Je crois que vous avez misaperc,u cet expression:

Le coeur a ses raisons qui raisonnent seul ne percevront jamais

Do you think this pointing-out of the BLINDNESS^* of the emotional _heart's_ "reasoning" is supposed to be _praise or endorsement_ of it?!? Not that I can place the quote... But if that is really what it is saying, then that only goes to confirm what we all already knew: The French are *nutz*!

You seem to be misunderstanding me, thinking I'm arguing we should all be computers in stead of the emotional animals we are^**. No, I never mant to say that -- I'm saying Feeling is all well and good. For one thing, all our values are of course based in it; for another, our admiration for some particularly elegant argument in support of some value over another, is also an emotion. But, when it comes to *evaluating* values, *choosing* between conflicting goals which are often *both* good... Then, *informed* reasoning is better than blind emotion. For that, "cooler heads", as opposed to "hot hearts", must prevail.

Lemme put it this way: Which are the more respected statesmen -- the ones that throw temper tantrums, or the ones that manage to hang on to their cool? To take an example, your Founding Fathers probably weren't all perfectly unanimous on everything all the time -- I can imagine there were some pretty deep discussions as the Constitution was hammered out. In those debates, which would you have wanted to "win": Hot-headed incoherent sputterers of Emotion, or persuasively _Reasoning_ advocates of (their surely equally emotion-based) rational value systems?

*) "[Ils] ne percevront jamais" = "[they] never percieve [anything]".

**) These over-convoluted attempted put-downs like "Imagining that Mr. Boole has captured the essence of 'wisdom creation'", "Faith in the triumph of codified process", and so on... Are getting rather annoying, BTW. And old.

Might have been Pascal (!) but there are various wordings - my pref. en Anglais: The heart has its reasons which reason alone shall never perceive.

Sorry about the Boole repetition - but you were arguing IMO for a large dollop of logic. Again. Doesn't mean you know no other, or that I imagine same. I respond to your editing of what you focussed upon.

Why would you imagine anyone sane would substantially disagree with:

But, when it comes to *evaluating* values, *choosing* between conflicting goals which are often *both* good... Then, *informed* reasoning is better than blind emotion. For that, "cooler heads", as opposed to "hot hearts", must prevail.

Nor this:

In those debates, which would you have wanted to "win": Hot-headed incoherent sputterers of Emotion, or persuasively _Reasoning_ advocates of (their surely equally emotion-based) rational value systems?

Well to name just one - Tom Paine was certainly hotheaded; nor were the 'debates' paragons of cool-headed "reasoning together". Yet in the end we had a genius like Jefferson to clean up, Edit! (most important literary job there is) all the mess into a coherent whole.

Still: "evaluating values" comes perilously close to oxymoron or possibly just different scales - meaning of meaning yada yada. But sometimes a poem or story may illustrate a 'meaning' better than a prose 'analysis'. No rules govern clear transmission of intertwined ideas - or limit the political hackery of those into something lesser, when no one is noticing. (Ever read the language in our congressional output?)

Yes too - the extremes ever fail. I consider it 'extreme' to treat the idea of surveillance cameras in proliferation, as - No Big deal. I consider it equally extreme to begin opposition by trashing such as exist (under currently many \ufffdgis-es or \ufffdges).

But if one never 'feels' what surveillance *means* - nothing much will occur to prevent its installation. That would go for its proponents as well. And I still believe that there is an overemphasis upon 'logic' re human affairs; of course one must not ever suspend logic, as we see works so well in lesser endeavors:

But it is mainly useful in pointing out flaws - of lesser use in drafting laws - such as homo-sap just might live by, if they are worded quite wisely. Though George thought his 'algebra' would be quite useful in human discourse (I've read) - I believe he overestimated the possibility of Any 'algebra' making matters much easier amongst large numbers of us. (For one thing, each believes s/he is Gawd, or very close-to Her yada yada. Logic? where is thy counter-sting to That!)

(So I don't need much reminding either - about Erwache and the rise of Brown Shirts et al. Man is at absolute lowest-consciousness when fullest of self-importance, spouting inane God-slogans and - with guns to back the mob. Mob = nohumanspresent. It's a different beast, en masse.)

A.

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