If the discussion that we have reviewed – and it is a discussion that has been going on for many decades – seems inconclusive, it is perhaps because the discussion always assumes a kind of priority of rationality over goodness. The question is always whether there is any sense in which it can be called irrational to choose a bad end, as if goodness were on trial and rationality were the judge. To assume this stance, especially when one's assumptions about rationality are a largely unexamined collection of cultural myths and prejudices, is to prejudge the question of the status of value judgments in advance. In the remainder of this essay I propose to reverse the terms of the comparison and to ask not how rational is goodness, but why is it good to be rational? Asking what value rationality itself has will both force us to become clearer about the nature of rationality itself and about the assumptions we are prone to make concerning rationality and may enable us to see what is wrong with the way we think about the former question.

Let us recall that when Max Weber introduced the modern fact–value distinction, his argument against the objectivity of value judgments was precisely that it is not possible to establish the truth of a value judgment to the satisfaction of all possible rational persons. From the very beginning it was the impossibility, or alleged impossibility, of rational proof that cast value judgments into a somewhat suspect light. Rationality has been putting value on trial for a long time.