Look at me! I'm working!

[skamp21]

So I'm doing my philosophy homework, and I was doing just fine until I got to this sentence in the second paragraph (yep, I'm getting mad two paragraphs into my first assignment. This should be an interesting semester).

"Feeling is the lowest form in which any mental content can exist."

This is a rant just waiting to happen. Fuck you, GWF Hegel.

Comments

[spaceheater]

in a conversations with god kind of context, that's actually a good thing, although the word "lowest" probably wouldn't be used.

supposedly, the soul is pure feeling, and the soul is the essence of who we are...the mind filters feelings into thought processes that make sense in a way that's easier to deal with, but not necessarily beneficial (this is a super rough generalization)...so in a way, the highest way to be is not thinking but feeling, being out of your mind.

[skamp21]

Maybe it would make more sense if it was set up in a linear fashion, rather than hierarchial. I guess I just fail to see how a filtered, approximate version of truth (as well as we can put it into words) is somehow better, or more justified or more real, than the stuff we just feel but can't explain.

Besides the fact that the most profound, real, and "truthful" things have, almost exclusively, been things I felt--and not things that I could construct undefeatable logical fortresses around. But I'm not exactly the most logical person on the planet, so maybe I'm biased.

[spaceheater]

i definitely think there's a place for mental work...like the shit i was reading today at diedrich's is pure, intellectual logic, which i think is good sometimes. the thing i like about that reading is that it takes into account that studying human beings is really hard to do empirically because humans are so complex. i think it's really hard to take emotions into account in academia because, once you do, it's easier to take it less seriously. people need to feel like they can solve things or figure them out, and i think there's a place for that to some degree...you kind of have to set your emotions aside to do that. i dunno. i think it's really hard to balance out pure feeling and pure intellect in academic settings.