Bibliographical Notes to Insert inThesis

why do we write texts on texts? because it's fun, because it's complex, because in a way it is harmless, because it is a common task or interest to know what someone thought - this may help us to learn better, but without imposing anything on anybody - it is more common and acknowledging a shared heritage.. because it is subjective and we recognize our subjectivity? beacuse we chart thinkers rather than thoughts?

From John Macmurray's book: Reason and Emotion: Faber and Faber, London, 1962
http://johnmacmurray.org/index.html
PROBLEM WITH THE TEXT - OLD AND LITTLE KNOWN - CAN USE IT ONLY IF IT ILLUSTRATES A POINT I AM ABLE TO BACK UP BETTER - EG. DESCARTES, nussbaum, or something..
Relevant bits:
Underlying them (the lectures he gave 30 years before) and giving them their unity lay the conviction that the contrast we habitulaly draw betwen 'reason' and 'emotion' is a false one, and that the error has practical consequences which have always been serious and may soon prove disastrous. For it leads ot the conclusion that our emotional life is irrational, and must remain so. In that case, the guidance of life and affairs must lie solely with intellect, which should control action in terms of 'rational' principles, suppressing the emotions where they threaten to infect our behaviour with their dangerou irrationality. The proper contrast,I thought, lies betwenn 'intellect' and 'emotion', while 'reason', as that which makes us human, expresses itself in both. This volume was concerned to clarify the notion of emotional rationality, and to exploore some of the modifiactions in our wyas of thinking, especially about sicence, art and religion, which its recognition involves.


p.13 - part entitled REASON IN THE EMOTIONAL LIFE (I am already reminded of NUSSBAUM - can perhaps co-link them..)
"Any
enquiry must have a motive or it could not be carried on at all, and all motives belong to our emotional life. How is this different from Aquinas - the appetitive is being drawn - he recognizes the passivity as well - here it is more a mover).
Moreover, if hte enquiry is to be satisfactorily carried thorugh, the emotion which provides the motive for it must be an adequate one (so emotion is a kind of energy that gets things done - seems an interesting way of phrasing it - can relate to Aquinas passions 'more active' - no not really)
Now, most scientific enquiries are concerned with usubjects which are not themselves higholy charged with emotional significance in the personal life of the enquirer. But when we come to study the emotional life this is no longer ture. We are enquiring into the motive forces of our own living, and one of these is the motive that sustains our enquiry. For this reason, the subject to which I have chosen to direct your attention is one in whic the success of our enquiry is profoundly bound up with the motives which lead us to undertake it. I must therefore begin with a warning. THe only way to approach the subject with any hope of succes is to grasp from the beginning its relation to the broad and general issuees
p. 14
of our social life as a whole. It may even be dangerous to examine our own emotional life from the wrong motives. In this connexion any motive is wrong if it is egocentric or self centred (wow
he hinges a lot of morality into this from the start). We must remember particularly that the desire to improve our individual lives is just as self-interested as any other form of egocentircity. It is the individual reference to ourselves which vitiates the motives, not the quality or character of our interest in ourseleevses. OUr objective and our motive, therefore, must be wider than the success or failure, the discomrfort or happiness, of our private lives. (Wow, okay, my reaction is this guy is pretty neurotic! my more distant reaction "see how different an approach from Aquinas who finds out that happiness is the end.. "colamus humanitatem of seneca.) anyway.
This is not a moral exhortation (could have fooled me) I am trying quite simply to state the condition which must underlie any attempt to understand or to deal with our emotianl development. THe deisre to save our own lives is a complete barrier to understanding our own lives. IT infects the enquiry with a prejudice from the beginning. In this sphere particularly it is true that he that would save his life shall lose it.
(Okay I undersatnd him more - he can be understood existentially - when he puts it that way I have a sympathy for him - partly existential, and partly the rationalist plunge - perhaps existentialism is the swinging balance of rationalism or something - maybe they go together in a way).
He proceeds to talk about us being enmeshed in network of relation - bound in human society - part of great process (human history) - makes me think of hegel - says a strong prejudice is to look at ourselves as outside history - places us squarely in our place - wow.... really hegelian but with weird pious twists... two kinds of question in bewliderment of 'these times of change and revolution' - 'peer out and ask fretfuly 'what is happening to us?" "an irreligious question revealing the kind of people we are.'\
"If we had instead the kind of minds that asked naturally "what is God doing through us in his world? we might be well on the way to receiving an answer. Behind the former question, shaping its character, lies an emotional unreason. THe latter question has its form dictated by emotiaonl rationality.

"What is emotional reason?" THe question, I imagine, seems a strange one, (you're right) and that itself is highly significant. Our lives belong to a satge in human development in which reason has been dissociated from the emotional life and is contrasted with it. Reason means to us thinking and planning, scheming nad calaculating. it carries our thoughts to science and philosphy, to the counting -house or hte battle-field, but not to music and laughter and love. It does not make us think of religon or loyalty or beauty, but rather tof that state of tension which knits our brows when we apply our minds to some knotty (end 15 beginning 16)
problem or devise schemes to cope with a difficult situation. we assocate reason with a state of mind which is cold, detached, and unemotional. WHen our emotions are stirred we feel that reason is lft behind an we enter another world - more colourful, more full of warmth and delight, but also more dangerous.
I just found another reason why we try to write from other people's minds - in a way it is LESS subjective than pretending to be objective! i am learning more about his neurosis than about the subject matter - or at least this seems to be more the case than usual because he comes off as not knowing it... anyway...

17 kind of cute - talking about all of us being disturbed by emotions if we are really alive (you know I can relate a little - I was mad no one talked about sorrow.)
p. 19: Definition of reason which he likes:
"reason is the capacity to behave consciously in terms of the nature of what is not oursevles. We can express this briefly by saying that reason is the capcity to behave in terms of the nature of hte objct, that is to say, to beahve objectively. REason is thus our capacity for objectivity (cites his more ful discussion "interpreting the universe, chapter 6)

p. 20 "The controversy about free will is insoluble, not because the facts referred to are irrecnocilable, but because the problem itself is wrongly conceived. We are looking for something in the inner constituiton of the human being to explain the peculoiar nature of is behaviour. We are still assuming that he must necessarily behave in terms of his own nature, like antyhign else. It is precisely this assumption that is at fault. REason is the capacity to behave, not in terms of or own nature, bnut in terms of our knowledgeo fhte nature of the world outside (gives example of mother seeing cild running in busy street - sees in danger of being hit by car - 'natural impulse' cry out - but she recognizes it would be mre dangerous for him and suppresses it - 'acts in terms of the nature of hte object'.
Hmmmm..... Hmmm..... Hmm.....

p 21
"Themain diffiuclty that faces us in the devleopment of a scinetific knowledge fo the world lies not in the outsdie world but in our own emotional life. IT is the deisre to retain beliefs to hwich we are emotiaonlly attached for some reason or other (yes it is normal to be drawn... is this to be problematic? or is this the only way we are drawn? not a question of absolute distinctions but of degrees and interactions between power - of a scale of passivity... is there any science that stands outside of the human reckoning of it? answer not in an illusory object but in a community of human beings organized by an ethics of responsibility, sharing, and delight?)
It is the tendnecy to make the wish father to the thought. Science itself, therefore, is emotionally conditioned (p. 21)

p. 22
if we are to be scientific in oour thoughts, then, we must be ready to subordinate our wishes and desires to the nature of hte world (but how non-human is our world, unless we live in a wilderness??)

and how much really do I have to 'die to myself' to accept that two plus two is four rather than three, or that if I forget to feed my pet frog, he's going to die of hunger? when it comes to more human sciences, it is less objective already. now psychology perhaps is an example of a middle ground where however it all the more impossible not to have biases - and don't we recognize in falsification that this is maybe the only way we know - but we have to hvae these things..

anyway...
he says "in this field, therefore, the discovery of truth must be from the subjective side a process of disillusionment (why not wonder?) the strength of our opposition to the devlopment of reason is measured by the strength of our dislike of being disillusioned...

Hmmm.
23
Same problem with morality - "demand for rational behaviour" definition of morality. "act in the light of eternity" as things are and not of subjective incliantions and private sympathies..
hmm
okay I"m going to move on... to hume or someone else.

Understanding wisdom from stultitia (folly)

This is a beautiful description of something that wisdom is.

I answer that, Stultitia [Folly] seems to take its name from "stupor"; wherefore Isidore says (Etym. x, under the letter of S): "A fool is one who through dullness [stuporem] remains unmoved." And folly differs from fatuity, according to the same authority (Etym. x), in that folly implies apathy in the heart and dullness in the senses, while fatuity denotes entire privation of the spiritual sense. Therefore folly is fittingly opposed to wisdom.

For "sapiens" [wise] as Isidore says (Etym. x) "is so named from sapor [savor], because just as the taste is quick to distinguish between savors of meats, so is a wise man in discerning things and causes." Wherefore it is manifest that "folly" is opposed to "wisdom" as its contrary, while "fatuity" is opposed to it as a pure negation: since the fatuous man lacks the sense of judgment, while the fool has the sense, though dulled, whereas the wise man has the sense acute and penetrating.

I am just checking out wisdom because Aquinas mentions it in 38.4 when he talks about 'contemplation of the truth being a remedy for pain. it is a unique question and contemplation is phrased uniquely there from the other appearances - "learning" or "contemplation" simply.