Should We Really Aim to Think with Dispassion?

Russell states that “the free intellect will see as God might see, without here and now, without hopes and fears, without the trammels of customary beliefs and traditional prejudices, calmly, dispassionately” (Bertrand Russell, “The Value of Philosophy”). I take this to mean that in order to achieve the true, unfiltered, objective thought, sought after by philosophers, we must approach our philosophical deliberation without any connection to our human emotions. Our emotions can prevent us from this type of thought as they lead us to think with bias and prejudice. We will make decisions based on prior beliefs and assumptions that are not reflective of the true nature of reality. Our mind and the emotions within are our disconnect from this true reality that Russell seeks to ponder. According to Russell, to truly think freely about the world, we need to escape our human nature and think the way God would. Or to think in the way a machine would. 

Russell is correct that in order to view the world in a truly objective sense, we must rid ourselves of our hope, fears, and customary beliefs. However, this renders us in a state of thinking like a machine, and we lose a crucial element that we must consider when viewing the world. We are human and we will always be human. Therefore, we will always experience the world as a human. The way we interact with the universe and the way it interacts with us will always be through a human element. Thinking in the way that Russell suggests may help us reach an objective truth about the world, but in doing so we cease to find our own subjective truths. And our own or subjective truths are arguably more important than an objective truth. This is because our subjective truth undoubtedly exists to us and it is the truth that we experience the world through. It is a truth that we can live by. Why should we attempt to understand the universe from an inhuman point of view, when we are all human? We need to view the world with consideration to our human nature because we will never experience the world without them. By viewing the world with consideration for our emotions, we are actually viewing the world objectively because we can now understand how we will interact with the world. 

But one could argue that if we could purge ourselves of these emotions then we wouldn't have to take them into account. However, it is completely unrealistic to cleanse oneself of emotion entirely. Our emotions are programmed into us evolutionarily and biologically, and even if a person is capable of thinking without emotion, no one is capable of living without it. While at specific times we may be able to rid ourselves of emotion and make decisions solely through rational thought, we will always descend back to our emotional base state in regards to everything else in our life. We don’t and for the most part can’t fall in love or derive pleasure from something, feel great sorrow rationally. So while at times emotionless thought may be possible, it isn't practical to live without it. And as Russell states, “The man who has no tincture of philosophy goes through life imprisoned in the prejudices derived from common sense”. We use philosophy not just as a way to think but as a way to live. And we will always live as humans.   

We have to look objectively not just at the universe, as Russell states, but also objectively at ourselves. Yes, in the interest of pure knowledge, view the world without bias, without passion and without humanity. But in the interest of true free thought, take into consideration your emotions, since they are the filter between you and the world. Yes we should attempt to think entirely without bias, but we should also ask ourselves why does this bias exist? By nature, human beings will form subjective attachments to the world, and while some of these may be irrational, they still exist. And since they exist, they should be taken into consideration. We cannot view the world as though we are not human because the way we interact with the world will always be altered by the fact that we are human.