The recent economic crisis and the rapid geo-political transformations (including recent events in Middle East and North-Africa) call for a re-thinking of the notion of human reason, especially economic and political “reason”. The inadequacy of the dominant paradigms reducing economic reason to rational calculation on one side, and politics to mere realpolitik, is all too evident and has crucial ethical implications. Realism in facing crises requires more than technical, disciplinary and mechanistic approaches.