Reason and No-Reason from Ancient Philosophy to Neurosciences

The reason/no-reason conceptual pair (also declinable in the similar forms of rational/a-rational, logical/a-logical) pervades the history of Western thought from the archaic era up to contemporary times. Perceived in different historical periods and in different cultural forms either as a conflict or as a vital coexistence, the reason/no-reason pair was first theorized and legitimated as a sharp contrast in antiquity with the Pythagorean systoichiai, and at the dawn of the twentieth century it was successfully exemplified by Nietzsche through the opposition between Apollonian and Dionysian principles, which denotes respectively the harmonious, orderly, bright side of the human soul, and the chaotic one, wild, instinctive, passionate, dark. This volume is the outcome of the work of an international research group, which intended to cover some aspects of this dichotomy with the specific end to prove that the two sides of the human soul don’t contradict each other - in such a way that one excludes, ontologically and axiologically, the other - but they are rather closely interrelated and interdependent. Scholars with different expertise in the history of thought tackled diachronically some key moments of this story, from different angles and with different approaches, from ancient thought to modern neurosciences.