Tuesday, August 3, 2021

How Emotionality Can Aid Rationality

Not only are emotionality and rationality--the capacity to experience rich emotions and grasp the laws of logic respectively--not in opposition to each other, for it is only emotionalism that conflicts with rationality and reason, but they can also be allies in a person's inner life.  A person can go beyond not having their alignment with reason and their strongest emotions displacing each other.  At best, the two can work together in solidifying a person's understanding of logical truths and their own personal experience of living as a philosophical being.  This is actually a possible status for every person who does not fallaciously misunderstand the nature of the laws of logic, the intellect, and emotions.

On one level, it takes just minor self-awareness and logical comprehension to realize that emotion can reinforce memories and thoughts by adding something beyond mere conceptual or introspective awareness.  Whatever emotions or more nuanced layers of emotion might accompany a given thought can very literally make it easier, more pleasant, or more empowering to reflect on.  Clearly, someone who is both wholly rationalistic and in touch with deep emotions is not hindered in their grasp of reason, but they can actually find the experience of thinking about philosophical truths about logic, concepts, introspection, or the senses more exciting and personal because of this.  There is more that can be understood about the issue beyond how rationality and emotionality never have to be enemies!

This is not at all the same as looking to emotion to reveal or "confirm" logical truths; it is letting one's capacity for emotions help motivate one to go from one idea to another and familiarize oneself with which ideas one has already contemplated.  Having different emotional experiences as one analyzes various concepts, dwells on precise details of an issue, or recalls specific philosophical facts is in no way emotionalistic.  Instead, it is a way for someone to honor how emotionality does not usurp the place of rationality and reason left to itself, a way to explore one's own personality while making genuine intellectual progress or simply revisiting ideas one is intimately familiar with.

Emotion is a significant part of human existence.  To distort this in one way or another is, in actuality, disastrous.  The twin errors of letting emotion guide one's worldview and regarding it as a universally trivial aspect of life not only contradict truth itself, but they also set one up for catastrophe.  Identifying, accepting, and savoring how emotion can come alongside rationality, enhancing the experience of looking to reason, is a key way to live in light of this fact.  While a rationalist and an emotionalist are ideological foes without exception, a rationalist is always capable of understanding reason, the truths reason illuminates, and their own personal emotions to the point of rejoicing in the liberating relationship between them.

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