The Value of Emotions

When I was 13 years old my hamster had to be put to sleep, because of a cerebral tumour. I cried for days. I was told that this was the best thing to do. It was reasonable to do it. But I wasn’t reasonable, I just didn’t want to see my loved hamster dying.

Maybe this is a rather weak example, because death seems to be a difficult topic for the human kind and can hardly be understood neither with reason nor with emotions, but nevertheless it seems to me that the philosophers value emotions negative whereas they uphold the reason; “We philosophise with our reason”. And not only the philosophers but also we in our every day lives. To be emotional is often viewed as weakness; we constantly try to control our emotions, even though this seems impossible and to a certain extend we all seem to be “slaves to our emotions”. But why is this such a big problem for human kind? What would we be without emotions? – A robot but not a human being.

I think the emotions we have are something very substantial to our lives. They influence our thoughts but they also seem to be bodily. When I am scared or angry my heartbeat goes faster and when I feel guilty I sometimes get stomach ache. Emotions influence my perception. In German there is a saying, that someone who is in love wears pink glasses, because when you are in love you have a positive attitude towards everything and you are blind for the negative things. Emotions such as jealousy made people to criminals not only in literature. Emotions can be the motives for our actions.

I think we should stop denying ourselves the emotions we have, not only because we cannot truly oppress our emotions, but also because only in the combination of reason and emotions we are human.