Starting with Galileo and Newton, an immanentist paradigm was enforced in the European culture, consisting in the abolition of the transcendence from the scope of scientific concerns; the new paradigm will lead to the birth of the modern sciences of nature. In this paper we shall focus on the way in which the prescribed ideal of rationality will generate a new ideal of knowledge, impacting all the others ideals - social, moral and political. The ideal of rationality proper to modernity can be summarized in the equation rational knowledge = unconditioned intelligibility. This equation comprises the idea that an utterance is rational only if it has a universally accessible meaning, if it is intelligible as to allow the control and, implicitly, if it reaches the inter-subjective consensus. Such requirements of rationality function in mathematics and in the mathematized sciences, but in other domains (philosophy, arts, religion) they are loosened, have another degree of importance or are sacrificed in favor of other values. For instance in poetry, universal accessibility, consensus and uniformity are avoided, being considered indicators of failure and not of success; the ineffable, the eremitism and the uniqueness are preferred in exchange.
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