[A question from the audience:]
Hi Eisel. I want to share what I've been thinking lately. Each person's purpose is to become a mature human being, with the potency in their nature actualized. It's easy to see that the potency of intelligence is to grow and develop, but what is the potency of emotion? Looking at human development, emotion doesn't change, it just becomes more and more subordinated to intelligence, so is it's fate to eventually disappear? No, emotions are a part of human life. But what is their relation to intelligence (hereinafter called thought)? People say there are positive and negative emotions, so should thought be used to encourage one and diminish the other? Or on the contrary, emotions (including desire) should be suppressed to increase thought? The latter isn't as bleak as it sounds, since there's still imagination and creativity.
[My reply:]
Emotion is not the opposite of reason. Emotional reasons are nevertheless reasons; and you can reason through and with emotions. Numerals are not the opposite of reason. Mathematical reasons are nevertheless reasons; and you can reason through and with numbers. Feeling is not incompatible with thinking: the opposite assumption is very deeply wrong.
