Why did Sorel criticize rationalism?
I critiqued rationalism because I saw it as a source of intellectual decadence and a barrier to genuine social progress. Modern rationalism, particularly as it manifested in parliamentary democracy and positivist thought, tended to dilute revolutionary fervor and promote a belief in inevitable, gradual improvement. This, in my view, made the working class passive and susceptible to bourgeois manipulation. True change, I believed, arises from a more primal, volitional force, one that is best awakened and sustained by adherence to powerful, unanalyzable myths rather than by dry, analytical reasoning.
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