Thank you for that insightful essay.

I do think much blame can be assigned to postmodernists. They have sought to ‘emancipate’ people from the ‘hegemony’ of ‘the rational’. Yet, our rational capacity is the only means we have for solving problems — even if they are problems created by unthinking over-use of products of people’s rational capacities such as insecticides, fertilizers, the internal combustion engine, and air conditioning.

Both modernists and postmodernists have erred in characterizing ideology as an exemplar of rationality. Ideologies are based on secular beliefs. Beliefs, whether secular/ideological or religious/theological, are what I call extra-rational knowledge. Ideologies, being based on beliefs, are no more an exemplar of rationality than any religion is.

Ideologies were invented to replace theologies for governing the governance of society because it had been demonstrated that religion was inadequate for that purpose. Since religions are based on beliefs, as the basis for governing governance they were in fact a font of injustice.

We are now learning that ideology is as inadequate for governing governance as theology is, for the same reason. Rationality offers an alternative, but rationality has been effectively undermined by its equation with ideology.

The rational ethic of justice that I have developed is mutual respect in effecting choices. If curious, it is summarized in a “5 min read” here in Medium.