Introduction
A recognition that informs the design of this course is that emotions have a hugely significant, albeit still to be fully appreciated/understood, role to play in critical thinking. This role can take a variety of forms. For example, emotions can either impede or support critical thinking. For that reason, some researchers stress the dynamic relation between critical thinking and “emotional intelligence,” arguing that “critical thinking cannot successfully direct our beliefs and actions unless it continually assesses not simply our cognitive abilities, but also our feeling or emotion states, as well as our implicit and explicit drives and agendas.” Others emphasize the need to develop “critical feeling,” which differs from emotional intelligence—in the following among other aspects, which seems especially pertinent now: “emotional intelligence does not care much about values while critical feeling is embedded in the practices and thus norms and values of a community.” Here is an insightful attempt to connect critical feeling—understood as the ability to monitor our feelings of guilt, shame, etc. and as a prerequisite to accurately empathize with others—with social justice:
All in all, how we deal with our emotions shapes everything that matters, from career decisions to personal relationships — at least according to psychologist Susan David in this powerful TED talk, “The Gift and Power of Emotional Agility“:
In what follows, we’ll look at a few affective states and virtues that seem especially salient and pertinent now.
Practicing CIVIL COURAGE with RELENTLESS OPTIMISM
Ours is a time that calls for “civil courage,” which cannot be sustained without a strong dose of “revolutionary love and relentless optimism,” as is most powerfully and movingly expressed in this excerpt from “A Sikh Prayer for America” by Sikh-American civil-rights activist and lawyer Valarie Kaur.
What if this darkness is not the darkness of the tomb, but the darkness of the womb?
What if our America is not dead but a country still waiting to be born?
What if the story of America is one long labor?
What if all the mothers who came before us, who survived genocide and occupation, slavery and Jim Crow, racism and xenophobia and Islamophobia, political oppression and sexual assault, are standing behind us now, whispering in our ear: You are brave?
What if this is our Great Contraction before we birth a new future?
Remember the wisdom of the midwife: “Breathe,” she says. Then: “Push.”
Here is Kaur’s longer TED talk on the lessons of “revolutionary love”:
COMPASSION &/or EMPATHY
‘Empathy’ is a word that gets invoked a lot these days. It has inspired initiatives (e.g. The Empathy Initiative). But there are also prominent critics, who do not so much reject the value of empathy per se as want us to think critically about its limitations and more effective alternatives (e.g. compassion)—if our goal is to inspire actions that could alleviate sufferings and injustices. Here are a few samples worth noting.
Paul Bloom–Against Empathy (The Art of Charm podcast):
Jesse Prinz–(against) Empathy[1] (Philosopher’s Zone podcast):
Joan Halifax–Buoyancy Rather Than Burnout in Our Lives, which contains very useful practical guidance as to how one can go from empathetic distress—an “edge state” that puts us on edge—to energized activist engagement with the world through “contemplative intervention”:
FEAR & VULNERABILITY
Philosopher Martha Nussbaum, in her new book Monarchy of Fear, argues explores how fear helped to fear the political crisis facing us—not just in this country but around the world. Here is Nussbaum talks about her view in a PBS interview:
And here is a longer and deeper conversation at Vox’s Erza Klein Show:
Often, fear (especially the sort directed at “the other”) comes from an inability to acknowledge and face our own vulnerability—as Brené Brown puts it in this TED talk on The Power of Vulnerability:
Here is Brown’s longer, very insightful conversation with On Being’s Krista Tippet, “Strong Back, Soft Front, Wild Heart”:
[1] Prinz works on philosophy of mind and cognitive science among other things. He has a paper on the subject of empathy too. David Brooks had an opinion piece on Prinz’s argument a few years ago, with “Empathy is a sideshow” as a fitting punch line.