Emotionally charged

New York

My doctor tells me that the reason I grew a tumour in my head was because of my obsession with Ashley Judd. For any of you living in outer space, Ashley is an actress whom I’ve never met but have rather ambitious plans for if I ever do. Needless to say, it was love at first sight. Then came the obsession, followed by the tumour. Don’t laugh. My doctor is convinced of the cause, and, if Spinoza were around, he would agree. Mind you, Descartes would not. Let me explain. As all of you know, Descartes theorised that human beings were composed of physical bodies and immaterial minds. Not so, said the great Spinoza. In his Ethics, the Dutchman argued that the body and mind are one continuous substance. In other words, the mind exists for the body’s sake and ensures its survival.

So far so good. Descartes, however, won the day. His rationalist doctrine shaped modern philosophy, and poor Spinoza was sent packing. Four hundred years later, Dr Antonio Damasio, the head of neurology at the University of Iowa, has published a book which proves Spinoza had it right all along. ‘Feeling is not the enemy of reason, but, as Spinoza saw it, an indispensable accomplice.’ Well, I don’t know how long it took the good doctor to discover this, but I could have told him so straight off the bat. Other academics are following Damasio’s lead, dismissing the division between reason and passion, and, while they’re at it, my old buddy Aristotle is also taking a drubbing. (Cognition and emotion.) Not to mention that old fraud Freud. The Viennese jerk believed that mental pathology was based on unsuccessful emotional repression, something I could have disproved in a jiffy long ago.