Hostname: page-component-7c8c6479df-8mjnm Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-03-19T06:38:35.527Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

Reason and Passion1

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  08 January 2010

Extract

I Once gave a series of talks to a group of psychoanalysts who had trained together and was rather struck by the statement made by one of them that, psychologically speaking, ‘reason’ means saying ‘No’ to oneself. Plato, of course, introduced the concept of ‘reason’ in a similar way in The Republic with the case of the thirsty man who is checked in the satisfaction of his thirst by reflection on the outcome of drinking. But Plato was also so impressed by man's ability to construct mathematical systems by reasoning that he called it the divine element of the soul. And what has this ability to do with that of saying ‘No’ to oneself? And what have either of these abilities to do with the disposition to be impartial which is intimately connected with our notion of a reasonable man, or with what David Hume called a ‘wonderful and unintelligible instinct’ in our souls by means of which men are able to make inferences from past to future?

It must readily be admitted that there are few surface similarities between the uses of ‘reason’ in these contexts. No obvious features protrude which might be fastened on as logically necessary conditions for the use of the term ‘reason’. But beneath the surface there may be lurking common notions that are, or can be, of importance in our lives. To make them explicit is to give structure and substance to what is often called ‘the life of reason’ and to show that this is not inconsistent with a life of passion as is often thought. This seems eminently worth attempting at a time when many people seem hostile to reason. For those who demand instant gratification, who adopt some existentialist stance, who cultivate violence or mystical experience, or who merely do what others do, are all, in various ways, resisting the claims of reason on them. And what they are resisting is not just the demand that they should reflect and calculate; it is also the influence of passions and sentiments that underlie a form of life.

Type
Papers
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy and the contributors 1970

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Footnotes

1

My thanks are due to the Australian National University for the facilities provided for me as a Visiting Fellow which enabled me to write this paper, and to those colleagues whose comments enabled me to improve it.

References

REFERENCES

Arieti, S., The Intrapsychic Self (New York, 1967).Google Scholar
Bennett, J., Rationality (London, 1964).Google Scholar
Bernstein, B., ‘Social Class and Linguistic Development, A Theory of Social Learning’, in Halsey, A. H., Floud, J. and Anderson, C. A., Education, Economy and Society (New York, 1961).Google Scholar
Dember, W. N., The Psychology of Perception (New York, 1964).Google Scholar
Flugel, J. G., Man, Morals and Society (London, 1946).CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Freud, S., Civilization and Its Discontents (London, 1930).Google Scholar
Klein, J., Samples from English Cultures (London, 1965).Google Scholar
Mabbott, J., ‘Reason and Desire’, Philosophy, xxxviii (04 1953).Google Scholar
Oakeshott, M., ‘Rationalism in Politics’ and ‘Rational Conduct’, in Rationalism in Politics (London, 1962).Google Scholar
Peters, R. S., The Concept of Motivation (London, 1958).Google Scholar
Peters, R. S. ‘Emotions, Passivity and the Place of Freud's Theory in Psychology’, in Wolman, B. and Nagel, E. (eds), Scientific Psychology (New York, 1965).Google Scholar
Peters, R. S. ‘Motivation, Emotion and the Conceptual Scheme of Common Sense’, in Mischel, T. (ed.), Human Action (New York, 1969).Google Scholar
Ryle, G., A Rational Animal (London, 1962).Google Scholar
Sidgwick, H., The Methods of Ethics, Papermac, ed. (London, 1962).CrossRefGoogle Scholar