AMBIVALENCE OF HUMAN EXISTENTIAL SITUATION AS AN INDEX OF RATIONAL EXPLANATION

Abstract

Man in spite of his rationality often tend to do things that also negate the interest he at the same time attempts to conserve. His entire existence is beset by this phenomenon of ambivalence. Models of explanation like the positivist and realist models, usually employed to give rational explanation on human social action have failed to make recourse to this phenomenon. Their logic of explanation is more or less restrictive and lopsided in the sense that reality, for them, is limited either to observable phenomena or their underlying structures from which the observable emanates. In this exclusivist – disjunctive reasoning, they cannot claim to explain fundamentally. In this paper, we argue that to give rational explanation about man’s social behaviour demands taking the human ambivalent situation into consideration. This measure will give us the leverage to understand that reality though a complex phenomenon with diverse components could better be appreciated in a complementary way. We submit that such understanding could only be provided via “complementary reflection”, an approach which is non-exclusivist in character.