Irrationalism

noun

noun ·Rare ·Advanced level

Definitions

Noun
  1. 1
    A philosophical movement formed as a cultural reaction against positivism in the early 20th century. countable, uncountable

    "Finally, with good reason, this psychology aims to be a psychology of a purely empiriological type. It is pervaded and overwhelmed on every side, however, by a pseudometaphysics of the most vulgar character, which Freud is all the less anxious to dispense iwth as he imagines he has no philosophy or metaphysics at all. I say pseudometaphysics of the most vulgar type, because it combines all the prejudices of deterministic, mechanistic scientism with all the prejudices of irrationalism."

Example

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"Finally, with good reason, this psychology aims to be a psychology of a purely empiriological type. It is pervaded and overwhelmed on every side, however, by a pseudometaphysics of the most vulgar character, which Freud is all the less anxious to dispense iwth as he imagines he has no philosophy or metaphysics at all. I say pseudometaphysics of the most vulgar type, because it combines all the prejudices of deterministic, mechanistic scientism with all the prejudices of irrationalism."

Etymology

From irrational + -ism.

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Data sourced from Wiktionary, WordNet, CMU, and other open linguistic databases. Updated March 2026.