Do we need emotions in our pursuit of knowledge?

Many people distrust their emotions in their pursuit of knowledge because they believe that emotions interfere with clear, accurate and neutral observation. The dogma that emotions must be suppressed and silenced for any reliable observation and that reliable observation is studying physical entities reflects our society’s obsession with philosophical standpoints often associated with quantifiable and definitional science. One of the two these philosophical viewpoints establishes reality as something that can be experienced with your senses and the other as an unchanging, clear idea that can be looked at with an undisturbed mental gaze. Often, without conceptualizing these philosophical standpoints, people argue that the access to real knowledge is always limited by emotion and achieved only through physical experience. However, this argument can be nullified with spontaneous performances such as empathy, which is an intellectual identification with feelings, thoughts or the attitudes of a person or society. On the other hand, arguing that emotions never distort objective knowledge is another opinion that can be heavily criticized. The difference between these two arguments is their definition of “emotion”. While one characterizes it as totally unreliable, the other, totally reliable. The contrasting confidences arise perhaps from personal, varying levels of emotional engagement. We fail to use our emotions properly to further our knowledge, if we fail to be empathetic, if we suppress our emotions and do not take the initiative to analyze them and transpose their dynamics onto others. Hence, my claim is that we can know to trust our emotions in the pursuit of knowledge only if we engage them. Two areas of knowledge, History and Ethics will be used to attempt to illustrate emotions both as a hindrance when emotion is not used engagingly and a tool when it is. 

A well engaged emotion is required to learn about and contribute to history because people must be empathetic to the situations in the past in order to acquire a real understanding about what happened. If we understand our own cognitive and non-cognitive emotions, we will be able to understand the thoughts, reasons or attitudes behind the course of events in history. The same could be said for the construction of one of the most appalling milieu in history, “Hitler’s Germany”. The fact that Hitler was supported by most of non-Jewish Germans despite his injustices such as massive massacres and his advocacy for war is incomprehensible in our modern paradigm. It can be only understood by studying and engaging our emotions to the milieu of that German society. Germany after World War I was a “setting of anti-Communist paranoia, bitterness over the Treaty of Versailles and growing inflation” (Pauley). Although the level and the omnipotence of fear and desperation from the economic and political disasters after World War I is exponentially greater, I can at best relate it to my experience of working on a hopeless group project in order to understand it. In both cases, amidst the fear of failure, the members gravitated towards a person with a solution and passion because the Germans as well as the members of my group felt a non-cognitive emotion of relief around this person. In 1932, while other parties within the Weimar Republic were practical and soft spoken, Hitler was passionate and semi-religious in his speeches. He proposed to renew German unity, pride and greatness but he never specified the plan in practical terms. Nevertheless, “He appeared to fulfill the need for heroic leadership at a time when the nation desperately wanted some”. Also, Hitler’s brutal purges against the Jews, were not heavily criticized because the mutual attitude of anti-Semitism all across Europe justified it. To relate, I can remember an instance, in which, a member of my group was “parasitic”. He did not participate in the project and was to be rewarded with the same mark as the members who worked very hard. At first, there was a personal, animalistic desire to alienate him within the group because I felt cheated and angry. However, at this stage, I judged that it was a wrong thing to do and did not put it into action. Although in this situation, alienating the member would always be the wrong thing to do, as the general concordance of frustration was exposed, there was a tendency to do so in the group even if it was the wrong thing to do. Now that the group was more exclusive, I thought I should work harder for the group not only because I was afraid I would be alienated but I also felt privileged to be accepted. Similarly, the Germans felt more engaged in the movement during Hitler’s purges. Although they were afraid of being targeted, they were also drawn to the non-cognitive feeling of being part of an exclusive movement that made them into “Aryans”. Since my emotions from my experiences can be transposed into Hitler’s Germany in order to better understand the history, it can be concluded that a well engaged emotion is required in pursuit of knowledge. However, when emotions are poorly engaged, it can have disastrous effects.

In contrast of well engaged emotions as a tool, uncontrolled emotion can hinder pursuit of knowledge. Uncontrolled emotions can create bias in one’s observation of a society in history. For example, the group of victims of Hitler’s purges like the Jews might have a more difficult time in transposing their emotions to further their knowledge about how “Hitler’s Germany” was created. If their emotions are uncontrolled and aggressive, in their anger, they may decide to conclude the Germans as “evil” and forever hate the population. Not only can emotions influence learning in the area of history but also in ethics as well.

A well engaged emotion is an important part of pursuing knowledge especially that of ethics because the concept of good and bad changes in each situation. Hence, we must be constantly empathetic to the effects of our actions when deciding what is right and wrong. This is true also in the case of lying. A lie is an intentional false statement made by a person who knows the whole truth. Although lying is taught as a bad conduct dogmatically from childhood, the ethics of lying is ambiguous because it is dependent on a situation. In each situation, we must consider the consequences of our lies for ourselves and for the receiver and the emotions of the receiver simultaneously to know if lying is good or bad. For example, my friend had a terrible hair cut but she did not know it. She asked me if I liked her new hair. In this situation I judged that lying is good and said that I liked her new hair style. Of course, before lying, I considered the consequences of the lie. My friend thinking that I like her hair style is not bad because it would make her feel confident for a day and this false knowledge would not make her upset at or give her a reason to hurt someone. However, if I had told the truth, my friend would be upset at her hair until it grew back to the way it was. This means that she would worry about her hair for at least two months, which would possibly distract her from her studies and social life and prevent her from fulfilling her purpose as a student. I know this by transposing my emotions from an experience of getting a new hairstyle to my friend’s situation. Also, no one, except for me, knows my true answer to my friend’s question and thus, unless I confess I have lied, I would never be blamed for falsehood. This was a case, in which, the reason and emotion was aligned. There are other cases where this is not so.

While emotion can help us make the right choices by considering others’ feelings when making a decision, it can also distract us. For example, another friend of mine confessed to me that she has been smoking cigarettes since grade nine because her life seemed overwhelming. According to the natural course of the conversation, I would have to either accept or discourage this activity. The question was, “Is accepting this activity a responsible thing to do?” I wanted to accept this activity despite the detrimental health effects and the probable alienation from my friends because I can relate to my desire to be accepted and the loneliness when rejected. However, this would prevent me from making the right choice of discouraging it. The harmful effects would prevent her from fulfilling her purpose as a friend and a student. Perhaps, it was not that I had to discourage my emotions to know what the right thing to do was. Maybe it was the sense of regret as well that I have related to.

In summary, I have explored cases in which emotion can help or distract us from the pursuit of knowledge. First of all, I have made an attempt to understand the milieu of “Hitler’s Germany” by transposing the German people’s decisions with the emotions that I feel every day. Then, I used the same example to suggest where prejudice would hinder the same exercise I have done.  Secondly, I have made an example of ethics from my daily life; one that is aligned with reason and emotion while the other was not. However, the sophistication of the knowledge issue has not been totally explored because I did not explore all instances. Nevertheless, from my personal exploration displayed in the essay, I suggest that we can know to trust our emotions in the pursuit of knowledge only if we engage them.