Existential Rationalism: Handling Hume's Fork

The nondual foundation of scientific reason: why objectivity was never required.

What if Western faith in objective reality is rationalism's blind spot?

Science seeks objective knowledge: truth purified of the observer. Yet no observer ever steps outside experience. The mind can imagine a world independent of itself, name it reality, and build impressive models around it. Can reason rightfully claim to know what no mind ever meets?

Beginning with David Hume's challenge to rationalism, Marcel Eschauzier reexamines experience, knowledge, truth, and reason itself. Hume showed how little certainty empiricism can give us. Existential Rationalism argues that nondual recognition supplies the missing turn: once objective reality can no longer serve as the final court of appeal, reason becomes more necessary.

The inquiry moves through consciousness, free will, psychology, and quantum mechanics. Across these fields, one assumption remains largely untouched: that experience divides into a subject here and an object there.

What is revealed when that division is questioned?

Science retains its rigor. Repeatable observations, causal relations, and shared methods establish an intersubjective order without requiring a view from outside experience. Subjectivity becomes open to rational inquiry. Nonduality becomes something reason can recognize without belief having to supply it. The central claim is simple and far-reaching:

The world we know is never separate from the knowing of it.

Existential Rationalism asks the mind to examine its most persuasive illusion—and follow reason wherever that inquiry leads.

Nonduality is open to reason. That is a scientific opportunity.

"I am a firm believer that great things happen when different practices and schools of thought converge to create something new. Arts and hard sciences are often pitted against each other as contradictory and opposite ends of our spectrum of knowledge. This book is a wonderful example of how philosophy and science can be integrated to deepen our understanding of both. […] Kudos to the author for this inspiring contribution to the world!"—Amazon customer