If you doubt for one moment our membership in the animal kingdom, spend some time in family court in a high-conflict case. I swear you can all but hear the parties snarling at one another in territorial rage. The claims of reason are tenuous when what’s at stake is an affair of the heart. We are, as David Hume observed long ago, slaves to our passions.
That’s a good thing, I say. I want a tactile, sensuous connection to the world around me. Reason is unbounded. There are an infinite number of possible worlds, each rational in its own terms. Values, placing a priority on one the thing rather than another, define communities of like-minded people. Destroy common commitments, and destroy a community.
