Is Reason "Cold"?

People are of many kinds. Some are rational and some emotional. Some are intelligent and some stupid. Some are ordinary and some fill lives and change minds. Unfortunately, a great many of them belong to the realm of stupidity and ignorance. They prefer the company of power and vanity. Their aims of life become so practical that they can only find themselves in endless fulfilment of worldly possessions. As time goes on, they are likely to detach themselves from the ability to reason because they have no time for the noble activity of thinking. Gone are the age of Renaissance and the age of Enlightenment. A great many people have recently been in the habit of condemning reason as "cold". Rational men are accused of being cold-blooded and emotionally insensible. They say rational men over-estimate the part of reason which is capable of playing and downplay the importance of emotions. The Romantic movement, though perhaps in a less noble form, has made a spectacular comeback. The sentiment of la sensibilite dictates the modern era. This error, I think, comes from the fact that they are in complete muddle of what the word "reason" actually means.

Reason has a perfectly clear and precise meaning. It allows you to see the choice of right means of an end that you wish to achieve. It does not dictate the ends. Take, for instance, the attempt to suicide. The ability to reason allows you to see the pros and cons of suicide and perhaps what sort of methods, from the most vulgar of hanging to the noblest Seppuku, that you wish to employ. However, it does not decide what end you wish to pursue. This is the part where passion comes into play. In order to attempt suicide successfully, passion is a decisive factor. One must have the passion which springs from the indignation and the ugliness of the world to put your wish into action. This is analogy which is similar to that of science and philosophy. A great deal of knowledge that you obtain from science does not decide what end you want to achieve. You need to rely on philosophy to offer you value judgement to decide how to put your knowledge into good use. Reason does not despise emotions, but acknowledges them as essential ingredients to make our lives better.

Reason also helps us develop emotional sensibility. By emotional sensibility, I do not mean we should liberate our emotions without self-control. I do not think it a good thing to be in the state of extremely insane excitement like the romantic revolutionaries which they would like to have the heads of aristocrats and members of royal family cut off. This usually leads to an undesirable consequence which is directly opposite to what they intend. But I do mean that by the ability to reason, we should be able to have greater emotional depth which equips us with the capacity to feel more deeply about our dark moods and optimistic moods than any other man who has attached little importance to reason and exercise them appropriately. But how does reason do this? Ethics offers one of the best examples. Our desires, like our senses, are primarily self-centred. Our egocentric character of desires always interferes with our ethics. Most of our moral values, if not all, appeal to intuitions rather than reason. Take, for instance, the objection to homicide. The objection to homicide was inspired by superstition. It was originally based upon the ritual pollution caused by the blood of the victims, but the fact is that such intuition was triggered by the contagion system in our brain favoured by natural selection. Let me take another example. Nudity in public is condemned. It is condemned not because a nude body offends our aesthetic sensibility to the eye, but because it is considered a sin according to the Christian tradition (at least to the West) as Adam and Eve are unable to resist the seduction of fruit offered by a snake. Of course, the fruit is a symbol of sex. As soon as they discover the pleasure of sex, they are ashamed of their nakedness of their bodies because sex is thought wicked. Many things are thought immoral because they offend our ideological familiarity and cause a rupture to our emotional stability. It is very curious in our human nature that we love regularities and contempt change. This curious pattern of thought also became the foundation of Platonic philosophy as a essential quality of his Utopia. Emotions have determined many of our moral values. Reason seems not to play any part in ethics. That is also precisely the reason why we need reason. Extreme emotions, if allow in one direction, will become all-pervasive. Therefore, we must need reason to constraint our emotions and practice them appropriately.

Moreover, reason has a constructive aspect to emotions. It helps develop impersonal feelings. I am speaking of impersonal feelings as feelings not only concern my own, but the feelings that extend to the wider public such as compassion and benevolence. We should not admire a man who only care only about his own dissatisfaction of hunger. On the contrary, we should admire a man who from his own need of food is led to the general sympathy of the hunger. We should not admire a man who is only kind and generous to his friends, lovers, and family. On the contrary, we should admire a man who from his need of friendly feelings from strangers is led to the general love to the mankind. I am not implying reason generates these feelings, but it helps construct them by minimising emotions that are an obstacle to well-being such as hatred, fear, and envy. However, that is not to say that reason kills all the deeper emotions which it does not condemn. In parental affection, in romantic love, in friendship, in benevolence, in the devotion to science and art, there is nothing that reason should wish to diminish. A rational man will be glad that he feels them and he will do nothing to lessen these emotions because they are parts of the good life. A man who can feel these emotions can contemplate the world more freely because his emotions are more delicate and sophisticated. In the spectacle of romantic love, he will feel the intensity of love offered by his romantic partner and treasure it because he is aware he does nothing to deserve such love, however hard that love is to be fathomed, but simply a consequence of romantic fatalism. In his heart, he shall be deeply thankful of the spectacle of joy that life has to offer. In the aspect of art, he is more able to be moved by the beauty and subtlety of a painting to tears not because the artist paints what he sees, but because the artist paints what he actually feels. When he listens to Beethoven music, he will consider it an aesthetic delight to the ear, and he will be touched by the intellectual and emotional depth that a piece of exquisite music wishes to deliver.

Reason is by no means cold. It does not condemn emotions that are parts of the good life. It only safeguards against emotions that prevent us from realising the ends of life we wish to pursue. It is an essential quality for integral harmony. In the spectacle of joy, you can feel what love can offer. And in the midst of grievance, you can feel disgust, contempt, despair, loneliness, and melancholy. It is these things that enable you to contemplate the world from a wider horizon and generate an universalising feeling upon the human race. It is also these things from which progress, artistic inspirations, and romance spring. Until our feelings become more refined, the world will be rendered dull and vulgar.

"I prefer the company of peasants because they have not been educated sufficiently to reason incorrectly." - Michel de Montaigne

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