The Age of Enlightenment

There are those that claim that we’re still living in the Age of Enlightenment, that through science and rationality, the human person can achieve a kind of ‘perfectability’ in terms of progress, tolerance and democracy. The Enlightenment is traditionally seen as ‘beginning’ in the eighteenth century, philosophically speaking, as a result of the scientific breakthroughs of the seventeenth century.

What we see happening is the emergence of a binary opposition between reason (good; reliable) and emotion (bad; unreliable). This is most easily demonstrated in the work of Kant and Hume who both posit the idea of rationality as a necessary condition for “good judgement”. However, what one can ask, particularly in relation to Art, is if it this a sufficient condition too?

Emotion is denigrated as a sign of youth, as a marker of a lack of knowledge. It is, apparently, emotion that skews judgement by permitting “unreasoned emotional judgement” and treating this as equivalent to “reasoned judgement”, presumably informed by ‘maturity’ and ‘knowledge’.

Yet is this all that informs reason? Think about how we talk about emotion in comparison to reason. Emotion can be qualified, in that we can say “quite happy”, “very sad” or “grief-stricken”. Can we use the same qualifiers in regard to reason? What would it be like to say that someone is “quite reasonable”, “very reasonable” of “reason-stricken”? Would it make sense to do this? The answer is, I think, yes, but what we have to do is exercise emotional judgement in regard to this someone’s use of reason and these simple phrases require qualification and contextualisation. If I describe someone as “quite happy” then it is fairly immediately apparent what I mean. If I describe someone as “quite reasonable”, doesn’t this carry with it a question mark and a suggestion that in regard to some circumstances they are not reasonable?

The phrase “grief-stricken”, although this is a special case compared to the other two phrases, conveys an obvious meaning: we can interpret this as meaning that someone is overcome by grief, an identifiable emotion, due to a set of circumstances of which we are already cognisant. We may or may not feel that this reaction is appropriate. If, however, we refer to someone as “reason-stricken”, a number of variables come into play: context; tone (is this an ironic phrase?); prior experience.

What I’m trying to get at here is the idea that whereas emotion is qualified by degree, reason is not. Reason is reason. We possess an extensive vocabulary using which we can qualify, and quantify, emotion. One can be “very happy”, “quite happy”, “ecstatic”, “delighted”, “joyful”. The appeal is to a more or less shared concept of happiness, which enables us to makes sense of these statements. We are, by Art, integrated into a set of shared concepts of emotion, beginning simply in the stories we are told and read as children, then these gradually become more complex and qualified as our experience grows. We can also note here that our experience, therefore, definitions of emotions are modified and controlled by the works we encounter. Not only do we learn to quantify emotions, we learn acceptable ways of expressing these. If we do not learn this, we may be rebuked, being told “you’re at the mercy of your emotions.”

This is not suggest that emotions persist in exactly the same ways over time. They modulate as we come to a wider understanding of what it means to be happy, sad, angry etc. Each epoch tends to formulate its own set of acceptable ways of exhibiting emotions.

Can we say the same for reason? Reason, unlike emotion, seems to be something that we have to reach outside of ourselves for. It depends, one can argue, on general agreement with others. Reason is not something that can be formulated for oneself. It also, historically, is something that is dictated by the ruling class. In a number of philosophical texts, ‘reason’ runs in the background with an assumed definition – look at Hume and Kant. (N.B. A side-question here. Is “reasonable behaviour” an emotional judgement of reason?) Reason is represented as a single ‘thing’ for much of history, until the 1950s, when philosophers such as Foucault and Derrida, and writers like Szasz, Illich and Laing began to question the concept of univocal reason. Reason is though, on the whole, represented as something to which we should aspire. “Being reasonable” is a compliment. “Behaving reasonably” still references a single (unstated) meaning. Thus, we can still see emotion as the ‘inferior’ of reason.

This relation between the two raises, I think, two central questions (I’m not trying to “do an Aquinas” here, by asking questions which I then answer brilliantly): firstly, in relation to Art isn’t emotion a central part of our reasoning? Secondly, how, in the current ‘climate’ of political populism, do reason and emotion relate to ‘truth’? One could raise a third, but I discussed this in a previous entry. That is, how is AI being used as weapon in the war on emotion? Put another way, how are the ruling class using a definition of reason that favours their interests to erode questions of cause and effect, which are represented as emotional, based on sentimentality. Even simpler: profit vs. people.

So, the first question, which we can call emotional reasoning (henceforth, ER). What kinds of processes take place the first time one encounters, say, a film, a painting, a piece of music? To generalise, and to put it into colloquial terms, “Wow! This is amazing…” But one of the pleasures of a piece, beyond its immediate effect on you, is the pleasure of talking about the artefact, making a case for its beauty to others. It is not enough to say to others “Look. This”, what we do is develop a set of reasons as to why this is beautiful to us, and why they should find it beautiful too. These reasons are, to extent, dependent on our knowledge of an area; the more one knows about an area, the stronger one’s case can be made. We try to conform reason to our emotional reaction. For example, “How can I make a rational claim for this film being beautiful, based on my enjoying the feeling the film gives me?” The “motivating factor” is still emotional, and from that I attempt to construct a set of reasons that will survive discussion with others. What this seems to indicate though is that whereas reason is a shared category, emotion is (can be) unique to the human person, even though an ’emotion’ does seem to be something learned. This leads to a related idea: do all the ‘things’ I ‘feel’ need to be identified (named?) for me to feel them? Go back to my film example: if a film gives me a feeling of “warm ambience”, of “informed tranquility”, of “French intelligence”. Look at these three phrases. The first has a chance of being relatable to others, but the second and third? If these are the names of feelings that I use to identify these feelings to myself, then to communicate these to others I have to embark on a process of reasoning to (try to) devise terms that make sense to those who are not me. One might even argue that this process begins internally as I try to describe to myself how this film makes me feel. Furthermore, if I cannot put this feeling into words, even to myself, can I be said to ‘have’ it in any sense? Am I content to simply say to myself, “This artefact creates something indescribable in me”? Is this what Burke means when he talks about the sublime and the beautiful? Obviously, calling X ‘indescribable’ is calling it something, is indicating to oneself or others that X is “beyond words”. But is “an X beyond words” possible?

The other ‘part’ of the first question becomes clear when we swap ‘beautiful’ for ‘good’ – although various philosophers of aesthetics have seen good as part of beautiful. For Hume and Kant, good is a sub-component of beautiful: an artefact cannot be beautiful without its being morally good. However, in the twenty first century, do we still make this assumption, or have the ways in which we judge artefacts changed? In the wake of Nietzsche’s The Genealogy of Morals, in which he makes the case for the concept of morally good being based on power, our considerations change. We also need to take Marx’s identification of ruling class ideology into account. Thus, ‘good’ is no longer identified as an absolute category, but one that depends on human persons. The concept of good, whether related to morals or other areas of human life, becomes contingent on other components of whatever system we are analysing (even if this a system that we favour/approve of – every system must be/is open to constant analysis and critique). Nor is ‘aesthetics’ a system in itself: an artefact does not exist in some kind of “rarified realm”, floating free of the society in which it was produced. The claim of “art for art’s sake” is a product of the the nineteenth century age of industrial capitalism, part of the attempt to establish that the artist does not inhabit the “real world”, but lives a privileged existence without having to be concerned with the elements of everyday life, therefore, the artist’s critique can be dismissed as a result of their ‘otherworldliness’.

What is also posited during the nineteenth century is the idea that the artefact is a ‘product’ of emotion rather than reason, therefore, the ‘conclusions’, ‘solutions’ or ‘changes’ that the artist identifies need not be taken seriously – a double-prongned attack. Reason becomes something attached to the sensible business of profit. Decisions made without being focused on economics (as those of us who’ve lived through various recessions know) are described as ‘unrealistic’ or as, in some sense or other, ‘childish’. This ideological tenet is also moved into the concept of morality, whereby morality and reason become intertwined as a function of profit. The decision that is made using reason is the most moral decision. We can observe this in the ‘corruption’ of utilitarianism, a theory of morality which, at first, seems quite attractive. The slogan of utilitarianism is “The greatest good (or happiness) for the greatest number”. This seems to be, as I’ve said, an attractive proposition…until we examine the “base line” in its application. Once the base line is profit, decisions that have devastating consequences are represented as being morally justified. For example: these jobs must go so that these jobs can remain; these social services must be cut so that living standards do not fall; this younger patient should be treated rather than this older one because they can re-enter society and become economically productive again. Utilitarianism becomes the “go to” moral theory for capitalism because it can be pressed into the service of profit.

Reason is deliberately severed from emotion. The two cannot, so we’re told, co-exist. Thus, we have returned to the age of intractable binary oppositions. The concept of reason that dominates society is, however, what we can call “Profit Reason”, rather than “Humanity Reason” – Humanity Reason is emotional, therefore, not reason at all.

To put this a different way, the concept of reason that dominates our society is an ideological construct, that deceives us into thinking that ruling. class reason is in the “best interests” of everyone. What is disturbing about this concept of reason is that, through the use of AI, this ideological construct is becoming entrenched as the concept that human persons should conform themselves to. This also makes the shift in university education from ‘education’ to ‘training/skills’ even more of a threat to alternative ways of thinking. If universities become orientated towards profit, rather than to discussing ways of establishing justice and equality in society, if their purpose – of analysing what exists, and formulating and defending public goods – is colonised, then they will become nothing more than another function of capitalism. The university is where Humanity Reason continues to exist, and where it can thrive. As such, it is , and remains, an existential threat.

Now for the second question: Reason, Emotion and Truth…in the next entry.