There can be no knowledge without emotion until we have felt the force of the knowledge, it is not ours. (adapted from Arnold Bennett). Discuss this vision of the relationship between knowledge and emotion.

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Tenzin Zomkey        Theory of Knowledge                         Hastings College

“There can be no knowledge without emotion … until we have felt the force of the knowledge, it is not ours.” (adapted from Arnold Bennett). Discuss this vision of the relationship between knowledge and emotion.

The role of emotion has, for a long time, been downplayed in majority of our societies; people try to distinguish and thus diminish its significance by attempting to separate it distinctively from other aspects like ‘reasoning’. This is possibly due to the fact that people’s emotions do tend to fog our perception and perspective of things at that very moment it is experienced. We know better than to expect an outraged, angry man to reason very well and take right decisions at the heat of the moment. We are more than often advised to ‘be reasonable’ and to ‘control our emotions’ rather than ‘be emotional’. ‘Being emotional’ is even taken in a negative way as an insult most of the times. More than often, all our emotions do is unnecssarily obstruct our attempt to make reasonable decisions when in a complicated situation, or prevent us from thinking clearly when making a choice.

However, despite our underestimation of emotions, it may strike us as unusual and inconsistent to know that emotion, along with language, reason and perception is regarded as one of the four principle ways of knowing. It is close to impossible for us to deny the fact that our feelings and/or our emotions mean a great deal to us and our daily lives. It is something that we were born with and live with everyday, a significantly integral part of ourselves that we can’t possibly ignore. And that is why we feel so naturally inclined to consult our emotions whenever there is a problem or a decision to be made, despite all the dubious concerns we have about it.

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Regarding the statement by Bennett which says, “There can be no knowledge without emotion … until we have felt the force of the knowledge, it is not ours,” it seemingly suggests that emotion plays a crucial part in the acquiring and the absolute sense of knowledge. But it can be pointed out that the first part of the statement is quite blatantly incorrect. We know all four angles of a square are ninety degrees, which becomes knowledge, and it does not involve or require our emotions at all to know it. But it can be said that in certain cases, ...

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