Why is Reason a Vice?: Empiricism, Rationalism, and Condemnation of Science in H. C. Andersen’s “The Snow Queen”

Abstract

This article studies the empiricist and rationalist worldviews presented in H. C. Andersen’s enigmatic fairy tale “The Snow Queen”. These two epistemic views are in contest not only with one another but also with the Christian doctrine that challenges them both and is offered in the tale as their superior alternative. While the empiricist and rationalist worldviews give the tale its epistemic aspects, the strong emphasis on Christian faith brings central ethical problems to the discussion, motivating the title’s question: why is reason a vice? By showing how empiricism and rationalism are presented in “The Snow Queen” and become embodied in the mirror-motif, this study seeks to provide an answer to the most disturbing ethical dilemma of the tale: scientific worldviews, such as empiricism and rationalism, and the Snow Queen herself in particular, are in the tale viewed as immoral and deceitful and abhorred by the protagonists, but this notion is in fact falsified by the tale’s own logic.