This is nicely written, but I don’t quite understand some of examples to be honest. What is being lumped in as part of the Rationalist World and why? Are we tal

This is nicely written, but I don’t quite understand some of examples to be honest. What is being lumped in as part of the Rationalist World and why? Are we talking post Renaissance? Post Enlightenment? Contemporary? The Greeks were not reasoning people? Of the architecture that is praised here, what makes those pieces so irrational, and what makes the critiqued pieces rational? When were those quaint Parisian apartments built? We could talk about the literal 18th century Age of “Reason“ to start, but the art there was quite Neoclassical actually (and grand and aesthetic per the criteria of this essay I suppose). In fact, it was followed by an era of greater expression and imagination. Le Corbusier and the modernists responded with some peculiar ideas against decoration yes, but surely we’re about a century past that now? On the contrary, so much of the postmodern world has been criticized as shallow and image obsessed and post-truth. What happened to the arguably recent developments that are in between the extremes of modern Brutalism and say, the tedium of Medieval religious art (if we really want some sort of reference point for pre-reason): art for art’s sake, beauty is truth, pure formalism? There has always been a back and forth dialogue between aesceticism and aestheticism, minimalism and maximalism. Beauty and wonder did not suddenly die when reason was “discovered” (whenever that was). Let’s not romanticize ye olden days.