Balance Of Power Essay Research Paper The — страница 2

both elements.”(3-p.98) We need to find a way to combine both of these ‘worlds’ so that they can coexist. This is a difficult task because at times they can contradict each other. There is, however, a way to do this. Imagine that there are two planes (see diagram at back). One plane is that of a true believer. The other is of a skeptic observer. If you are raised, as I was, in a Christian home, or of any other faith, you have been brought up in the category of a believer. However, if we start in the plane of a true believer, our faith is naive. We don’t have that connection between our inside and our outside. What me must do, like Nussbaum says, is to jump over to the other plane of the skeptic observer and look at our faith objectively. We must think hard and clear about

it, taking a serious look at what our faith actually entails. If we then decide to take the leap back into our faith, we have found a way to bind our inside and outside and we will be more committed to our faith because our intellect is not constantly fighting against it. Another capacity that is vital to our human flourishing is that of passion. Passion in the sense of our emotions, as well as something that we are passionate about. Passion is not just an emotion, it is what governs all of our other emotions. It intensifies every thing else that we feel. It is a way of living. Kierkegaard is a staunch supporter of passion filled thought and action. Passion is what makes us great human beings because it leads us to action upon those emotions, rather than mulling over the question

until it dies. It is not merely the concept of passionate emotion and thought that makes up our capacity for passion, but it includes those things which we are passionate about. Faith, love, art, music, all are things that enrich the human spirit. Both Lewis and Underhill bring up the point that not everything can be a passion. Underhill talks about the inability to have mathematics be a passion. It deals only with the factual things, rather than dealing with the human spirit. Lewis’ example of the waterfall explains it best. “The man who called the cataract sublime was not intending simply to describe his own emotions about it: he was also claiming that the object was one which merited those emotions.”(1-p.28) These are things which ‘merit’ being passionate about,

because they consume the heart and involve the human spirit. They involve the subjective thinking that engage our emotions and help us to uncover what makes us tick. They help us to set our spirits free and let them soar to great heights. However, if we always take action by what our passion tells us, it can quickly become a weakness. Although passion intensifies our emotions of love and goodness, it also enhances our other emotions of hatred and jealousy. It clouds the mind with unclear thoughts. In one of Shakespeare’s plays, Othello shows the twofold result of passion. He was considered to be a great man and a great leader because his passion led him to action. But it also proved to be his downfall. His passion made him blind with rage because of his jealousy. Passionate

thought and emotion alone is not the answer. We also need our capacity for reason to create a system of checks and balances. As stated in “A Rational Animal”, Reason can be broken up into the two categories of Theoretical Reason and Practical Reason. “Theoretical Reason is our capacity, small or great, to think thoughts, that is, to operate from and with propositions. Practical Reason is our capacity, small or great, to conduct ourselves according to moral principles in the warm world of action, and, therewith, our capacity also to feel the proper feelings towards the inhabitants and the furniture of this world.”(4-p.417) Reasoning is our ability to think objectively about something. To step aside and detach ourselves from it for a moment and look at it through unclouded

eyes. Reason is what separates humans from every other living thing in this world. We have been given this capability, and to push it aside would be denying ourselves the opportunity to fully appreciate our humanity. As Nussbaum says, we must “cultivate our humanity” by fully taking advantage of what we have. The capacity for ‘Practical Reasoning’, as stated above, leads us into another capacity that is essential to our lives. It is our capacity for moral principles. Kierkegaard says that “morality is character”, and that “character is really inwardness.”(2-p.43) What we consider to be our moral principles is really a projection of our ‘inside’ life. Our capacity for morality depends on how much we have let our capacity for religion grow. The two are bound