Abstract

It has been widely held, and still is held to some extent, that emotion and reason tend to be incompatible, that if a person is influenced by emotion to hold the beliefs he does, or perform the actions he does, then they tend to that extent to be unreasonable. This opinion manifests itself in a variety of ways. For example, it is no coincidence that Sherlock Holmes, the archetypal person of reason, is emotionally cold and detached. In a recent philosophical work, Robert Trigg has written of the emotions[They] overwhelm us; we do not choose to adopt them …. They have always been thought to be the enemy of reason rather than its adjunct. A man who acts in anger is acting as he feels he wants to because of something that has happened. He is not necessarily acting as he would think best if he reflected on the matter. His emotion may have clouded his judgment.