When you decide something, what

dominates in your decision- making:

Reason or Feelings?
The Importance of
Feelings
 Introduction

- Explain the importance of both reason and feeling in

every moral decision- making
- Many thinkers in the past made no recognition of the
role of feelings in the moral evaluation because feelings
tend to be biased to what it used to or what it liked to
feel.
- History would tell us that reason had a full
recognition as the authority and the primary, if not the
only basis of any act of moral evaluation.
 Introduction

- As time passed by, few great minds had tried to deal

into the mystery of human emotion.
- From these different attempts, we have discovered the
huge role of feelings in our desire to address moral
dilemmas and to understand the complications of
human action.
- Hence, feeling is indispensable in every decision-
making.
 Introduction

- We have learned from the previous chapter how the

culture contributed to the formation of the moral standard
of every human being.
- The ethical standard that we have, is patterned from the
kind of morality, which we picked up from the community
where we are coming from.
- Our choice of what is right and wrong is determined by
how we exposed to the concept of right and wrong.
“Never make decisions on
temporary feelings.”
The Importance of Feelings
What is wrong with feelings that it should not be the
basis of any decision-making?
• German philosopher Immanuel Kant (1724-1804), one
of the leading ethical theorists in the history of human
kind, gave high regard to reason as the foundation of any
form of ethical evaluation.
• Genuine morality is based on moral law and moral laws
are based on reason.
• Reason is universal because it has a priori foundation.
• This means that what is moral is not dependent on
empirical data or object, which the emotion is connected
to.
• What is good is good whether we feel that it is good or
not.
• Feelings, therefore, should not be the basis of morality or
any moral evaluation and decision-making because “it is
far from having an absolute worth” due to its
dependence on the human experience.
However, is it a fair treatment to
feelings?
 Two Arguments on Feelings

1. There is objectivity in feeling opposite to the claim of

some moralist, including Kant, that feeling is simply
subjective.
2. Feeling is necessary in every moral decision-making
because humans are not only rational, but emotional
creatures.
• Most people, if not all decide in consideration with the emotion. It
might not be reliable to depend our decision from feelings, but it
could contribute to how we decide in most situations.
• Virginia Held sums up: “caring, empathy, feeling with others, being
sensitive to each other’s feelings, all maybe better guides to what
morality requires in actual contexts than may abstract rules of
reason, or rational calculation, or at least they may be necessary
components of an adequate morality (Rachels, p. 150).”
• This topic uses Max Scheler’s phenomenology of feelings and
Mengzi’s reflections on the functions of feelings and reason in the
cultivation of virtues, to construe the importance of feelings in
moral decision-making.
• Max Scheler owed a lot from his predecessor, fellow German
philosopher Edmund Husserl (1859-1938), the success of his work:
“Phenomenology of Feelings.”
• Originally, phenomenology for Husserl is a method which suggests
“bracketing of presuppositions,” or “epoche.”
• The general idea is that it is only when both the subject and the
object of consciousness are pure and free from any unnecessary
features that a direct seeing of the essences is possible (Gripaldos,
p. 128).
• Scheler, however, made a unique interpretation of phenomenology.
He did not look at phenomenology as a method, rather as an
attitude.
• Phenomenological attitude is necessary for humans to look at, to go
into, and to know the object-in-itself.
• ‘Epoche’ or ‘disengagement’ is a necessary attitude to have a
knowledge of the essence of an object.
• To disengage is to participate in the essence of an object.
Disengagement can be only done by the love of the world.
• It means to say that our love towards the different objects in the
world and the world-itself, motivate us to participate and to delve
into the nature of an object.
• This concept of love by Scheler is likened to Gilligan’s language of
care. These two terms are similar in a sense that they are both
attitudes which establish connection between the one expressing
the feeling and the object of feeling.
• Thus, disengagement is an act out of loving to know the world, to
know the objects in the world, and to participate and value of their
existence.
• This object of experience is, for Scheler, the bearer of values (Driver,
2014).
• Valuing the object is giving meaning to an object.
• The manner of giving meaning to an object is an act not of the
intellect but of the emotion, an act of the heart.
However, if objects of experience are bearers
of values, how does it answer the doubt about
the subjectivity of feelings?

It seems that ethical values are nothing but

subjective preference.
• To clarify the issue, Scheler cited two basic emotional acts:
1. Love
2. Hate
and Brentano’s two characteristics of values:
1. Positive
2. Negative.
• Love reveals the highest and most profound significance of an object
which we are attracted of. Hate, on the other hand, is a movement of
distraction which pushes man to move away from the object.
• Positive values are characteristics of an object which entice man to
participate with the object’s existence, while negative values are
what an object ought not to be.
• In this sense, values are in hierarchy(ranking). Objects provide us
the value of pleasure (pleasant/unpleasant), utility(noble/vulgar),
vitality (beautiful/ugly), and spirituality (holy/unholy).
• Pleasure is the lowest form of valuing and holiness is the highest.
• Objects with higher values are to be preferred than lower values.
• The act of value-preferencing is a priori by nature.
• Value-preferencing is not given before experience but present in the
experience of the specific value modalities (Driver, 2014).
• Consequently, feeling is important in every moral
decision-making because it is the heart that can validate
and determine the value of an object or an action.
• Indeed, reason teaches human that there is an object
with highest value, while the heart makes us prefer
objects with the highest value.
• The feeling makes us aware of what we are involved in.
So much more that feeling makes us relate with others’
feeling too.
• More than that, feeling is an important aspect of any
moral decision-making because feelings connect with
the value of an object in experience.
• Through feeling, the object with positive and highest
value is preferred and chosen rather than the object
with negative and lower values.
• But, this does not mean that choosing objects with
lower values are wrong.
• “There is no problem if we choose objects with lower
values as long as it does not displace the objects with
higher values (Dy, p. 98).”
• Example: one decides to go to bar after having a heavy
workload and stressful day.
• We can love anything that is good or has value.
• There is no wrong in loving because “it is an act of
participating and putting meaning” to an object in
experience.
• The error comes in the exercise of the feeling
which is supposed not to be.
• It means that, evil is committed when humans
prefer to choose negative values than positive
values and to love objects with lower values
over higher values.
• Example: students cheat during exam prefer
the value of passing through cheating over the
value of honesty and dignity.
• Further, choosing positive values over negative values
and higher values over lower values is not an easy
task.
• Although it is a priori to prefer positive values over
negative values, our human nature is conditioned by
the environment where we are situated.
• While some people are molded with good values,
others are brought up with bad practices.
• Thus, in value preference, some people have the huge
tendency to prefer objects with lower values rather
than objects with lower values.
• However, Mengzi pointed out; “to assure that human
being would prefer objects with higher values, he
must be conditioned to cultivate in him the moral
feelings which serve as a foundation of a virtue.”
• The basic moral feelings are compassion, shame,
deference, and right and wrong.
• These moral feelings are called “sprouts” which will
turn into a virtue.
• The seed of compassion develops in human
the virtue of benevolence; shame forms in human the
virtue of righteousness; deference evolves in human
the virtue of propriety; and right and wrong unfolds
in human the virtue of wisdom.
• The actuality of the moral feelings is only possible
through the help of a guiding principles.
• The principles are the doctrines which allow these
feelings to mature into a virtue.
• The participation of the members of the society are
indispensable in the formation and the moral
maturity of the young.
• The elders and the moral exemplars in the family and
in the community are necessary to serve as a good
example to the people especially the young.
• The moral exemplars are those who have gone to
difficult situations and ethically-challenging
conditions but chose to stay faithful and committed to
what is true and moral.
• Feeling, therefore, is important in every ethical
decision-making because it has gone through a
complex process of cultivation.
• This process makes feeling a reliable basis of moral
evaluation.
• More than that, feelings direct human decision to
prefer objects with higher values over objects with
lower values.
• The preference of a higher value is an act of the heart
rather than of the mind.
• In addition, feelings make our decision more authentic and personal.
• We can always provide good arguments to justify our decision to
convince others that our decision is the right one, yet we can never deny
to our self whenever we are bothered with our decision.
• The feeling of being bothered pagkabagabag signaled a moral problem
in our decision.
• Whenever we feel bothered by our decision, we are, once again invited
to reevaluate our previous decision.
• If it is still possible to undo the things that we had already decided,
better consider the option.
• When there is no chance to change our decision, the invitation is to
learn from the situation to avoid committing the same mistake again.