Giovanni Stanghellini, René Rosfort. Emotions and Personhood
—
[They are talking about the difference between rational, a-rational and irrational behaviour, inspired by Ronald de Sousa’s take on rationality:
1. in *categorical* sense 1.1) rational (behavior) contrasts with 1.2) a-rational
2. in *normative* sense 2.1) rational contrasts with 2.2) irrational
2.1. two kinds of normatively rational:
2.1a. thin (skeletal) — functioning of the logical structures of our cognitive abilities
2.1b. thick (fleshy) — an embodied, personalised, and context-sensitive kind of rationality, where ‘rational’ behaviour cannot be distinguished from ‘irrational’ behaviour merely by means of what is logical and what is not.]
The difference between ‘a-rational’ and ‘rational’ can be illustrated with two variations over one story. Say that one late afternoon my wife and I decide that we want to make an omelette. Unfortunately we are out of eggs, so my wife offers to cook the omelette, if I go out to buy the eggs. Half an hour later, I return abashed with an empty egg pack. When she asks why the pack is empty, I tell her one of the two following stories.
[1.2) a-rational]
On my way home from the grocery store, a massive branch of the old chestnut tree at the corner of our street broke off and tumbled down over my head. I managed to jump away from under the falling branch, but the egg pack slipped from my hand, and all the eggs broke when the pack hit the ground. This is one story.
[1.1) categorically rational or 1.2) irrational?]
The other version goes like this. When I turned the corner from the grocery store, I caught sight of my former boss. Ever since the bastard first humiliated me in front of everybody and then fired me eight months ago, I have nursed an intense grudge against him, so when I saw him on the other side of the street I could not control myself. I became so enraged that I started to throw the eggs at him.
—
[They are talking about the difference between rational, a-rational and irrational behaviour, inspired by Ronald de Sousa’s take on rationality:
1. in *categorical* sense 1.1) rational (behavior) contrasts with 1.2) a-rational
2. in *normative* sense 2.1) rational contrasts with 2.2) irrational
2.1. two kinds of normatively rational:
2.1a. thin (skeletal) — functioning of the logical structures of our cognitive abilities
2.1b. thick (fleshy) — an embodied, personalised, and context-sensitive kind of rationality, where ‘rational’ behaviour cannot be distinguished from ‘irrational’ behaviour merely by means of what is logical and what is not.]
The difference between ‘a-rational’ and ‘rational’ can be illustrated with two variations over one story. Say that one late afternoon my wife and I decide that we want to make an omelette. Unfortunately we are out of eggs, so my wife offers to cook the omelette, if I go out to buy the eggs. Half an hour later, I return abashed with an empty egg pack. When she asks why the pack is empty, I tell her one of the two following stories.
[1.2) a-rational]
On my way home from the grocery store, a massive branch of the old chestnut tree at the corner of our street broke off and tumbled down over my head. I managed to jump away from under the falling branch, but the egg pack slipped from my hand, and all the eggs broke when the pack hit the ground. This is one story.
[1.1) categorically rational or 1.2) irrational?]
The other version goes like this. When I turned the corner from the grocery store, I caught sight of my former boss. Ever since the bastard first humiliated me in front of everybody and then fired me eight months ago, I have nursed an intense grudge against him, so when I saw him on the other side of the street I could not control myself. I became so enraged that I started to throw the eggs at him.
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чугунные тетради
Giovanni Stanghellini, René Rosfort. Emotions and Personhood — [They are talking about the difference between rational, a-rational and irrational behaviour, inspired by Ronald de Sousa’s take on rationality: 1. in *categorical* sense 1.1) rational (behavior)…
Now, it is glaringly obvious that my wife will react very differently to my two stories.
[1.2) a-rational]
In the first case, she will, or so at least I hope, be relieved that I am not hurt and consider the business of the broken eggs a freak incident which could have ended tragically, but fortunately turned out well. In fact, she might even be impressed and commend me on my agile and attentive reactions. The fact that the eggs are broken is due to a series of events which were out of my control and had nothing to do with rationality whatsoever. On the contrary, it can only be ascribed to an a-rational, causal chain of chance and necessity—to use Jacques Monod’s poignant expression (1970).
[1.1) categorically rational and 2.1a) normatively rational, of a “thin” kind, or 2.2) irrational?]
It goes without saying that the reaction of my wife will be quite different when I tell her the second version. I can be pretty sure that she will not be impressed or commend my behaviour. Being the level-headed person she is, she will probably sigh and tell me that it was an irrational or stupid thing to do, since it will not bring about any good. It will certainly not give me my job back, help me regain my self-respect or convince my previous boss of anything save that it was a good decision to get rid of me in the first place. If I try to argue that in spite of this, it made me feel good, my wife can point to the obvious fact that I cannot go around doing things just because they make me feel good. All kinds of behaviour might feel good without therefore being rational. At this point, it seems difficult, if not impossible, for me to reply to her argument. I could try to blame her for her cold-hearted lack of empathy and her obnoxiously bourgeois reasonableness in a circumstance where all I need is to be cuddled and understood. But no matter what I say to justify my behaviour or to express my disappointment at her, in my eyes, insensitive rational thinking, I cannot argue against the irrational nature of my action.
[…] I said that my wife was right to deem my throwing the eggs at my boss irrational. If we view my behaviour from the standpoint of the thin notion of rationality, though, my behaviour was perfectly rational. I felt a desire to get back at my mean boss, and I found myself holding a pack of eggs which I believed was perfectly suitable for that purpose, so it was indeed rational to break the eggs for that purpose. Nevertheless, my wife can give several reasons why it was an irrational thing to do: it is an inconsiderate waste of perfectly good eggs, it makes me look like an idiot, it is immature and inappropriate for a man of my age, it is not a normal way of behaving, it is not a reasonable way to deal with problems, and physical aggravation in whatever form is simply wrong. What is important to notice here is that when my wife judges my behaviour irrational she needs to scaffold her use of rationality with several densely normative adjectives such as ‘inconsiderate’, ‘immature’, ‘inappropriate’, ‘normal’, ‘reasonable’, and the explicitly ethical one ‘wrong’.
[1.2) a-rational]
In the first case, she will, or so at least I hope, be relieved that I am not hurt and consider the business of the broken eggs a freak incident which could have ended tragically, but fortunately turned out well. In fact, she might even be impressed and commend me on my agile and attentive reactions. The fact that the eggs are broken is due to a series of events which were out of my control and had nothing to do with rationality whatsoever. On the contrary, it can only be ascribed to an a-rational, causal chain of chance and necessity—to use Jacques Monod’s poignant expression (1970).
[1.1) categorically rational and 2.1a) normatively rational, of a “thin” kind, or 2.2) irrational?]
It goes without saying that the reaction of my wife will be quite different when I tell her the second version. I can be pretty sure that she will not be impressed or commend my behaviour. Being the level-headed person she is, she will probably sigh and tell me that it was an irrational or stupid thing to do, since it will not bring about any good. It will certainly not give me my job back, help me regain my self-respect or convince my previous boss of anything save that it was a good decision to get rid of me in the first place. If I try to argue that in spite of this, it made me feel good, my wife can point to the obvious fact that I cannot go around doing things just because they make me feel good. All kinds of behaviour might feel good without therefore being rational. At this point, it seems difficult, if not impossible, for me to reply to her argument. I could try to blame her for her cold-hearted lack of empathy and her obnoxiously bourgeois reasonableness in a circumstance where all I need is to be cuddled and understood. But no matter what I say to justify my behaviour or to express my disappointment at her, in my eyes, insensitive rational thinking, I cannot argue against the irrational nature of my action.
[…] I said that my wife was right to deem my throwing the eggs at my boss irrational. If we view my behaviour from the standpoint of the thin notion of rationality, though, my behaviour was perfectly rational. I felt a desire to get back at my mean boss, and I found myself holding a pack of eggs which I believed was perfectly suitable for that purpose, so it was indeed rational to break the eggs for that purpose. Nevertheless, my wife can give several reasons why it was an irrational thing to do: it is an inconsiderate waste of perfectly good eggs, it makes me look like an idiot, it is immature and inappropriate for a man of my age, it is not a normal way of behaving, it is not a reasonable way to deal with problems, and physical aggravation in whatever form is simply wrong. What is important to notice here is that when my wife judges my behaviour irrational she needs to scaffold her use of rationality with several densely normative adjectives such as ‘inconsiderate’, ‘immature’, ‘inappropriate’, ‘normal’, ‘reasonable’, and the explicitly ethical one ‘wrong’.
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чугунные тетради
Now, it is glaringly obvious that my wife will react very differently to my two stories. [1.2) a-rational] In the first case, she will, or so at least I hope, be relieved that I am not hurt and consider the business of the broken eggs a freak incident which…
As a preliminary illustration of how the precarious character of rationality bears on psychopathology, we can imagine a third version of the story with the broken eggs.
Suppose I tell my wife that I arrived safely back at our front door, but when I was about to open the door, I was suddenly overtaken by a feeling of despair immediately followed by an agonising feeling of emptiness and spleen. It felt as if my heart splintered in pieces, and the meaning of my life was shattered in an instant. I cannot explain why, I say to my wife, but I took the eggs out of the pack and dropped them, one by one, down the three steps leading up to our door. It was as if something inside me, like a piece of my brain, caused me to do so. It simply happened. I try to explain myself, but find no words to express the strangeness of this anonymous event which had taken place inside myself. It was simultaneously my body and a body, something external and internal at the same time that made me behave like this. It felt as a kind of otherness in myself, impersonal and personal at the same time, with no clear-cut distinction between my self and that otherness. I also felt that it was me who was the owner of this piece of my brain, but not its possessor; something that belonged to me but that it was not under my control. It was as if it acted through me.
How is my wife supposed to react on hearing this story? Surely, she will be shocked and become deeply concerned for me, but how is she supposed to understand what has happened? Are we talking about a-rational events, like those in the first story? Or can my behaviour be explained in terms of a radical degree of irrationality, akin to the second story? How we choose to explain my behaviour, despair and spleen in general or even clinical disorders, depends (in part at least) on how we understand the interplay of rational and a-rational factors constitutive of our emotional life. We shall argue that our emotions are permeated by rationality, but that the rationality we find in our emotional life is an unstable rationality entrenched in, and to a certain degree constituted by, the a-rational changes of our bodily landscape. This instability, though, is not something that can be done away with by recoiling into either a rationalistic or a biological conception of human emotions. We are fragile beings because of this ambivalence of a-rational and rational factors of our emotional life, and we believe that our investigation into Ricoeur’s wounded Cogito will help us understand this fragility, and hopefully shed some light on why human persons are vulnerable beings.
Suppose I tell my wife that I arrived safely back at our front door, but when I was about to open the door, I was suddenly overtaken by a feeling of despair immediately followed by an agonising feeling of emptiness and spleen. It felt as if my heart splintered in pieces, and the meaning of my life was shattered in an instant. I cannot explain why, I say to my wife, but I took the eggs out of the pack and dropped them, one by one, down the three steps leading up to our door. It was as if something inside me, like a piece of my brain, caused me to do so. It simply happened. I try to explain myself, but find no words to express the strangeness of this anonymous event which had taken place inside myself. It was simultaneously my body and a body, something external and internal at the same time that made me behave like this. It felt as a kind of otherness in myself, impersonal and personal at the same time, with no clear-cut distinction between my self and that otherness. I also felt that it was me who was the owner of this piece of my brain, but not its possessor; something that belonged to me but that it was not under my control. It was as if it acted through me.
How is my wife supposed to react on hearing this story? Surely, she will be shocked and become deeply concerned for me, but how is she supposed to understand what has happened? Are we talking about a-rational events, like those in the first story? Or can my behaviour be explained in terms of a radical degree of irrationality, akin to the second story? How we choose to explain my behaviour, despair and spleen in general or even clinical disorders, depends (in part at least) on how we understand the interplay of rational and a-rational factors constitutive of our emotional life. We shall argue that our emotions are permeated by rationality, but that the rationality we find in our emotional life is an unstable rationality entrenched in, and to a certain degree constituted by, the a-rational changes of our bodily landscape. This instability, though, is not something that can be done away with by recoiling into either a rationalistic or a biological conception of human emotions. We are fragile beings because of this ambivalence of a-rational and rational factors of our emotional life, and we believe that our investigation into Ricoeur’s wounded Cogito will help us understand this fragility, and hopefully shed some light on why human persons are vulnerable beings.
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Giovanni Stanghellini, René Rosfort. Emotions and Personhood
—
«We are fragile beings because of the ambivalence of reason and sensibility at play in our experience, thoughts, and behaviour. We are rational creatures, but our rational capacities are bound to our senses and enmeshed in the a-rational, causal functioning of our body. This means that ‘our Cogito is internally fractured’, as Ricoeur says, and our rational capacities are deeply precarious and easily wounded. We possess an immediate sense of being a self, but this minimal sense of self is characterised by ambivalence and confusion which can only be dealt with through an ongoing interpretation of the self ’s existence in the world. The self finds itself situated in a world in which it has not placed itself, and it is in this world, by interacting with otherness (that which is not itself), that it must reaffirm itself as an individual person: ‘the self [le moi] must be lost in order to find the “I” [le “je”]’ (2004, p. 19 [24]). The self continuously struggles with the question ‘Who am I?’, and in order to reappropriate itself, it is compelled to measure itself with the insecurity stirred up by the otherness that constitutes its being.
[…]
The values that inform and orient our existence are generated by the multitude of heterogeneous feelings that characterise human experience. Ricoeur proposes that we approach these feelings in terms of the two basic roots of selfhood, namely, reason and sensibility. He argues that the core of human selfhood, which he calls the heart, is in a permanent restless tension between vital desires (sensibility) and spiritual desires (reason). This affective fragility of selfhood calls for an interpretive approach to our troubled selfhood.»
—
«We are fragile beings because of the ambivalence of reason and sensibility at play in our experience, thoughts, and behaviour. We are rational creatures, but our rational capacities are bound to our senses and enmeshed in the a-rational, causal functioning of our body. This means that ‘our Cogito is internally fractured’, as Ricoeur says, and our rational capacities are deeply precarious and easily wounded. We possess an immediate sense of being a self, but this minimal sense of self is characterised by ambivalence and confusion which can only be dealt with through an ongoing interpretation of the self ’s existence in the world. The self finds itself situated in a world in which it has not placed itself, and it is in this world, by interacting with otherness (that which is not itself), that it must reaffirm itself as an individual person: ‘the self [le moi] must be lost in order to find the “I” [le “je”]’ (2004, p. 19 [24]). The self continuously struggles with the question ‘Who am I?’, and in order to reappropriate itself, it is compelled to measure itself with the insecurity stirred up by the otherness that constitutes its being.
[…]
The values that inform and orient our existence are generated by the multitude of heterogeneous feelings that characterise human experience. Ricoeur proposes that we approach these feelings in terms of the two basic roots of selfhood, namely, reason and sensibility. He argues that the core of human selfhood, which he calls the heart, is in a permanent restless tension between vital desires (sensibility) and spiritual desires (reason). This affective fragility of selfhood calls for an interpretive approach to our troubled selfhood.»
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«Human existence is generally ‘pathetic’, because our problematic relation to the world, other people, and ourselves is felt before it is understood.»
— Stanghellini, Rosfort. Emotions and Personhood
«I do not coincide with my experience. There is a cleavage between myself and my suffering. I am a self-interpreting animal and thus I am compelled to make a logos out of my pathos.»
— Stanghellini. Lost in Dialogue
— Stanghellini, Rosfort. Emotions and Personhood
«I do not coincide with my experience. There is a cleavage between myself and my suffering. I am a self-interpreting animal and thus I am compelled to make a logos out of my pathos.»
— Stanghellini. Lost in Dialogue
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Robert Kegan. In Over Our Heads
—
«In my thirties I wrote The Evolving Self, proposing a view of human being as meaning-making and exploring the inner experience and outer contours of our transformations in consciousness throughout the lifespan. Although the book was published over a decade ago, it is still rare for two weeks to go by without someone putting pen to paper to write me about it. Some years ago, when I proudly told my father that it was being translated into German and Korean, he said, "That's great! Now when is it going to be translated into English?" And in truth, these fortnightly letters from readers occasionally have a similar theme:
I appreciated the "sincerely.”»
—
«In my thirties I wrote The Evolving Self, proposing a view of human being as meaning-making and exploring the inner experience and outer contours of our transformations in consciousness throughout the lifespan. Although the book was published over a decade ago, it is still rare for two weeks to go by without someone putting pen to paper to write me about it. Some years ago, when I proudly told my father that it was being translated into German and Korean, he said, "That's great! Now when is it going to be translated into English?" And in truth, these fortnightly letters from readers occasionally have a similar theme:
Dear Dr. Kegan,
We had to read your book in our psychology class. I can't believe the publishers let the thing out in this condition. No one in our class understands what you are saying. Not even our teacher, and he assigned it! Who are you trying to impress with all those big words? I got so mad reading your book I wanted to come to Boston and break your teeth.
Sincerely,
[writer's name]
I appreciated the "sincerely.”»
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Giovanni Stanghellini, René Rosfort. Emotions and Personhood
—
«[…] to be a person is not a fact, but a continuous task.
[…]
Personhood characterises what we all have in common, and still no person is the same as another. Second, personhood makes evident the problem of identity through time. We are the same person throughout our life, but the sameness of our identity as a person is continuously challenged by the changes that all persons undergo through time. How can we talk about being the same person when, more often than not, we change drastically over the span of a lifetime? Finally, the notion of personhood emphasises the otherness at the heart of selfhood.
This third feature somehow brings together the two previous ones (normative ambivalence and per- sonal identity) in the question of how to cope with tension, and sometimes conflict, between otherness and selfhood in being a person over time. I am a person in the eyes of other people, and my particular way of being a person is continuously challenged by the gaze of other people. Again, I am who I am, but I might feel that I am not myself, or that the person that others take me to be, is not the person that I truly am. My choices and actions when done leave my control and may result in unexpected, happy or unfortunate, results that in some way or another influence the person that I am. The responsibility for my words and deeds does not end when they are out of my mouth or hands, so to speak. The future can be oppressive (as in shame, obligation, anxiety, or despair) as well as liberating (as in hope, possibility, surprise, or ambition). My body changes, becomes different as the years go by, and I may become alienated by these transformations. I can accept such changes, despair because of them, or fight them ferociously, but every one of those attitudes affects the person that I am. In short, to be a person involves a permanent struggle with the otherness that constitutes the person that I am.»
—
«[…] to be a person is not a fact, but a continuous task.
[…]
Personhood characterises what we all have in common, and still no person is the same as another. Second, personhood makes evident the problem of identity through time. We are the same person throughout our life, but the sameness of our identity as a person is continuously challenged by the changes that all persons undergo through time. How can we talk about being the same person when, more often than not, we change drastically over the span of a lifetime? Finally, the notion of personhood emphasises the otherness at the heart of selfhood.
This third feature somehow brings together the two previous ones (normative ambivalence and per- sonal identity) in the question of how to cope with tension, and sometimes conflict, between otherness and selfhood in being a person over time. I am a person in the eyes of other people, and my particular way of being a person is continuously challenged by the gaze of other people. Again, I am who I am, but I might feel that I am not myself, or that the person that others take me to be, is not the person that I truly am. My choices and actions when done leave my control and may result in unexpected, happy or unfortunate, results that in some way or another influence the person that I am. The responsibility for my words and deeds does not end when they are out of my mouth or hands, so to speak. The future can be oppressive (as in shame, obligation, anxiety, or despair) as well as liberating (as in hope, possibility, surprise, or ambition). My body changes, becomes different as the years go by, and I may become alienated by these transformations. I can accept such changes, despair because of them, or fight them ferociously, but every one of those attitudes affects the person that I am. In short, to be a person involves a permanent struggle with the otherness that constitutes the person that I am.»
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