Karl Jaspers has some harsh words for Marxism and the psychoanalysis fashions of the time in which he wrote Reason and Anti-Reason in Our Time, these words presented in the first of three parts of the book. Those three parts, The Challenge of the Scientific Method, Reason, and Reason in its Struggle, are based on three lectures he gave in series. He waxes a bit purple and poetic in parts of the second of these lectures, but cogent analysis of the challenges pop culture sets in the path of rationality, the nature of the human act of reasoning, and the value it brings us as the only honest (and, consequently, perhaps asymptotic) approach to truth, all pervade the text. Along with the brilliance of his characterization of the matters relevant to his theses, it makes for a fascinating read.

Jaspers sets the always-outnumbered champions of reason in their proper place, outnumbered but not outgunned as he reveals the remarkable tendency of reason to arise anew after every effort to put it down, a phenomenon he describes as not emerging from the nature of the human condition but rather consciously pursued (and often at great cost) by leverage of the condition of freedom and exercise of the faculty of choice. A nearly pocket-sized, largely featureless red hardcover, my copy of Reason and Anti-Reason in Our Time came into my possession by some now-forgotten happenstance with (intellectually rather unimpressive) notes handwritten in the margins of the book's yellowing pages by someone using dismayingly poor penmanship, lending it a well-loved charm and warm sense of inspirational authority that other copies will probably lack. The content itself, however, is a stellar work of philosophical rationalism that must benefit anyone with the wit and will to understand it, regardless of the form and condition of the published book, and my only possible regret is that I had not plucked it from my to-read shelf sooner. It is getting a place of honor on another shelf tonight, among books that have special significance for me. As I have with the Tao Te Ching, I rather suspect I will return to it from time to time in my life.

The term "philosophy" in literal translation yields the meaning "love of wisdom". This is a book for authentic philosophers, who exercise Reason in search of the wisdom they love. ( )