Irrationalism is the philosophy of the unknown

In the broadest sense, irrationalism is a philosophical teaching that limits, belittles, or even completely denies the role of reason as the main and decisive component in cognition. This current puts forward on the first plans and series other kinds and varieties of human abilities - illumination, imagination, feelings, instincts, intuition, contemplation and so on, and the like.

As a rule, irrationalism is an idealistic teaching, which recognizes the basis of the whole universe is not intelligence, but something else. Basically there are three options. The first is the articulation of the absolute possibilities of human consciousness and subconsciousness (Schopenhauer's irrationalism). The second is the recognition of God as a transcendent unknowable entity that stands above the faculties of the mind and can only be cognized in the process of some kind of mystical union. The third option is that irrationalism is the so-called "unknowable," which in principle is a priori inaccessible to the realization of the human mind, although it lies at the heart of consciousness and can manifest itself in one way or another. This opinion was developed in his writings by Kant, Frank and Spencer.

Irrationalism is the lowering of the role of rational consciousness and reason. At its extreme point, it is close to agnosticism. However, agnosticism emphasizes the absolute fundamental unknowability of the whole world. The starting point for such a philosophical trend, as irrationalism, was skepticism. Pirron, the founder of this philosophical school, says that all things are equally unexplained, indefinable and indistinguishable. As a consequence, no opinion or judgment can be either false or true. To skepticism (and therefore to such a trend as irrationalism in philosophy), such philosophical doctrines and concepts as relativism (the doctrine of conventionality and the relativity of consciousness and cognition) and nihilism (the denial of the universally recognized) have a direct relation.

In the Middle Ages it was irrationalism that was the basis of all philosophy and theology. Scholasticism and Christian mysticism based on the concepts of Johann Eckhart and Bernard Kleroski believed that it is impossible to rationally know the Lord God, but one can mystically contemplate it. Starting from the Renaissance, one could say that irrationalism is an antipode and an antithesis to the realism that has arisen. At that time, the ideas of the irrational view could be qualitatively divided into three main groups:

1. Irrationalism as a reaction to Hegel's panlogism and rationalism.
2. Existentialism as a doctrine of the irreducibility of a person's personality to the intellect alone.
3. Critical attitude to the intellectual abilities of man, which originates even in the ancient skepticism.

At the same time, the offshoot of irrationalism, later becoming an independent trend, also begins-the existentialism mentioned above, which developed the idea that the essence and personality of man is not an intellect, but an existential that can not be expressed, but can be described with the help of an emotional And the irrational side of the human mind.