ABSTRACT
When people do something, finding a propositional attitude take that would give a good reason to do it 'rationalizes' what you do, in the sense of showing that there is a reason for doing it. Davidson uses it, a reason 'rationalizes' an action if and only if it really is the agent's reason for doing what he did. Socrates' reference to Anaxagoras suggests an answer. Arrangements in a world ordered by Anaxagoras' Nous are for the best because Nous is of such a nature that it always acts for the best. That they are for the best does not by itself explain those arrangements; it does so only in conjunction with the fact that it is the nature of Nous to act for the best. The causal property on which Aristotelian explanations of human choice rest is the capacity to perceive elementary irrationality, and the will to reject it.
