Theory of knowledge Essay
“There can be no knowledge without emotion… until we have felt
the force of the knowledge, it is not ours” (adapted from Arnold Bennett).
Discuss this vision of the relationship between knowledge and emotion.
Candidate Name: Stephanie Sue Choza Macre
Subject: Theory of Knowledge
Candidate Number: 000858- 017
Word Count: 1418
“There can be no knowledge without emotion… until we have felt the force of the knowledge, it is not
ours” (adapted from Arnold Bennett). Discuss this vision of the relationship between knowledge and
emotion.
The word emotion is use to define the meaning of strong or weak feelings from people characters.
However, emotions are changeable, so the range of the type our emotions that a person can
experienced in a day are a lot. It is possible to be in a condition of being sensitive emotional, for
instance, in one day a person can pass of to be the happiest person in the world to be complete sad.
In others words this is defined as a mood change, a person can be expose to be in a good or bad mood.
The role of this emotional changes in a person denominated to be an emotional person, lets his own
emotions to dominate in most of the decisions or actions in life.
The idea of have an emotions is extremely complex is very difficult to define them, I think our
emotions makes a different between human beings and animals, due to we are able sometimes to
drive our selves based by emotions. In fact, these emotions has a role in our process of learning,
and to reach the point of complete self understanding and to understand the world around us. It is
common to denominate emotions more as an obstacle than a source of knowledge.1 This essay is focus
on three different areas of knowledge and how the emotions sometimes can blind us or motive us
to rich the force of knowledge.
Religion
It is one of the most controversy areas of knowledge, around the world we have thousands of religions
with different perspectives in what or why to believe. I personally believe that people can discuss
about religion forever and never get a conclusion where everyone will be agree on.
The justification to believe in something it is more rational for some cultures than others, we can find
people who justify believes by they own experiences or by a strong feelings of empathy with a kind of
ideology. However, the idea to follow a religion or to accept as true the existence of it is someone of
something superior to us, is mostly excuse by emotions. How can our emotions be the source of
spiritual knowledge? Let take an example:
1
Pg.151. Theory of knowledge for IB Diploma.
“I had conversation days ago with one of friends and he said that for him the idea to follow a religion is
quite complicated, although he is able to believe in God. Because of an experienced that his mother
had years ago, where she was very sick, and in that moments the only thing he thought was in God. I
asked why God? And he said because that I knew from my feelings, that if I would pray my mother it
would be ok.
He was not able to explain me why, he thought that , the only thing he was able to say it is that he
knows a person of something superior to him because he felt that, he mentioned he felt hope on God
in that moment. “
From this example we can understand that he believes because he feel that, it is not any particular
justification such as faith, the way as he understands and know about religion it is most by his
emotions.
In contrast for him this is the only true, one God (monotheistic), different religions explain us a
different idea of other types of God (polytheistic )and a different vision of what happens after we
die. I think if a person is extremely emotional involve in a type of religion this person would not be
able to see how other people understands they believes. Also we can get to the point to compare two
people emotional involve in religion and for both seems to be the absolutely truth. It is lack of rational
justification.
Science
The idea in how science works it is more systematic and our emotions seem to do not play any role in
the practice of science. Furthermore in order to achieve the knowledge from science it is more
important to have a neutral position. The understanding of science it is more rational than emotional
because it has an explanation for everything. Although the relevance of our emotions in to reach the
knowledge from science can be explained by the curiosity, passion of want to know about science.
In particular case of an investigation, if a group of scientists are not engage with the project it is
possible that the results would be dissimilar than a group which is passion for the project. The role of
our emotions in this particular case it is more about how our attitude affects the results of get to
knowledge of a particular investigation.
The same it seems to happen when you have a school group of kids, you can explain to them the idea
of energy conservation, however not all them will be interest in that. In fact that it is easy to remember
concepts of what we are interest in, although that does not mean that it is impossible to learn about
science without of emotions.
Art
The definition of art seems to be a very subjective idea, it is complex to define it, however art in itself
has its own parameters to be identifying what can be seen as art or not. The role of our emotions into
get to know what it is art is very important in both sides; from the artist side and also from the
spectators.
How an artist can produce an artistic work without to get emotional involve? It is common to hear that
a good artist is who express his emotions in his works and achieves to transmit them to the audience.
In fact is possible that an artist without passion by his work would not be able to achieve this goal, and
for the viewers seems not to be art at all. In other hand resembling of what happened during the
Renaissance, when most of the artist were encourage exploring and painting about religion. It is
possible that they were not emotional involve with these paints, although these still considering as art.
Therefore is not necessarily to be emotional engage with the work however, it is very important to
understand that for most of the artist it should be a kind of motive, a feeling that move them to
create.
From spectator side a complete understanding of art would be almost impossible without emotions,
most of the artist reproductions are emotions. For instance a reproduction as the Mona Lisa, it has
been a point of discussion for the art world due to it is very complex to define her expression in the
picture. In what way it is this relevant to evaluate a piece of art? As result of this it is possible to
conclude that the knowledge of art it is a type of package where not only it is important the technique
understanding also the motive and relevant emotions involve it in an art work.
To sum up what we discuss in this essay it seems that the job of our emotions in the process of
reaching the knowledge is of fundamental importance. Our emotions are the connection with the
world around us; by them we understand a lot of the areas of knowledge. However what would
happen if as human beings we would not have any emotions? Would the world make sense? In some
way it would be any interest to actually know specific information, though it will be easier to focus
without any interest from the science point of view, everything it will be clearer and maybe the will be
easier to find an absolutely true. For the reason that we have a variable of understanding in a way is
possible that by our emotions the range of opinions are that diverse.
We can have access to the knowledge without get emotional involved like a robots, achieving
information lacking any sense of understanding of why we are doing that. Thus as human beings we
would not be able to understand songs which talks about sadness because it is a feeling that we did
not experience. I strongly believe that our emotions are thing that move us to want to know more ,
to be curious of the all the information that we can have access in this world.
References
*Theory of Knowledge for the IB Diploma, Richard van Lagemaat, Cambridge University Press 2005.