Logic, Emotion, Reason

If we were only logical creatures, confronting a contradiction would be enough to give us pause. If I said with real passion for my homeland that everyone is welcome here, but some, of course, are not, I would be contradicting myself outright, and you would know to be wary of other opinions I might hold so strongly. The first lessons of logic will explain how I cannot keep those two conflicting beliefs and yet remain consistent, and as far as solid and objective critical thinking is concerned, consistency—noncontradiction—is everything.

But hard logic, it seems, lies rooted like a plant in the damp ground of our feelings and imagination. The health of our thinking, like that of a natural organism, depends on the quality of its soil, an entire biosphere of ideas we have inherited from our parents and culture, the assumptions we hold unbeknownst to ourselves, and above all our intentions, what we want most, very deeply to believe. For all our conclusive science and the mind-reeling technology it spawns, the world remains a mysterious place for us as persons: the infinitive reaches of the sky at night are enough to induce a tremble that will make each of us hold fast to our accepted beliefs, whatever logic and its injunctions may have to advise.

From this loamy ground of personal feelings, though, logic arises to flower and fruit as a complementary, not competitive, force. Our struggle to understand should not be between logic and feelings, but with each together. The human stature requires proportion, a fit balance of our emotional life kept to its creative bounds to gather its energy through the concentration and discipline that logic necessitates. But to be ready to listen to the advice those rules of logical consistency might offer, we must want one thing above all else: the truth, the certainties we possess controvertible only by our own will. If truth is not our ultimate need, both individual and social, then the lesser attractions of self-assertion, of power, of status, of but merely gleaming cash will persuade us that those lower achievements will be enough to make for us the place we seek.

And persuade here is just the word, because the object of persuasion is our emotional life. Others can persuade us by an appeal to our feelings—which is good and right as long as we are also open to hearing the correcting counsel of logic, which is not out to persuade but to convince, at the risk otherwise of self-contradiction. Though we often use the two words synonymously, this distinction between persuasion and conviction is all important from the classical perspective of language: the study of rhetoric teaches persuasion; the study of logic, conviction, both being rooted in the grammar of a particular tongue. Again, the two disciplines are complementary, not adversarial, because greater than each, their genus, is the ideal of reason.

To be reasonable, that hallmark of the human species, means to think and feel about something in a particular balance appropriate to the subject and its circumstance. To be reasonable does not mean to think logically without feeling deeply, nor does it mean to think only within the range of accepted beliefs. To be reasonable is not a static disposition some have and others don’t. It is, rather, a ready propensity to find the rightful posture of thoughts and feelings as called for when we reflect privately on and discuss openly with others about a subject common to all concerned. There is an athleticism proper to being reasonable, and like the dancer or gymnast or Olympian of any sort, the art of a reasonable person is to feelingly express, embody even, a right measure of both rational and emotional understanding about something. Passion then does not go headlong over itself, and thought does not stand cold.

But there is no logical counterweight against someone who wants to believe something, anything, for reasons less than the demand for truth will accept. Plants will wither in soils too rich, and dry lands without vegetation are called deserts. So too can we become if reason, which aims at truth, is not our first concern.

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