In other words

Reasonableness sounds much better than 'pragmatic rationalism', which is far too clunky and abstract. The former implies limitations: we may not able to know everything and striving to do so or acting as if we did may ultimately turn out to be at best an excessive flirtation with error, at worst a recipe for personal or political disaster.

We are made aware-by what process?-that reason comes up against limits-and these limits are fundamentally those of the human condition. But that is not the same thing as excluding reason or the attempt to make sense of our lives and the world. There is no return, no leap of faith, no abnegation of one's responsibility to oneself...

Reasonableness: to temper one's own claims for rationality, understanding, one's own interests, in the light of experience. Other people, with their distinct interests and motivations, are not simply constraints to one's own behaviour or preferences and nor can they be squeezed into the framework of your own understanding. Does reason always isolate, abstract, or can it relate, connect?

Reasons of the heart, the seat of the intellect. Of course, the need for distinctions, to see clearly. But it is a mistake to think that one can see the world with clarity before one has tidied things up at home or that, even, there is a simple picture in your head to which everything must conform and against which everything must make sense.

Can reason be understood without plurality, freedom? In Sen's formulation: we have reasons to value things. Reason, then, is not a logical relation, an internal mechanism, a notion of consistency-or it is not exhausted by such characterizations. Instead, our reasons are contextualized and made comprehensible by our aims and purposes.

Reason is not cold, but it does lower the temperature and is "sober".

"The nobility of Man, acquired in a hundred centuries of trial and error..."

[The chemist must perforce describe the world as it is, and the precision and simplicity of this requirement seems to have conformed closely to Levi's own distaste for gloss, commentary, for excess of any kind.]

'A definite language, essential.'[The appeal of medieval plainsong]

Point by point.

[Being good at your job and taking pleasure from it constitutes "the most accessible form of freedom"]

There is a longing for sameness but there is also impurity "which gives rise to changes, in other words, to life."

In other words.

~~~ ~

There's a fascinating talk by Adam Gopnik on Camus here

The quotes are from Tony Judt's essay on Primo Levi (there's another on Camus in the same book). 

What does it mean to strike the right key these days? How to find the register, the exact tone of voice that needs no explanation or justification? 

It is not true that we live in unreasonable times-though it may seem like that if one is feeling down. Shallowness: yes, that is always there, but a superficial life is pointless rather than unreasonable. 

In the land of the pure there are many-a growing number,actually- shrill, pointed voices, and with that goes the hand that waves the damned to one side, the saved to the other. But-and this may in the long run be more significant-what really strikes you is the sheer volume of incomprehensible chatter and the mounting fascination with trivialities. And of course, one may feed into the other: a life full of banality and mediocrity may reach out for the excitement and surety of authoritative, commanding voices. Who, today, wants to hear "perhaps" or "maybe"?

And yet by profession and perhaps by temperament too, you are committed to a view that rests on no firm ground. The most difficult thing to achieve with the passing of time is to remain open, curious. Children can help because there is much to be learnt from seeing the world afresh, with innocent eyes. But by evening you have to face this alone and the aim is,as before, to remain half-hearted and resist being single-minded.

Of course, the heart longs for 'wholeness' just as it longs for broken-ness and the mind will always try and find a pattern, "intuit unity" (Iris M). Instead you drift or choose to drift in and out of the morning hours (this could be the confession of an opium eater!). In other words, the words you hope will be true, like the flesh behind the clothes, the road back, the road north, is a narrow and arduous one...