, of course, what sort of statement is this thesis? Clearly it is not analytic -- it obviously purports to be more than simple explication of our own concepts and words. Yet it is not empirical, at least not in the sense that its validity can be apprehended by our senses. Thus, it must be synthetic a priori, yet on the positivist's own terms this renders their thesis meaningless. This is a grave philosophical error. Despite the wanton overkill, if you savor poignant intellectual argument, Blanshard is among the best and his work is a pleasure to read. His criticisms, where not essential to the destruction of his opponents' position, is brimming with important insights.

With the fortresses of analytic philosophy razed, Blanshard sets out a positive case for reason. He explicates rationalist accounts of formal logic, arithmetic, and geometry, and puts forth an original and compelling theory of universals (that only specific universals exist, but not generic or quantitative universals).

Gordon H. Clark once wrote that Brand Blanshard was the most important American philosopher of twentieth century. Why would Clark (a staunch Calvinist) say this about Blanshard (a signer of the Secular Humanist Manifesto)? Well, read this book.

Blanshard was a rationalist who disagreed with the dominant empiricist trend in philosophy. Like just about everyone prior to Hume, Blanshard had a full-orbed conception of reason. Philosophy is not limited to describing "linguistic conventions," but actually tell us something about the nature of the world.

REASON AND ANALYSIS starts with a discussion of traditional conception of reason (and its recent enemies) and then begins a full-scale assault on analytic philosophy. There is a particularly excellent discussion of a priori reasoning, which demolishes logical positivism and also demonstrates that logic is neither a linguistic convention nor the arbitrary creation of the mind.

My only complaint with this book is its length: 500 pages. Considering that much of what Blanshard destroyed has gone the way of a 1970's sitcom, this might seem excessive. On the other hand, if you are interested in learning about the differences between the early Moore and the later Moore, the early Russell and the later Russell, logical atomism and logical positivism and the like, you get something of an encyclopedic approach to the issue. It's tempting to ignore all the differences in nuance in various schools and thinkers, but the attention to detail only magnifies our appreciation of this work.