=Deliberation and Intuition.=--It is indeed absurd to set immediate
recognition of quality and indirect calculation of more or less remote
consequences, intuition and thought, over against each other as if they
were rivals. For they are mutually supplementary. As we saw in a
previous chapter, the foresight of future results calls out an
_immediate reaction_ of satisfaction and dissatisfaction, of happiness
or dislike. (See p. 272.) It is just as false to say that we calculate
only future pains and pleasures (instead of changes in the world of
things and persons) as it is to say that anticipations of the changes to
be wrought in the world by our act are not accompanied by an immediate
emotional appreciation of their value. The notion that deliberation upon
the various alternatives open to us is simply a cold-blooded setting
down of various items to our advantage, and various other items to our
disadvantage (as Robinson Crusoe wrote down in bookkeeping fashion his
miseries and blessings), and then striking an algebraic balance, implies
something that never did and never could happen. Deliberation is a
process of active, suppressed, rehearsal; of imaginative dramatic
performance of various deeds carrying to their appropriate issues the
various tendencies which we feel stirring within us. When we see in
imagination this or that change brought about, there is a direct sense
of the amount and kind of worth which attaches to it, as real and as
direct, if not as strong, as if the act were really performed and its
consequence really brought home to us.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
Reviews
Reviews
No reviews yet
Be the first to share your thoughts on this work.
Elsewhere in the archive
Join the Discussion
Join the discussion
Sign in to leave a comment or review.
Sign InorCreate an account