Is it better to be reasonable or rational?
You find yourself in the heat of an argument and your mulish interlocutor refuses to see the light. ‘Please,’ you implore, ‘be reasonable.’ But what exactly are you asking? Do you want him to be more rational? Or to act as a typical person might act in his shoes? Maybe the whole question is hopelessly subjective, as your paragon of reasonableness may be his idea of madness, and vice versa. Or else perhaps your request is a mere smokescreen – a sly piece of rhetoric to mask your will to power behind the language of decency? In a short and deftly argued book, Krista Lawlor, a professor of philosophy at
