Feb 29, 2016
A powerful description of the effects of rationalising our decisions, once our will has already turned away from the objective good.
"But human beings do rationalize; the reason and the will, once they have been torn apart in the moment of yielding to temptation, demand to be reconciled. The consciousness of having acted irrationally must be assuaged, even at the cost of reason's grasp on reality. And so it is that, in the free exercise of the will to sin, man deprives himself of his freedom, for he cuts off his cognitive access to the created order. He cuts himself off from the earth on which he must have a purchase if his agency is to amount to more than a flailing of limbs."
Resurrection and Moral Order, O'Donovan, pg 112.