unreason

Lack of reason or rationality; unreasonableness; irrationality.

c. 1566, John Knox, The Historie of the Reformation of the Church of Scotland, Book I, London: 1644, Another day the same Frier made another Sermon of the Abbot of Unreason, unto whom, and whose Laws, he compareth Prelats of that age; for they were subject to no Laws, no more than was the Abbot of Unreason.

[…] it was long ere these scandalous and immoral sports could be abrogated;—the rude multitude continued attached to their favourite pastimes, and, both in England and Scotland, the mitre of the Catholic—the rochet of the reformed bishop—and the cloak and band of the Calvinistic divine—were, in turn, compelled to give place to those jocular personages, the Pope of Fools, the Boy-Bishop, and the Abbot of Unreason.

Nonsense; folly; absurdity.

To prove to be unreasonable; disprove by argument.

The reason of the unreasonable usage my reason has met with, so unreasons my reason, that I have reason to complain of your beauty :" and how did he enjoy the following flower of composition ! "

The elenchus enables him to overturn the formerly secure reasoning of his interlocutors about the subjects they discourse on so confidently—until the Socratic elenchus gradually unreasons them (see especially Meno, 80A—B).

To apply false logic or think without logic.

After some trouble I have got the Programme, and now send it on to you ; I beg you to transcribe the first ten pages, in which he reasons, or rather unreasons, about homeopathy, and then send the Programme back to me, as I do not know how to procure another copy.

In other, happier times, the mind could unreason freely, as if it belonged to no age, emancipated as it was...

To make unreasonable; to deprive of reason.

Unbelief unreasons a man: so the Apostle joyns them, when he prays to be delivered from unreasonable men; for all men have not faith.

My pathetic collapse provoked them. My unreasonableness unreasoned them.