Originally "Le coeur a ses raisons que la raison ne connaît point" - i.e.
the heart has its reasons of which reason doesn't see the relevance or in
which reason sees no point, i.e. the rational intellect can understand the
"reasons of the heart" (affective impulses, inclinations, emotions welling
up naturally in the body) but does not admit them as a real factor in
argumentation or rational inference, i.e. the ratio seeks precisely to
abstract from that (or must abstract from that in order to function), or
alternatively, ratio and sentio are incompatible, referring to different
modes of functioning or different frames of reference. Hence my comment
about the ratio not "admitting" the reasons of the heart as the essence of
the idea.
Perhaps the idea of "reason" underpinning this contrast is mistaken. That, I think, is the claim made by Hegel and Marx. Husserl makes the same claim. The relation of the latter to the former is explored by phenomenological Marxists such as Enzo Paci and Karel Kosik. A key feature of the critique is that the idea of reason involved derives from a demonstrably mistaken ontology - mechanical materialism.
Ted
