The human mind has two fundamental psychological motifs. Descartes’s proclamation, “I think, therefore I am,” illustrates one, while Melville’s statement, “Ahab never thinks, he just feels, feels, feels,” exemplifies the other. Our Rationalist inclinations make us want certainty (objective truth), while the Romantic in us basks in emotional subjectivity. Psychology and neuroscience recognize this distinction: cognition and emotion are the two major categories of mind that researchers study.
But things were not always quite like this. Rational thought has always been treated as a product of the mind, and emotions were traditionally viewed as belonging to the body. Descartes, following Plato’s lead, said that humans differ from animals in that we have a rational mind (a soul), but are similar to animals in that we have bodily passions (emotions) that interfere with reason. Somewhere along…
