ABSTRACT
This chapter demonstrates the distinct unity of a European tradition by means of the theme of rationality. This process provides its own commentary and oscillates between self-subversion and utopian renewal. The history of European rationality can be described as the history of the dissolution of a rationality continuum which had joined the observer in the world with the world. Politicized distinctions based on the programme of the French Revolution or the socialist movement employs the same style of hiding the question of unity. Psychoanalysis likewise has never been recognized as a theory of knowledge but at most as the science of a therapeutic practice. No concept of rationality based on a differential logic will ever lead us back to this position of unity and authority. Global communication has compelled this, especially since the discovery of the Americas which coincided with the invention of printing.
