ABSTRACT

If one were ambitious enough to compile a chronology of oppositions to Western rational thought – a chronology broad enough to include such figures as Al-Ghazali, Meister Eckhart, Rousseau, Blake, Nietzsche and Levinas – it would be interesting to see what kind of common denominators, if any, such a study would produce. Metaphors of wind, breath, spirit and freedom would probably abound; a common emphasis on ‘openness’ ( futuh/ouvert – an important word for both our thinkers), an aversion towards rigidity and systems, an exaltation of wandering and a defamation of reason as somehow unnatural and restrictive . . . in other words, a rejection of reason which would be almost aesthetically motivated.