Prathamesh Mahadeo Kubal

Abhinav Vidyalay & Jr. College, India 

Reason – The Logical Thinking

                      Reason is a tool for understanding things & making decisions by which an individual can create his own Sense of Life. Reason helps the individual to know why things happen practically & the way to response the conditions. It is used at a psycho-epistemological level by the individual to evoke his emotions. It is the integration of emotions, thinking, cause,

                      Reason according to Blaise Pascal is of two types which means, emotional reasoning according to heart & the other means reasoning through a pure logical sense. Emotional reasoning takes place when the individual tries to think for the benefit of their beloved ones as well as him. It does not always go logically, for e.g.: If a boy goes wrong in his actions, & ends in a disgusting way, his parents try to cover those things because they don’t want the boy to be unhappy. They think that if they scold their son then his emotions might be hurt & the boy may try to neglect his parents after a period of time. Here the parents care that their beloved one’s are not hurt in any sort of sense even though their intentions & actions are correct but their consequences may result very badly. But reasoning by logic can reach the level of rationality, reason cannot be defined as logic, but logic is an integrated part of reasoning. If a person tries to know a concept, he must try to know the cause of it, he must know the consequences, and even the moral extent of his actions should be known. When he integrates all the causes, actions, consequences, moral emotions, responses then it can be said that the person can logically reason the particular concept.  Reasoning here does not mean giving importance to emotions i.e. reason through heart, it means thinking & applying concepts which are logical enough to support the given concept. When thinking rationally is involved in reason then the intensions, actions & consequences are taken into consideration as an entity. In this people do not give the superficial abstraction that they have understood from the situation, instead they try to get to the roots of the cause of such a situation.

                      I strongly oppose what Blaise Pascal’s statement that “The heart has its reasons which reason knows nothing of”. Emotions are the outcomes of normative thinking; it may or may not be rational. Emotions depict our sense of life as they are evoked through our actions. If the actions go wrong then even the depiction of emotions evoked are rationally wrong. Emotions vary according to situations as well as vary from individual to individual, as they are controlled by personality, temper & even the mood of that individual. For e.g.: When a boy understands a particular concepts & then explains it to his elder friend with reasoning then the elder one feels angry as his junior is proving the way he understood the concept is wrong. This tendency is due to emotions that the individual has, it makes him feel disgusting. This is not a rational reason that the junior student should not understand the concept before the elder one does. The elder tries to suppress the pure reasoning by his illogical reasoning.

When reasoning is brought to practicality, even the emotional reasoning (from heart) is considered as the part of reasoning. If the emotional reasoning is insufficient to prove the concept correct or if it criticizes the pure concept then it is omitted out of the rational reasoning. This means that when one tries to reason out things, his rational emotional reasoning is involved in it. For eg: Consider a individual is on a freedom struggle & his relatives are trying to oppose him because they fear that they may suffer a lot due to it. Hence, they shake hands with the enemies. So in such a case if the person has to fight in a battlefield where he has to kill his beloved ones, then it would be irrational to think emotionally that I must not kill my relatives. By this if he idle then his relatives may kill him. At last he would not succeed in fighting for his country. But if he thinks rationally that I must kill all those who obstruct the way to freedom then he is right in his intensions & will lead to right actions.

Emotional thinking (from heart) is a part of the logical reasoning but when the emotional part becomes irrational to support the given conditions then it is neglected. Emotions lead to quick response which may be irrational, where the reasoning part does not contain good logic. This may lead to false abstractions where people often get confused about what is morally right. Is such cases people usually say, “I did this because I like this”, “I follow this because my heart says it’s correct, “I know its always right so it should not be opposed”……… This thinking is because people give importance more to their emotions & desires. They actually say this because they want to fulfill their desires, they do not actually reason it. This kind of saying cannot be said as a reason since it always does not contain pure logic. Reasoning is tool as said earlier for understanding things, but as per the above discussion the emotional aspect of reasoning shows that it is not used for understanding things nor it helps the particular person to know the cause. Reasoning from heart as said by Pascal is not purely a reason, because it cannot be used to understand things. It just helps to take decisions, i.e. to apply the emotions for finding the solutions. This type of reasoning is insufficient to explain things that go around us, it depends on the way of thinking of the individual. So it may not be always correct, from the perspective of rationality. It should be used just for uniting people & helping them, & cannot be used for questioning things.

When people are facing problems they may use only the rational part of emotions & use it to help others. One must not allow oneself to flow with his/her emotions; this may make him loose his own sense. For e.g.: Consider that there is a bus accident where the bus is on the edge of the cliff that it can fall at any time & the people are scarred for their life. If the family members of a person are badly injured in the accident then the person must not enforce the remaining people to help his family first. In this condition the person must allow others to get safe & then try to save his own members. If he reasons emotionally, then that may lead to a chaos & result in the death of all, but if he reasons logically that the people at the nearer end should be saved & then his injured ones. One uses the tool of emotions (emotional reason) only when one wants to crush & suppress the opinions that his reasoning does not match with. It is given the quality when the individual does not want himself to be questioned by others. This means that emotions used as reasons actually defend individuals who do not want their way of thinking to be opposed. But it is not always that the normative way of thinking is right. Reasoning for such things is illogically as it doesn’t allow others to understand it, it is just imposed on others. A person who wants his own desires & wishes to fulfill gives the emotions the dignity of reason.

Hence, I would say that reasoning is only done by logic with the thought of morality. Emotional reason cannot be considered as a reason because it depends upon individual’s way of thinking & may vary with time. Reason which is logical includes the emotional thought (reason) but need not consider it as the only frame through which the reasoning is to be done. Emotions should not be directly given the dignity of reason.