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63-526: Johann August Nauck (18 September 1822 – 3 August 1892) was a German classical scholar and critic . His chief work was the Tragicorum Graecorum Fragmenta ( TrGF ). Nauck was born at Auerstedt in present-day Thuringia . He studied at the University of Halle as a student of Gottfried Bernhardy and Moritz Hermann Eduard Meier . In 1853 he became an adjunct under August Meineke at

126-455: A formal proof , arguably the most difficult of formal reasoning tasks. Reasoning, like habit or intuition , is one of the ways by which thinking moves from one idea to a related idea. For example, reasoning is the means by which rational individuals understand the significance of sensory information from their environments, or conceptualize abstract dichotomies such as cause and effect , truth and falsehood , or good and evil . Reasoning, as

189-640: A broader version of "addition and subtraction" which is not limited to numbers. This understanding of reason is sometimes termed "calculative" reason. Similar to Descartes, Hobbes asserted that "No discourse whatsoever, can end in absolute knowledge of fact, past, or to come" but that "sense and memory" is absolute knowledge. In the late 17th century through the 18th century, John Locke and David Hume developed Descartes's line of thought still further. Hume took it in an especially skeptical direction, proposing that there could be no possibility of deducing relationships of cause and effect, and therefore no knowledge

252-436: A critic's influence is enhanced by subsequent reworkings such as the operatic versions of Beaumarchais's play ( The Barber of Seville ) by Rossini and ( The Marriage of Figaro ) by Mozart . August Ahlqvist , a Finnish professor and poet, who highly admired J. L. Runeberg , the national poet of Finland, gave very negative feedback to the entire literary production of the author Aleksis Kivi , when Kivi presented content of

315-577: A critic's job to be right or wrong; it's his job to express an opinion in readable English." Schonberg was the first music critic to receive the Pulitzer Prize for criticism. Daniel Mendelsohn described the equation of criticism for critics as knowledge + taste = meaningful judgement . Restaurant critic Terry Durack explained that from a critic "you hope for a thorough, objective and legitimate discussion" that puts "opera, art or book into context, so that it adds to your own body of knowledge"; in

378-471: A foundation of all possible knowledge, Descartes decided to throw into doubt all knowledge— except that of the mind itself in the process of thinking: At this time I admit nothing that is not necessarily true. I am therefore precisely nothing but a thinking thing; that is a mind, or intellect, or understanding, or reason—words of whose meanings I was previously ignorant. This eventually became known as epistemological or "subject-centred" reason, because it

441-551: A free society each individual must be able to pursue their goals however they see fit, as long as their actions conform to principles given by reason. He formulated such a principle, called the " categorical imperative ", which would justify an action only if it could be universalized: Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at the same time, will that it should become a universal law. In contrast to Hume, Kant insisted that reason itself (German Vernunft ) could be used to find solutions to metaphysical problems, especially

504-425: A model of communicative reason that sees it as an essentially cooperative activity, based on the fact of linguistic intersubjectivity . Nikolas Kompridis proposed a widely encompassing view of reason as "that ensemble of practices that contributes to the opening and preserving of openness" in human affairs, and a focus on reason's possibilities for social change. The philosopher Charles Taylor , influenced by

567-492: A moral decision, "morality is, at the very least, the effort to guide one's conduct by reason —that is, doing what there are the best reasons for doing—while giving equal [and impartial] weight to the interests of all those affected by what one does." The proposal that reason gives humanity a special position in nature has been argued to be a defining characteristic of western philosophy and later western science , starting with classical Greece. Philosophy can be described as

630-414: A natural order that was itself understood to have aims. Perhaps starting with Pythagoras or Heraclitus , the cosmos was even said to have reason. Reason, by this account, is not just a characteristic that people happen to have. Reason was considered of higher stature than other characteristics of human nature, because it is something people share with nature itself, linking an apparently immortal part of

693-564: A nominal, though habitual, connection to either (for example) smoke or fire. One example of such a system of symbols and signs is language . The connection of reason to symbolic thinking has been expressed in different ways by philosophers. Thomas Hobbes described the creation of "Markes, or Notes of remembrance" as speech . He used the word speech as an English version of the Greek word logos so that speech did not need to be communicated. When communicated, such speech becomes language, and

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756-451: A part of executive decision making , is also closely identified with the ability to self-consciously change, in terms of goals , beliefs , attitudes , traditions , and institutions , and therefore with the capacity for freedom and self-determination . Psychologists and cognitive scientists have attempted to study and explain how people reason , e.g. which cognitive and neural processes are engaged, and how cultural factors affect

819-616: A range of theoretical positions . For instance, they may take a feminist or Freudian perspective. Unlike other individuals who may editorialize on subjects via websites or letters written to publications, professional critics are paid to produce their assessment and opinions for print , radio, magazine, television, or Internet companies . When their personal opinion outweighs considered judgment, people who give opinions, whether on current events, public affairs, sports, media or art are often referred to as "pundits" instead of critics. Critics are themselves subject to competing critics, since

882-484: A range of factors, including an assessment of the extent to which the item under review achieves its purpose and its creator's intention and a knowledge of its context. They may also include a positive or negative personal response. Characteristics of a good critic are articulateness, preferably having the ability to use language with a high level of appeal and skill. Sympathy , sensitivity and insight are also important. Form , style and medium are all considered by

945-465: A synonym for "reasoning". In contrast to the use of "reason" as an abstract noun , a reason is a consideration that either explains or justifies events, phenomena, or behavior . Reasons justify decisions, reasons support explanations of natural phenomena, and reasons can be given to explain the actions (conduct) of individuals. The words are connected in this way: using reason, or reasoning, means providing good reasons. For example, when evaluating

1008-451: A system of logic. Psychologist David Moshman, citing Bickhard and Campbell, argues for a " metacognitive conception of rationality" in which a person's development of reason "involves increasing consciousness and control of logical and other inferences". Reason is a type of thought , and logic involves the attempt to describe a system of formal rules or norms of appropriate reasoning. The oldest surviving writing to explicitly consider

1071-412: A way of life based upon reason, while reason has been among the major subjects of philosophical discussion since ancient times. Reason is often said to be reflexive , or "self-correcting", and the critique of reason has been a persistent theme in philosophy. For many classical philosophers , nature was understood teleologically , meaning that every type of thing had a definitive purpose that fit within

1134-418: A way that can be explained, for example as cause and effect. In the explanation of Locke , for example, reason requires the mental use of a third idea in order to make this comparison by use of syllogism . More generally, according to Charles Sanders Peirce , reason in the strict sense requires the ability to create and manipulate a system of symbols , as well as indices and icons , the symbols having only

1197-490: A way that is consistent with monotheism and the immortality and divinity of the human soul. For example, in the neoplatonist account of Plotinus , the cosmos has one soul, which is the seat of all reason, and the souls of all people are part of this soul. Reason is for Plotinus both the provider of form to material things, and the light which brings people's souls back into line with their source. The classical view of reason, like many important Neoplatonic and Stoic ideas,

1260-414: A whole. Others, including Hegel, believe that it has obscured the importance of intersubjectivity , or "spirit" in human life, and they attempt to reconstruct a model of what reason should be. Some thinkers, e.g. Foucault, believe there are other forms of reason, neglected but essential to modern life, and to our understanding of what it means to live a life according to reason. Others suggest that there

1323-434: Is based on reasoning alone, even if it seems otherwise. Hume famously remarked that, "We speak not strictly and philosophically when we talk of the combat of passion and of reason. Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them." Hume also took his definition of reason to unorthodox extremes by arguing, unlike his predecessors, that human reason

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1386-488: Is based on the knowing subject , who perceives the rest of the world and itself as a set of objects to be studied, and successfully mastered, by applying the knowledge accumulated through such study. Breaking with tradition and with many thinkers after him, Descartes explicitly did not divide the incorporeal soul into parts, such as reason and intellect, describing them instead as one indivisible incorporeal entity. A contemporary of Descartes, Thomas Hobbes described reason as

1449-468: Is not just one reason or rationality, but multiple possible systems of reason or rationality which may conflict (in which case there is no super-rational system one can appeal to in order to resolve the conflict). In the last several decades, a number of proposals have been made to "re-orient" this critique of reason, or to recognize the "other voices" or "new departments" of reason: For example, in opposition to subject-centred reason, Habermas has proposed

1512-511: Is not only found in humans. Aristotle asserted that phantasia (imagination: that which can hold images or phantasmata ) and phronein (a type of thinking that can judge and understand in some sense) also exist in some animals. According to him, both are related to the primary perceptive ability of animals, which gathers the perceptions of different senses and defines the order of the things that are perceived without distinguishing universals, and without deliberation or logos . But this

1575-451: Is not qualitatively different from either simply conceiving individual ideas, or from judgments associating two ideas, and that "reason is nothing but a wonderful and unintelligible instinct in our souls, which carries us along a certain train of ideas, and endows them with particular qualities, according to their particular situations and relations." It followed from this that animals have reason, only much less complex than human reason. In

1638-469: Is not yet reason, because human imagination is different. Terrence Deacon and Merlin Donald , writing about the origin of language , connect reason not only to language , but also mimesis . They describe the ability to create language as part of an internal modeling of reality , and specific to humankind. Other results are consciousness , and imagination or fantasy . In contrast, modern proponents of

1701-544: Is seen as the most pure or the defining form of reason: "Logic is about reasoning—about going from premises to a conclusion. ... When you do logic, you try to clarify reasoning and separate good from bad reasoning." In modern economics , rational choice is assumed to equate to logically consistent choice. However, reason and logic can be thought of as distinct—although logic is one important aspect of reason. Author Douglas Hofstadter , in Gödel, Escher, Bach , characterizes

1764-411: Is the way humans posit universal laws of nature . Under practical reason, the moral autonomy or freedom of people depends on their ability, by the proper exercise of that reason, to behave according to laws that are given to them. This contrasted with earlier forms of morality, which depended on religious understanding and interpretation, or on nature , for their substance. According to Kant, in

1827-488: The 18th century, Immanuel Kant attempted to show that Hume was wrong by demonstrating that a " transcendental " self, or "I", was a necessary condition of all experience. Therefore, suggested Kant, on the basis of such a self, it is in fact possible to reason both about the conditions and limits of human knowledge. And so long as these limits are respected, reason can be the vehicle of morality, justice, aesthetics, theories of knowledge ( epistemology ), and understanding. In

1890-554: The 20th century German philosopher Martin Heidegger , proposed that reason ought to include the faculty of disclosure , which is tied to the way we make sense of things in everyday life, as a new "department" of reason. In the essay "What is Enlightenment?", Michel Foucault proposed a critique based on Kant's distinction between "private" and "public" uses of reason: The terms logic or logical are sometimes used as if they were identical with reason or rational , or sometimes logic

1953-571: The Joachimsthal Gymnasium in Berlin . After a brief stint as an educator at the Grauen Kloster (1858), he relocated to St. Petersburg , where in 1869, he was appointed professor of Greek at the historical-philological institute. Nauck was one of the most distinguished textual critics of his day, although, like PH Peerlkamp , he was fond of altering a text in accordance with what he thought

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2016-618: The Neoplatonic view of human reason and its implications for our relationship to creation, to ourselves, and to God. The Neoplatonic conception of the rational aspect of the human soul was widely adopted by medieval Islamic philosophers and continues to hold significance in Iranian philosophy . As European intellectual life reemerged from the Dark Ages , the Christian Patristic tradition and

2079-731: The author must, or ought to, have written. Nauck was elected a foreign member of the Royal Netherlands Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1885. The most important of his writings and translations, all of which deal with Greek language and literature (especially the tragedians) are as follows: Critic A critic is a person who communicates an assessment and an opinion of various forms of creative works such as art , literature , music , cinema , theater , fashion , architecture, and food. Critics may also take as their subject social or government policy . Critical judgments, whether derived from critical thinking or not, weigh up

2142-428: The context of a restaurant criticism, this means it is "not about me liking it or not; it's about me helping you decide whether you are going to like it or not." Rothko's dilemma was that he wanted to employ the vocabulary of symbolism – the palpitating indeterminate space, the excruciatingly refined colour, the obsession with nuance, the presence of Mallarmé's "negated object" – to render

2205-409: The critic will read the book before writing a notice of it. We do not even expect the reviewer of the book will say that he has not read it. No we have no anticipations of anything unusual in this age of criticism. Reasoned Reasoning involves using more-or-less rational processes of thinking and cognition to extrapolate from one's existing knowledge to generate new knowledge, and involves

2268-499: The critic. In architecture and food criticism , the item's function, value and cost may be added components. Critics are publicly accepted and, to a significant degree, followed because of the quality of their assessments or their reputation. Influential critics of art, music, theater and architecture often present their arguments in complete books. One very famous example is John Ruskin 's Seven Lamps of Architecture and The Stones of Venice . Critics may base their assessment on

2331-448: The discovery of the foundations of morality. Kant claimed that these solutions could be found with his " transcendental logic ", which unlike normal logic is not just an instrument that can be used indifferently, as it was for Aristotle, but a theoretical science in its own right and the basis of all the others. According to Jürgen Habermas , the "substantive unity" of reason has dissolved in modern times, such that it can no longer answer

2394-623: The distinction in this way: Logic is done inside a system while reason is done outside the system by such methods as skipping steps, working backward, drawing diagrams, looking at examples, or seeing what happens if you change the rules of the system. Psychologists Mark H. Bickard and Robert L. Campbell argue that "rationality cannot be simply assimilated to logicality"; they note that "human knowledge of logic and logical systems has developed" over time through reasoning, and logical systems "can't construct new logical systems more powerful than themselves", so reasoning and rationality must involve more than

2457-407: The example of Islamic scholars such as Alhazen , emphasised reason an intrinsic human ability to decode the created order and the structures that underlie our experienced physical reality. This interpretation of reason was instrumental to the development of the scientific method in the early Universities of the high Middle Ages. The early modern era was marked by a number of significant changes in

2520-542: The final critical judgment always entails subjectivity . An established critic can play a powerful role as a public arbiter of taste or opinion. Also, critics or a coordinated group of critics, may award symbols of recognition. The word "critic" comes from Greek κριτικός (kritikós)  'able to discern', which is a Greek derivation of the word κριτής (krités) , meaning a person who offers reasoned judgment or analysis , value judgment , interpretation or observation . Early English meaning of criticism

2583-477: The formulation of Kant, who wrote some of the most influential modern treatises on the subject, the great achievement of reason ( German : Vernunft ) is that it is able to exercise a kind of universal law-making. Kant was able therefore to reformulate the basis of moral-practical, theoretical, and aesthetic reasoning on "universal" laws. Here, practical reasoning is the self-legislating or self-governing formulation of universal norms , and theoretical reasoning

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2646-531: The heart of his Natural Law . In this doctrine, Thomas concludes that because humans have reason and because reason is a spark of the divine, every single human life is invaluable, all humans are equal, and every human is born with an intrinsic and permanent set of basic rights. On this foundation, the idea of human rights would later be constructed by Spanish theologians at the School of Salamanca . Other Scholastics, such as Roger Bacon and Albertus Magnus , following

2709-419: The highest human happiness or well being ( eudaimonia ) as a life which is lived consistently, excellently, and completely in accordance with reason. The conclusions to be drawn from the discussions of Aristotle and Plato on this matter are amongst the most debated in the history of philosophy. But teleological accounts such as Aristotle's were highly influential for those who attempt to explain reason in

2772-403: The human mind with the divine order of the cosmos. Within the human mind or soul ( psyche ), reason was described by Plato as being the natural monarch which should rule over the other parts, such as spiritedness ( thumos ) and the passions. Aristotle , Plato's student, defined human beings as rational animals , emphasizing reason as a characteristic of human nature . He described

2835-788: The inferences that people draw. The field of automated reasoning studies how reasoning may or may not be modeled computationally. Animal psychology considers the question of whether animals other than humans can reason. In the English language and other modern European languages , "reason", and related words, represent words which have always been used to translate Latin and classical Greek terms in their philosophical sense. The earliest major philosophers to publish in English, such as Francis Bacon , Thomas Hobbes , and John Locke also routinely wrote in Latin and French, and compared their terms to Greek, treating

2898-509: The influence of esteemed Islamic scholars like Averroes and Avicenna contributed to the development of the Scholastic view of reason, which laid the foundation for our modern understanding of this concept. Among the Scholastics who relied on the classical concept of reason for the development of their doctrines, none were more influential than Saint Thomas Aquinas , who put this concept at

2961-521: The marks or notes or remembrance are called " Signes " by Hobbes. Going further back, although Aristotle is a source of the idea that only humans have reason ( logos ), he does mention that animals with imagination, for whom sense perceptions can persist, come closest to having something like reasoning and nous , and even uses the word " logos " in one place to describe the distinctions which animals can perceive in such cases. Reason and imagination rely on similar mental processes . Imagination

3024-604: The patriarchal despair and elevation of the Old Testament. Criticism doesn't get sharper, or more sensitive, or more deeply sympathetic to the object, than that. Robert Hughes (critic) on (artist) Mark Rothko Social and political critics have used various forms of art to express their criticism, including literature and music. Pierre Beaumarchais , for example, prior to the French Revolution , used his play The Marriage of Figaro to denounce aristocratic privilege, and

3087-473: The peoples social life in the form of rude realism instead of romanticism . Among the most famous social/political criticism in literary form are Jonathan Swift's satire Gulliver's Travels and George Orwell 's satire Animal Farm . Some political critics, such as Ai Weiwei use visual art as their medium. Throughout history, political critics have faced higher risks, including the risk of imprisonment or death. Several websites have developed for

3150-636: The purpose of compiling or publishing original critical reviews. Examples include Blogcritics , Rotten Tomatoes , and Yelp . According to A. O. Scott , chief film critic for The New York Times , everyone on the Internet is a critic. Some critics like Roger Ebert achieve iconic status in pop culture and become well regarded. The American film critics Roger Ebert and Gene Siskel collaborated and appeared on television sometimes agreeing on their review of cinematographic works; sometimes they would differ. Film critics may use star classification to qualify

3213-421: The question "How should I live?" Instead, the unity of reason has to be strictly formal, or "procedural". He thus described reason as a group of three autonomous spheres (on the model of Kant's three critiques): For Habermas, these three spheres are the domain of experts, and therefore need to be mediated with the " lifeworld " by philosophers. In drawing such a picture of reason, Habermas hoped to demonstrate that

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3276-417: The reasoning process through intuition—however valid—may tend toward the personal and the subjectively opaque. In some social and political settings logical and intuitive modes of reasoning may clash, while in other contexts intuition and formal reason are seen as complementary rather than adversarial. For example, in mathematics , intuition is often necessary for the creative processes involved with arriving at

3339-603: The reviewed works. Characters depicting critics have been part of some movies, and have been represented in comedies, such as a food critic in the animated fantasy-comedy Ratatouille , and as an art critic in one of the initial parts of the anthology comedy film The History of the World Part I . People whose work is the subject of criticism have a full range of responses to it. For example, they may be appreciative, offended, distressed, encouraged, amused or nonplussed. We do not object to criticism; and we do not expect that

3402-551: The rules by which reason operates are the works of the Greek philosopher Aristotle , especially Prior Analytics and Posterior Analytics . Although the Ancient Greeks had no separate word for logic as distinct from language and reason, Aristotle's newly coined word " syllogism " ( syllogismos ) identified logic clearly for the first time as a distinct field of study. When Aristotle referred to "the logical" ( hē logikē ), he

3465-538: The same " laws of nature " which affect inanimate things. This new understanding eventually displaced the previous world view that derived from a spiritual understanding of the universe. Accordingly, in the 17th century, René Descartes explicitly rejected the traditional notion of humans as "rational animals", suggesting instead that they are nothing more than "thinking things" along the lines of other "things" in nature. Any grounds of knowledge outside that understanding was, therefore, subject to doubt. In his search for

3528-544: The substantive unity of reason, which in pre-modern societies had been able to answer questions about the good life, could be made up for by the unity of reason's formalizable procedures. Hamann , Herder , Kant , Hegel , Kierkegaard , Nietzsche , Heidegger , Foucault , Rorty , and many other philosophers have contributed to a debate about what reason means, or ought to mean. Some, like Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, and Rorty, are skeptical about subject-centred, universal, or instrumental reason, and even skeptical toward reason as

3591-460: The understanding of reason, starting in Europe . One of the most important of these changes involved a change in the metaphysical understanding of human beings. Scientists and philosophers began to question the teleological understanding of the world. Nature was no longer assumed to be human-like, with its own aims or reason, and human nature was no longer assumed to work according to anything other than

3654-447: The use of one's intellect . The field of logic studies the ways in which humans can use formal reasoning to produce logically valid arguments and true conclusions. Reasoning may be subdivided into forms of logical reasoning , such as deductive reasoning , inductive reasoning , and abductive reasoning . Aristotle drew a distinction between logical discursive reasoning (reason proper), and intuitive reasoning , in which

3717-426: The word. It also does not mean that humans acting on the basis of experience or habit are using their reason. Human reason requires more than being able to associate two ideas—even if those two ideas might be described by a reasoning human as a cause and an effect—perceptions of smoke, for example, and memories of fire. For reason to be involved, the association of smoke and the fire would have to be thought through in

3780-403: The words " logos ", " ratio ", " raison " and "reason" as interchangeable. The meaning of the word "reason" in senses such as "human reason" also overlaps to a large extent with " rationality " and the adjective of "reason" in philosophical contexts is normally " rational ", rather than "reasoned" or "reasonable". Some philosophers, Hobbes for example, also used the word ratiocination as

3843-579: Was based mainly on the criticism of literature and it was in the 17th century that more general forms of criticism began. Cultural critic Clement Greenberg wrote that a good critic excels through "insights into the evidence ... and by ... loyalty to the relevant"; poet and critic T.S. Eliot wrote "a critic must have a very highly developed sense of fact ". In 1971, Harold C. Schonberg , chief music critic of The New York Times from 1960 to 1980, said that he wrote for himself, "not necessarily for readers, not for musicians. ... It's not

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3906-529: Was readily adopted by the early Church as the Church Fathers saw Greek Philosophy as an indispensable instrument given to mankind so that we may understand revelation. For example, the greatest among the early Church Fathers and Doctors of the Church such as Augustine of Hippo , Basil of Caesarea , and Gregory of Nyssa were as much Neoplatonic philosophers as they were Christian theologians, and they adopted

3969-412: Was referring more broadly to rational thought. As pointed out by philosophers such as Hobbes, Locke, and Hume, some animals are also clearly capable of a type of " associative thinking ", even to the extent of associating causes and effects. A dog once kicked, can learn how to recognize the warning signs and avoid being kicked in the future, but this does not mean the dog has reason in any strict sense of

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