Rational Secular State -- Introduction Continued

Some ways of being in the world, individually and socially, privately and publicly, are better than other ways of being in the world, and it is possible to choose one over the other rationally.  A great deal is implied in that statement, and there is an historical discussion of rationality and what it means to decide rationally that I could not hope to detail in a single monograph.  Let me just suggest that rationality of a rational act is predicated on the ends it serves, and the fundamental challenge to any notion of rationality is the question of 'ends' or 'purpose,' both in the pragmatic sense (an act is more or less rational if it has instrumental utility to a given end) and in the moral and ethical sense (an act is more less ethically rational if it can be justified relative to a given end).  While the second parenthetical remark has been roundly challenged in the folk wisdom -- the ends, or so we want to say, do not justify the means -- we are left with the question, 'what then does?'  It is folk wisdom invoked when the ends themselves have been abandoned, not when they are being served.  The initiating political question -- how best to live among others? -- elicits the answer -- well it depends -- and it depends upon the ends we predicate for ourselves, privately and publicly.  In that shoulder shrug, 'it depends,' the contemporary contribution to the discussion of rationality derails itself in a humanist theory of relativity that seems to be the final word on the matter because it denies that there can be a final word on the matter.  The rationality of an act depends upon the ends we predicate for ourselves, individually and socially, privately and publicly, and in the absence of a final end, once and for all, then the rationality of an act depends upon the ends we set for ourselves within the various contingencies within which we find ourselves.  Adolf Eichmann was not inherently irrational or evil.   The banality of Eichmann's acts resides in their utter rationality relative to the 'purpose' the Third Reich had set for itself, and his acts were not brought into question within the context of the Third Reich itself, and might never have been brought into formal question had the Third Reich somehow prevailed.  They were brought into question only from without, only when the Third Reich and the ends it served were vilified.  Given the urgency of the demand, the initiating political question, or so it would seem, is less the instrumental question of 'how best to live among others,' more the intentionality question of 'what ends do we serve?'  If indeed our choice of ends arise out of contingency, affect contingency, and sink back into contingency -- if indeed there is no position outside contingency from which to view contingency -- then in what way do we decide upon the ethical and moral efficacy of our acts?