Great question, and one with very deep historical roots. The ancient Stoics, for example, thought that remorse and regret were not compatible with being a true Sage, and I think the same arguments they give about these responses would also apply to those of disappointment or frustration when things don't go as you had hoped they would. But to extend this way of thinking even further, you might then go on to ask whether it is even ever really rational to hope for something that is not under your own control. For the Stoics, the only thing that is under our control (or, at least, can and should be under our control) is how we react to things. As a result, such "bad" reactions as remorse, regret, disappointment, or frustration are not the right way to respond to things that happen in the world. The true Sage would understand how the world works so well that nothing he or she would ever do would give rise to remorse or regret. Similarly, the Sage would understand the world so well that nothing would frustrate or disappoint him or her, because the Sage would never be so irrational as to hope for something that was not the ways things really are or will be. The Sage is one who simply wants the world to be the way it actually is, so that one's will is perfectly aligned with what actually has happened, does happen, and will happen.

Now, many people would question this Stoic view as being "morally challenged," at best. It sounds, for example, like the Stoic Sage is someone whose response to a school bus full of innocent children hanging precariously over a cliff, but slowly tipping towards the point where it will surely fall over the cliff, would be something along these lines. "Hmmm...I see that the bus will go over the cliff and all those children will die on the rocks below. Well...that's fine with me!"

If this sounds like something has gone wrong in the Stoic view, then you can apply that to your thought. If the acquisition of something (such as a certain job) seems like it would bring genuine benefits, all things considered, then it strikes me as both natural and also reasonable to feel at least some disappointment or frustration if one does not obtain the valuable thing. The Stoics denied that things like jobs (or, for that matter, even loved ones) actually have any genuine value. Many people will find this element of the Stoic view implausible. If things do have value, then it is right for us to want them, and part of the logic of desire is to feel some kind of dissatisfaction/discomfort if our desires are not met.

So perhaps a more fruitful way to think about this question is not to frame it in terms of contraries (either we should feel frustration or not), but instead to think about what levels of frustration or disappointment are appropriate to the specific episode in which we do not get what we desire. Here, I think most philosophers will adopt a view that is not as extreme as the Stoic view, but which approximates that view more closely than the very exaggerated (and, I suspect, self-absorbed) way in which most people respond to the (often very petty) frustrations of their lives. We are encouraged to be "philosophical" about things, which means, I suppose, that we are supposed to evaluate the actual worth of things as accurately as we can, and also to remind ourselves of the generally very poor position we are in with respect to assessing the actual long-term value, all things considered, of what we find ourselves desiring.

A small anecdote might help here. I was very frustrated in my career for many years, and sometimes came close to being offered jobs that I know I would have accepted had they been offered at the time. I also now think, in retrospect, that accepting at least some of those jobs would have actually hindered my career even more than what I was already finding frustrating at that time, so...actually, it turns out to have been a good thing for me that I did not get what I wanted so badly at that time. Reminding oneself of such things can certainly help to allay some of the more negative aspects of the experience of frustration.

But if a desire really is for something good, and one does not manage to get the good, then it seems to me that at least some level of disappointment is quite reasonable, especially if that disappointment can help to motivate a continued effort to get some version of the good that was missed this time, or a better line of approach, so that one's next efforts might be more successful.

Good question and good suggestion! Beginning with the last point, there are philosophers who love self-refuting arguments, the most famous being the Cartesian (and Augustinian) proposal that claims such as "I do not exist" have a habit of self-destructing. But some philosophers (and not a few poets) have sometimes introduced a narrow conception of 'rationality' in contrast to the emotions or experiences that seem to defy easy rational analysis, e.g. experiences that are moral, aesthetic or religious. So, when Pascal claimed that "the heart has its reasons whereof reason knows nothing" he was still appealing to reason but in contrast with what you might call abstract, emotionless rationality. This is probably best seen, not as a philosopher recommending we be irrational, but that we not be restricted to a narrow concept of the rational. On this point, a follower of Pascal might be in the same company with romantic poets such as Wordsworth or Coleridge and Blake or even St. Thomas Aquinas. All these thinkers resist narrow notions of reason, and allow for faith or insights that go beyond scientific rationality or passionless reason.

Two philosophers or philosophical theologians who come close to recommending the irrational are Tertullian, a third century Christian who is often quoted as claiming he believes Christianity because it is absurd, and the 19th century Danish, Christian philosopher Soren Kierkegaard who is sometimes understood to hold that, from the stand point of reason, Christianity cannot be true. I suggest both cases turn out to be less exciting, and that Tertullian only meant that Christianity only appears absurd from a pagan point of view and Kierkegaard that Christianity is only impossible from a certain kind of Enlightenment use of reason, whereas a broader point of view would show faith to be more reasonable than doubt. Nietzsche may be your best bet for a thinker who seeks to throw off a concern for "objective truths" discernible by reason. In a very early essay on history, Nietzsche suggests (or he may be understood as suggesting) that truth itself (or at least the truths in history) need to be subordinate to the value of life itself.

One other modest point may be worth making: many philosophers recognize that occasions can arise when it is rational (or reasonable) to appear to be unreasonable or irrational. Think of the figure Hamlet in Shakespeare's famous play: he wisely pretended to be crazy in order to not arose suspicion that he suspected the King of killing his father. There is a good, recent book on such matters: Appearances of the Good; An Essay on the Nature of Practical Reason by Sergio Tenenbaum (Cambridge University Press), especially the last three chapters

I'm also no scholar of Schopenhauer, but from what I remember he's claiming that our universe is at bottom non-rational -- fundamentally arising from causes rather than from reasons. The universe isn't, on this view, irrational if that means 'capable of reasoning but bad at it' or 'containing logical inconsistencies'. I take it that Schopenhauer is rejecting a theistic or deistic view that sees reason (and not causation) as fundamental to our universe. I agree with Professor Manter that neither Schopenhauer's view nor the view he's rejecting allows for inconsistent things such as square triangles.

Can I take this opportunity to grind an axe? Advocates of a supernatural (theistic or deistic) origin of our universe often claim that only their view -- rather than metaphysical naturalism -- gives us hope of achieving a rational understanding of the universe by investigating it. They say that only if the universe was rationally intended can we hope to understand it. I think the opposite is true. If the universe arose supernaturally, rather than by means that natural science could in principle explain, then we have no hope of understanding the universe ever more deeply by investigating it scientifically: we'll eventually hit a barrier beyond which there's literally just magic, something that by definition defies naturalistic explanation (and maybe any explanation). Only if the universe is fundamentally non-supernatural -- unintended, uncreated -- can we hope to delve ever deeper into it. A bit ironically, then, a Schopenhauer-like view of the universe as fundamentally non-rational is the one that gives us the best hope of understanding it rationally.

It's been years since I've read Schopenhauer, so I cannot respond with his position as such. What I am noticing is that you seem to have excluded other possibilities by assuming that if the universe is not rational it must be irrational. What about non-rational, for example? No squared circles needed!

If we posit that rationality is a capacity of human consciousness - and a mysterious thing consciousness is - what might it mean to call the universe "rational?" Are we saying it is conscious? Does the analogy to human consciousness hold sufficiently to apply to the vast universe? There might be human minds that see order and disorder and apply rational principles to their observations, but it is quite another thing to ascribe rationality to ... what? The universe is one of those concepts that is not a reality one can experience. Perhaps we can thank Schopenhauer (and his 19th century counterparts) for helping us see our anthropomorphizing for what it is.

Does this help? -bjm

Let me begin by saying that any meaningful discourse requires reason, including feminist attempts to mount a critique of reason!

Feminists differ significantly, so there is no one answer to your query, but there seems to be a shared conviction that rationality alone is insufficient to shed light on many of the deeper problems humans seek to solve. One way to ask the question could be: "Given its rightful role in any inquiry, does rationality exhaust all aspects of a given question?" or: “How does one's experience, cultural identity, gender, along with many other social markers shape the nature of the questions one raises and the answers one is willing to consider ‘rational?’"

Historically speaking, the raising and answering of significant human questions has been done in the context of educated, white, European male academics or clerics. Perhaps Descartes could sit by the fire and believe he is but une chose qui pense (a thing that thinks), but is this the experiential norm for most men and women? Where are the meditations devoted to their collective wisdom?

Remember, feminist do not debate arithmetic and so I would suggest that feminists do not critique rationality per se. Rather, feminists argue that reasoning that purports to be universal but is not inclusive of a wider range of human experience/reasoning is never "pure reason" but contextual. But this isn’t just a feminist matter! Why would anyone wish to privilege a narrow sample of one type of reasoning (significant in its own right) to the exclusion of all others?

Given that it is possible to think rationally, it must be possible also to think irrationally. An analogy with the concept of biological function may usefully illustrate why this is the case. If some part of the body has a function--so, for example, if the heart has the function of pumping blood--it must be possible for it to malfunction, for otherwise the ascription to the heart of the function of pumping blood would not have any normative force. Similarly, insofar as one aims to think in accordance with the norms of thought, it must be possible for one not to think in accordance with those norms, and hence to think irrationally.

It's hard to give advice on the basis of a one-paragraph description; so please take the following as no more than a suggestion for your consideration. Unfortunately, your son's problem is not unique. At least I feel that I see it ever more often: really bright teenagers peaking prematurely, then becoming ever more dim, dull and lethargic.

I doubt your son's attitude to school is much affected by what happened to him eight years ago; and I doubt it could be much affected by the anticipation of any long-term effects that his non-attendance might have eight years down the road. I think he would happily go to school if he found the experience interesting and rewarding either intellectually or at least socially.

You cannot control the school's curriculum to make it more interesting for your son, more responsive to his needs and curiosity. But you may be able to supply links: materials that really interest him and are also related to what's being taught in school. Perhaps he is interested in deep-space exploration and in what we can learn therefrom about the origin of the universe. A well-written introductory book on this subject might then get him interested in physics which provides the methods we use to find out about parts of the universe that are very distant in space or time. Similarly, a good travel story might get him interested in geography; a good program on the Discovery Channel or a trip to the zoo or to a museum of natural history might get him interested in biology; a good program on the History Channel might get him interested in history; a fun book about number theory might get him interested in maths; Sophie's World might get him excited about philosophy; and so on. If he takes a real interest in one subject, becomes curious, gets good at it, finds materials on his own, discusses them with the teacher or fellow students outside class -- then he'll see that school can be interesting, can answer real questions and can also raise many even more interesting new ones. If, with some creative effort on your part, you can get him over this hump, then he may see how interesting school can be and want to take fuller advantage of it on his own.

One way to answer this question, I think, would be to consider the history of science. Ptolemy, for example, believed that the earth was at the center of the universe, and that the sun and other planets revolved around it in roughly circular orbits, except for "eccentricities" accounting for which was much of what astronomers did in those days. Copernicus corrected part of that, holding instead that the sun was at the center of the universe and that the Earth and other planets revolved around it, with only the Moon (now not considered a planet) revolving around the Earth. But Copernicus too thought that the orbits of the planets were roughly circular, except for eccentricities

By the time of Descartes, it was realized that the sun is not at the center of the universe, but it one star among many, though Descartes did think the sun was at the center of (what we would now call) the solar system. Kepler would later replace the view that the orbits of the planets are circular with the much more nearly correct view that they are elliptical and place the sun at one of the foci of these ellipses. Newton would then show how Kepler's equations can be derived from more fundamental laws of physics, showing that the orbits are not perfectly elliptical, (since the planets exert a gravitational force on each other. The sun then doesn't occupy a special place at all, even in the solar system. If anything does, it is the center of mass of the solar system.

But then it turned out that Newton's account couldn't explain the so-called procession of the perihelion of Mercury. It's inability to do so is part of what led to Einstein's discovery of relativistic physics, which does explain it and brings us to the present day.

Now, it seems to me that we must surely regard all of these views as reasonably held. It would, of course, be utterly unreasonable for me or you to think that the Earth was at the center of the universe. But it was a perfectly sensible thing for Ptolemy to think, and the theory in which this belief was embedded was actually pretty successful, as theories go. The same goes for Copernicus's view, Kepler's, Newton's, and Einstein's.

And that, I think, is the key here. It is not so much views that are reasonable or unreasonable. Views can, rather, be reasonably or unreasonably held. That is, one may good reasons to hold those views, have taken proper account of all relevant and available evidence, and so on and so forth. So "reasonable", in this use, is an epistemic adverb, and of course false views can be reasonably held. Surely it is now reasonable for you and me to believe the relativistic account of the orbits of the planets. But some hot-shot physicist may yet come along and show us that we believe falsely.

That said, philosophers do sometimes describe other philosophical views as "reasonable". What they mean, I think, is that someone relevantly like the people engaged in whatever discussion is underway might reasonably hold that view. I.e., that merely holding the view doesn't indicate that one is failing to take proper account of relevant evidence or otherwise being irrational.

How about because they're hard questions?

Okay, maybe that's a bit quick. But it's close. When a question doesn't have an obvious answer, it's no surprise that people disagree. And if there's no agreed-upon method for getting the answer, it's even less surprising. A lot of what most people would count as fundamental questions about life are like that. For that matter, so are a lot of questions that most people would have a hard time getting excited about. (A good chunk of what you'll find in academic journals deals with questions that hardly count as fundamental issues about life, but the answers aren't obvious and the methods for getting at answers aren't obvious either.)

For some such questions, there's another sort of reason: picking an answer depends on how we rank competing values. Many of the familiar differences between liberals and conservatives are of this sort, for example. And it's not just that questions of value can be hard or that there's not always a clear way to settle them. It may be that in some cases, there isn't a uniquely correct answer.

That might suggest that smart people would stop disagreeing about such things. After all, if you like vanilla and I like chocolate, we don't disagree. We just have different preferences. But to suggest that some value-questions don't have uniquely correct answers isn't to imply that none do. It also isn't to say that all answers are equally acceptable. And even if we agree that there's no real disagreement when you and I pick different acceptable responses, it may not be obvious that we're in that kind of case. In other words, even if there's in fact no one right answer, that fact may not be obvious and it won't stop us from caring deeply about our "disagreements," even if they aren't real disagreements.

So perhaps the original answer still stands with a qualification: it's not just that questions like this can be hard; sometimes they're meta-hard: hard to figure out if they really have answers to begin with.

That is an excellent question that has fascinated philosphers from the beginning in the west. Socrates seems to have equated knowing an act is good with desiring it, and reasoning that if someone desires X they must (on some level) both think it good and do the act or try to do it (unless constrained internally by an injury, for example or some external constraint, e.g. chains). From a Socratic point of view, the person who seems to be in the situation of thinking jogging is good but electing not to jog (without good reason) must (on some level) think that jogging is not (or not always) good. For he or she to remain watching TV rather than go running, the person must think something like: in this case, it is ok because running can be dangerous and I might be hit by a car or [whatever]....and so it is perfectly fine for me to wait until tomorrow to go for a run. The greeks called this apparent liability for us not to do what we think we should akrasia, a term that is usually translated as "weakness of will" but could also be translated as "incontinence." Although some scholars disagree, I believe Plato and Aristotle basically accepted Socrates' position. Perhaps the most famous literary case on the other side would be St. Paul who in the New Testament confesses to doing the very thing he thinks is sinful.

Personally, I think akrasia is still an open issue philosophically! There may be a middle position, though, between Socrates and St. Paul: perhaps Socrates is right that on some level your wanna-be jogger has to consciously think it is ok for him or her not to jog, but there is some self-deception in play, and deep down (sub-consciously?), the person realizes that failing to run is wrong? Maybe Socrates and his student Plato and his student's student Aristotle got the conscious narrative right, but Paul was right about what lies beneath the surface?