unreason

Etymology

Definitions

1. 1

   Lack of reason or rationality

   Lack of reason or rationality; unreasonableness; irrationality.

   • What is called the great popular heart was awakened, that indefinable something which may be, according to circumstances, the highest reason or the most brutish unreason.
2. 2

   Nonsense

   Nonsense; folly; absurdity.

3. 3

   To prove to be unreasonable

   To prove to be unreasonable; disprove by argument.

   • The reason of the unreasonable usage my reason has met with, so unreasons my reason, that I have reason to complain of your beauty :" and how did he enjoy the following flower of composition ! "
   • The elenchus enables him to overturn the formerly secure reasoning of his interlocutors about the subjects they discourse on so confidently—until the Socratic elenchus gradually unreasons them (see especially Meno, 80A—B).
   • Being a father can “unreason” your worldview, or at least make it very flexible, and that can create all sorts of fun and insights.
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   1. 4

      To apply false logic or think without logic.

      • In other, happier times, the mind could unreason freely, as if it belonged to no age, emancipated as it was...
      • Just as Heidegger's reflections on the imagination led him to think "The nothing nothings," so Foucault's reflections on madness led him, in effect, to think "Unreason unreasons."
   2. 5

      To make unreasonable

      To make unreasonable; to deprive of reason.

      • Unbelief unreasons a man: so the Apostle joyns them, when he prays to be delivered from unreasonable men; for all men have not faith.
      • My pathetic collapse provoked them. My unreasonableness unreasoned them.

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