Hunter Maats — The Rational Case for Emotions

Perhaps, in our excitement over our technological progress, we have trained ourselves to worship a false idol. We have gone so far in the direction of being obsessed with technology, robotics, big data—the cold, calculated, and rational— that we have forgotten that the most valuable asset we have in solving human problems is, in fact, our humanity.

This is not a recent development. Since the time of Plato, the West has worshipped reason. It is the ability to think critically that separates man from the beasts. Reason allowed Plato to philosophize, Pythagoras to perform his mathematics, and Aristotle to explore the precursors to science. Reason was considered to be pure, unsullied by our animal instincts.

The natural implication, then, was that emotions were the enemy—base and dirty, coming from our most animal selves. Emotions like fear and shame could shatter the philosopher’s stoicism and turn him into a cringing wretch. Even celebrated emotions, such as love (be it romantic or filial), drew contempt for being “irrational.” With the Scientific Revolution, our reverence for reason has only grown. And today, we depend on computers and technology more than ever before, using them to reduce or eliminate what we call “human error.” Plato seems poised to emerge the victor.

There are myths in every field and this a one of the chief myths of philosophy. The ancients were not under the spell of reason as most people think. Rather, this occurred in Europe at the time of the rise of modern philosophy beginning especially with Descartes and the success of modern science.

Nor were modern philosophy and modern science as separate as some imagine either. Descartes is considered the originator of analytic geometry and Leibniz of the calculus, although Newton took it a step further. It is at this stage that reason began to be differentiated from passion in the way described above. Kant then writes a critique of "pure reason." Cognitive science reveals what the ancients realized. Reason and emotion are bound up and cannot be disentangled.

Ancient thought and the medieval thought that was based upon it were more nuanced about the relationship of reason and emotion than modern rationalism. In Republic Book IV, 426-435, Plato distinguished four "virtues" or excellences — prudence (φρόνησις, phronēsis), justice ((δικαιοσύνη, dikaiosynē)), temperance (σωφροσύνη, sōphrosynē), and fortitude (ἀνδρεία, andreia).

These are also found in the Bible.

The deuterocanonical book Wisdom of Solomon 8:7 reads, "She [Wisdom] teaches temperance, and prudence, and justice, and fortitude, which are such things as men can have nothing more profitable in life." Wikipedia

To these virtues, Saint Paul added the three theological virtues — faith, hope and love — Πίστις, Ἐλπίς καὶ Ἀγάπη (Pistis, Elpis, and Agape). Medieval Scholastic philosophy was founded on the four "cardinal virtues" of ancient Greek thought and the three Pauline "theological virtues."

The ancients and medievals held that there are two types of feeling, one associated with the "animal passion," which arises from the sense appetite. It was symbolized as the stomach and its virtue was temperance, which is the ability to socialize animal passions.

The second type of feeling was taken to be particularly human. It arises from the rational appetite, the perfection of which is unconditional altruistic love. It was symbolized by the chest, specifically "the heart." "The heart" in this sense is not the physical organ on the left side of the body, but the center between the breasts. It is where one points when one points to oneself. This is the seat of the self, so to speak, although self is non-localized.

Prudence or practical wisdom was symbolized as the head. Justice is the harmony and balance of these three in an integrated human being.

It was not until after the Scientific Revolution that this view changed to blaming the dichotomy between reason and emotion on Plato and the ancients. Nor were all moderns under its spell. William Blake excoriated it in "The Marriage of Heaven and Hell." However, there was a divide between rationalism and romanticism that opened into a chasm. "Thinking people" inhabited on side of academia, for example, and "feeling people" the other. This battle is still being fought in the halls of education.

In The Abolition of Man, C. S. Lewis criticized the modern Western conception of human nature as overlooking the rational appetite, conflating emotion with sense appetite as animal passion that reason must overcome.

“We make men without chests and expect from them virtue and enterprise. We laugh at honor and are shocked to find traitors in our midst.” ― C.S. Lewis, The Abolition of Man

This is a major flow at the heart of the contemporary conception of rationality that has infected many important areas of thought, including economics.

John Stuart Mill criticized the naïve approach to Utilitarianism on these grounds.

“It is indisputable that the being whose capacities of enjoyment are low, has the greatest chance of having them fully satisfied; and a highly endowed being will always feel that any happiness which he can look for, as the world is constituted, is imperfect. But he can learn to bear its imperfections, if they are at all bearable; and they will not make him envy the being who is indeed unconscious of the imperfections, but only because he feels not at all the good which those imperfections qualify.

It is better to be a human being dissatisfied than a pig satisfied; better to be Socrates dissatisfied than a fool satisfied. And if the fool, or the pig, is of a different opinion, it is only because they only know their own side of the question.” — Utilitarianism

Evonomics
The Rational Case for Emotions

Hunter Maats