Thoughts vs Feeling

In the questions following a talk by Martha Nassbaum at the RSA, one audience member mentions The Power of Now By Eckhart Tolle.

Her question relates to how Martha Nassbaum's views - on the value of a participatory and didactic approach to arguing against injustice - and Eckhart's views - that we should be essentially be trying to think less in order to really feel life - could be reconciled.

Martha Nassbaum, having not read the book, is not really in a position to answer. And to be fair, the question was not all that clear, even to someone who has read the book.

Even so, her response is interesting. From the brief description of 'looking inwards' she sees Eckhart's view to be narcissistic and at risk of encouraging less empathy.

Having read the book, I would say that this is exactly not what it is about. The questioner describes it as a 'quirky little book' and that it certainly is. Some of the statements in it would certainly jar with anybody approaching it from a scientific point of view. At it's core though is a call to re-connect with some of the teachings that have inspired Eastern and perhaps also, though now much more obscured, Western spirituality.

Whilst Eckhart does advise keeping part of our energy always focussed inwards on our body, it is too blunt to equate this with narcissism. What he is trying to instill in the reader is contact with something deeper, something that transcends thoughts about the 'self'. At the core of his philosophy is a cultivation of an awareness of out feelings, our very experience of reality. According to him, it is only through the awareness that we can hope to transcend our ego, which is made up of thoughts, and empathise with others.

The exchange struck a chord with me because I also couldn't help feeling distant from some of what Nassbaum was saying. Her obviously humanist views and sense of injustice are difficult to argue with but her academic, intellectual approach felt somehow old-fashioned. As if presenting a rational argument to somebody is going to change their mind. Recent research seems to suggest that it can do quite the opposite, retrenching people into their previously held view. People are often just not convinced by 'reasonable' argument. Just look at the arguments between left and right in America.

If we want a world in which people treat each other better then thinking and debating our differences might help take us some of the way.

True empathy though has feeling at his root. Although Eckhart's philosophy may involve spending time looking inwards, it is ultimately about switching off our thoughts to cultivate human feeling and, with it, the empathy that arises from a realisation of the shared human condition.

Image - Thoughts and Feelings by Jose Alberto Gomes Pereira