The dominance of a particular conception of "reason" itself—usually the Enlightenment ideal of dispassionate, analytic, individual cognition—over all other modes of thought and understanding. Reason hegemony operates when this specific style of thinking is treated as the pinnacle of human cognition, and all other modes (emotional intelligence, embodied wisdom, relational knowing, intuitive insight) are relegated to lower status. It's the cultural assumption that the most "reasonable" person is the one who reasons like a Western philosopher, and that other ways of making sense of the world are merely primitive precursors to "real" thought.
Example: "The committee valued the candidate's cold analytic memoranda while dismissing the warm, contextually rich reports from field workers—a classic case of reason hegemony mistaking one cognitive style for intelligence itself."
by Dumu The Void March 12, 2026
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