Emotivism Must Die!

The failure of people to exercise their God-given faculty of intelligence (intelligence means the ability to distinguish categories) is correctly called stupidity. Against stupidity the gods themselves fight in vain; but it is not the gods alone who are condemned in intellectual battles with the stupid to beat at the air. It would be easier for us to leave the stupid to wallow in their pitiable mire and go about our lives; but those of us who love our fellow man are loth to neglect someone in such a state of extreme necessity.
Now the form of stupidity with which we are probably all best acquainted is that called "emotivism" or "emotionalism". It is not a method of thought ; it is the negation of Thought (which is why I have called it Stupid) and the substitution for it of Will. A man is an emotivist who laughs at something because it is unfamiliar to him - which is indeed a particularly pathetic and puerile strain of this disease. That man also is an emotivist who utters the diabolical sentence, "She had to have an abortion," as if murder were not only in some cases not an evil, but could actually be demanded by a moral obligation - which is what the words "have to" mean. He is an emotivist who would have a man put down like a dog "to end his suffering"; also, he who lauds self-murder as the means to escape the woes of this world; again, he who cannot bear a word of criticism against himself, but who at a mere nothing will fly into an insensate rage wherein there will be no limits to the emotional abuse he himself inflicts upon his unfortunate victims. This last, incidentally, will frequently support abortion and euthanasia. He will justify his moods with laudatory epithets, such as "common humanity" - the word "common" having the same function as "had to" in the phrase "had to have an abortion" - implying, of course, that anyone who does not agree with him is morally evil. He would never dare assert that he implied that; nevertheless, that is the implied meaning of his words, which is inescapable. You cannot affirm something without simultaneously affirming all that logically follows from it.
The Emotivist, because his substitution for Thought subsists in Will that answers Feeling, will tend to inflict his philosophy on all those about him, be they willing or no. This may be inferred from his use of such words as "had to" and "common", and also such expressions as "those who have no experience of", with reference, for example, to witnessing the slow and painful death of a beloved family member - which will be the Emotivist's attempt at justification for what is called euthanasia but should be called lugrothanasia, unhappy death; yet special pleading is not argument. The Emotivist will regard pleasure as the supreme good, and pain as the supreme evil. He may well regard the infliction of pain, even in just punishment, as the worst sin (if he believes in sin) that can be committed - so, for instance, no parent shall be permitted to smack his naughty child - yet he will not object to the imprisonment of the miscreant parent who dares to discipline his son, or to the trauma undergone by the family by its being destroyed in this way. If his emotions followed some sort of reason, perhaps these things would trouble him; but our emotions are inordinate and delude us. Yet the Emotivist trusts to these rather than to his intelligence. But since the Emotivist has abandoned intelligence, he has only the emotions to fall back upon.

I have said that the Emotivist replaces Will for Thought. If he thinks at all, it will be to justify what his will has already chosen. So, if he has chosen something evil, for instance, fornication or unnatural vice, he will, after having made a decision, rationalize it in order to fit in with his emotions and his will.
We all do this at times. There is no limit to the depravity of man, nor to his stupidity. But where Emotion is followed as superior to Reason, man ends up broken and a wreck, more depraved and more stultified than he could ever otherwise have been. For this reason, and because of the stumblingblock it puts in the way of intelligent argument, emotivism must die.

I have spent much time with sanabituranima in the last couple of days. I have borrowed her Greek grammar for the purpose of teaching myself Greek. I ought to know Greek; I know Latin, not to the degree of fluency but to the degree of being able to read it and understand 99% of it with the help of a dictionary, at least if it is in prose. Verse is more difficult to read, in Latin at least, because words which agree with each other are sometimes placed in very strange places, and I have not thus far succeeded in training my mind to think in such a way.
Latin is more important than Greek, of course; half of our great classic literature is in that tongue; it is, historically speaking, the common tongue of Western Europe; we still write in the Latin alphabet, for example; there are inscriptions in Latin all over Europe; the vast majority of everything that was written down was in Latin in Europe for a great amount of time; and the advantages of acquaintance with it are very obvious. Latin remains the official language of the Catholic Church, yet there are only a handful of people who can actually speak it.
I confess my own acquaintance with the literature of Greece and Rome is thoroughly insufficient. I have read the Iliad and little else. I approve of the Iliad. Lattimore's translation is excellent. I have been intending to read the Odyssey for ages, and have read the first eight books or so; but I will read the whole thing one of these days. Actually it will probably take more than a day. Especially must I read Homer and Aristotle. Belloc called Aristotle "the tutor of the human race." But now I shall sleep.

6242/260410/83

This is my order number for about half a dozen of Hilaire Belloc's books. I thought if I posted it here I wouldn't forget it.

I wish to thank Stuart and Katie for a delightful evening.

I am back in Durham.

I am tired, as usual - I realized I had not blogged while I was falling asleep.

I was not able to argue with the person I discussed in my last entry; I am able to pray for him, however, and I ask you to do the same, since he needs to be prayed for.

Today I came across one of the most obstinate and ignorant fools I have ever had the pain of encountering. I shall not name him, but he cannot understand the love of God - subjective or objective genitive. I told him so. This was his response:

"You're absolutely right David, I don't. And I don't want to, if it's more important than helping people."

I shall deal with this tomorrow.

Today I discovered that the Kingdom of Sweden appears to have withdrawn from European civilization. sanabituranima has written about ithere:

St Ansgar brought Christianity to Sweden in 829; Christianity became the prevalent religion in the 11th century, but did not fully oust paganism until the 12th century. Thus we see that Sweden was a late arrival in European civilization. And it was those nations that accepted the Faith latest of all that were, as a general rule, the first to lose it - and Sweden jettisoned the Faith during the religious downheaval of the seventeenth century.

What has this to do with the abduction of a boy and the traumatization of an entire family? I think it is relevant, for the worldview of the State officials of Sweden must necessarily be determined by their view of the world and ultimately by their religion. They evidently think it a good thing to snatch a seven-year-old boy from his parents. This entire episode is thoroughly appalling.

I don't especially feel like adopting a penguin.