Mr. Spock and the Gift of Prophecy: Emotion, Reason, and the Unity of the Human Person

Abstract

Emotions are a central and indispensable part of our cognitive equipment by which we apprehend the world. But until fairly recently Western philosophical thinking about emotions was dominated by a model of adversarial relationship with rationality. This is particularly a heritage of Enlightenment philosophy, but has antecedents in Stoicism. Classical Stoics regarded emotions as judgments, but thought they were invariably wrong or misleading. With regard to Christianity an 'intellectualization' of God, making him the seat of purified, emotionless rationality, has also contributed to the problem. But for the sake of personal integration we cannot have components of our mind at permanent war with each other, whatever occasional conflicts may arise. Emotions could not be the product of evolution if they were always misleading. Healthy moral and spiritual development of the whole person needs to take both emotions and intellect seriously. This development has often been described as spiritual ascent, but this metaphor brings with it the danger of looking down on our un-ascended fellow humans. There are resources for integrating human emotions in moral and spiritual development, not just from contemporary psychology, philosophy, etc., but also from past spiritual writers in the Christian tradition. PU - SPRINGER PI - DORDRECHT PA - PO BOX 17, 3300 AA DORDRECHT, NETHERLANDS