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A 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.

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Ira Birkkjaer
 Ira Birkkjaer
Theory of Knowledge Essay
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“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.

“Emotion is the energy required to learn anything,”i said Clotaire Rapaille, the author
of The Culture Code. Rapaille is the godfather of Archetype Studies and Creativity, asking the
question ‘Why do people do what they do?’ and he is well known for his unique approach to
market research based on his knowledge of psychology, psychiatry and cultural anthropology.
The questions remains ‘Was Rapaille correct in his proclamation; can there be any knowledge
without the application of emotion?’ If emotion exists as the only pathway to knowledge then
it seems rather comical that have I spent thirteen years of my life in an educational system,
which forces knowledge upon me that does not necessarily stimulate positive emotions. The
artistic areas of knowledge, particularly languages and the visual arts, have always been my
favorite and less surprisingly also the areas within which my strengths lie. Meanwhile, I have
dragged myself through several natural science and mathematic classes. These areas never
caused me much joy; emotions likely affected by my lacking interest in the areas. Yet again, if
‘emotion is the energy required to learn anything’ then my negative emotions towards the
natural sciences and mathematics should still trigger, support, and encourage the growth of
knowledge within the subject, since a negative emotion is as valuable an emotion as a positive
one. Or is it? Is a positive emotion, more specifically, the energy required to learn anything?

Each area of knowledge defines and applies the term ‘knowledge’ differently, each
taking certain qualities of knowledge for granted. In ethics knowledge becomes a vague term
resting on culture, previous experience or childhood, and possibly the religion of the
individual. This causes a chaos of knowledge, within which different standpoints collide,
causing ethical decision making to be largely dependent on emotion. In Denmark, free speech
prevails as a guiding ideology, a crucial aspect of democracy and the Danish culture. In 2005,
a Danish cartoonist, Kurt Westergaard, working for the national newspaper, Jyllands Posten,
published a series of caricatures of the prophet Mohammed. The reaction to follow was to an
international student, predictable; Muslims worldwide protested in defense of their religion,
burning the Danish flag and images of the cartoonist himself as well as Anders Fogh
Rasmussen, the prime minister of Denmark at the time. This divergence was and is an ethical

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conflict between two religious cultures and their individual sets of knowledge - a knowledge
issue, difficult to solve due to the emotional impact that is has. The individual’s perception of
the situation and their ability to reason is distracted due to emotion, and in addition to that
there is a language barrier separating the two cultures. The underlying knowledge of the
Muslim as well as the Danish culture, was guided by the emotional circumstances of the
conflict. In a conflict as such, the knowledge which provides the culture its foundation for its
reasoning is no longer sustainable. Emotion, based on cultural and religious traditions,
dominates the situation, to the extend where none of the players can know anything- has any
knowledge, objective to their emotional basis. Here the question ‘is it possible to stay
emotionally neutral in an ethical situation, that is, will not ethical knowledge always be
subject to emotion?’ becomes relevant. It has been argued that the core, the foundation of
ethical decision-making, moral judgment was hardwired into us, which suggests that within
ethics one cannot have any knowledge objective of emotion.

The human sciences exist and evolve due to emotion. The areas, psychology,
economics and anthropology are designed to investigate, develop, calculate and conclude
regarding emotion as a way of knowing. Essentially though, these methods focus largely on
language, reason and perception while emotion is the vital way of knowing at hand. If
emotion is required to know anything, if “deep thinking is attainable only by a man of deep
emotion,”ii then to become a specialist in the field of psychology and truly be capable of
helping or curing a patient, one would need to have felt the emotions of the patient,
personally. This may be the reason why many psychotic diseases are said to be never fully
healed – simply because there is no other person who has felt exactly the same feelings as the
patient, and therefore none with the knowledge allowing them to help to the extent necessary.
From day to day, in our mundane routines, we to some extent act as the therapist or
psychologist of the people with whom we interact whether it be friends, family or coworkers.
The hallway of a high school in between classes is a true example of this. Based upon
personal experience I know that a good friend is someone who will listen to me, try to
understand my emotional situation and seek to advise me. Yet in the end I mostly disregard
this advice because of the clichés: they do not really know what I feel or they do not actually
understand. And how can they? How can psychologists? If emotion, whether positive or
negative, is necessary for the existence of knowledge, then one would think that a friend or
family member would essentially be more capable of helping as there is a likelihood that they

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are more familiar with the feelings of the person.

Concerning art as an area of knowledge, it is generally accepted that all knowledge

within the subject is based upon the presence of emotions. That is not to say that art does not
require any technical abilities but that even these, as the law of cosine in mathematics, are
learned on the basis of interest, that is, emotion. The arts though, to the very core, are inspired
or generated by an emotion and in most cases produce an emotion as well - may it be classical
music, an abstract painting or African dance, it evokes an emotion; causes a reaction. But
within art does the emotion provoked by the art guide knowledge? The arts in a sense take the
idea, or statement, that ‘There can be no knowledge without emotion…until we have felt the
force of the knowledge, it is not ours’ full circle. The energy initiating the art so to speak is an
emotion, and as long as there is a fundamental passion for art present, it does not matter
whether this emotion portrayed is positive or negative since art can express both powerfully.
Then the production of the initial emotion evokes emotion, which then creates the pathway to
emotional knowledge. My artwork is always reflective of or relating to myself, therefore
essentially emotional. Each individual in the audience will experience my piece differently as
it will evoke a like or a dislike, which then allows him or her to understand either something
about me and the reasons behind the work or emotion in general, that is, emotional
knowledge.

Emotion, no matter within what area of knowledge or in what form: negative or

positive seems to be the generation of all knowledge. Naturally a positive emotion can lead to
a higher level of knowledge since positive emotions stimulate interest and as the German
philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel said, “Nothing great is accomplished in the world
without passion.”iii My passion is the visual and literary arts and it also in these areas that I
have developed the greatest knowledge, which has led me further to greater accomplishments
than within any other area of knowledge. It can thereby be deduced that a positive emotion
will always be a stronger pathway to knowledge, as interest produced by a positive emotion
enhances the knower’s desire for further information. While not as strongly, it is wrong to say
that a negative emotion does not provide a pathway to knowledge. An example of this is the
child, who puts his or her hand on the hot stove and becomes subject to pain, whereby the
child learns not to repeat such an act. The problem with the hot stove scenario is that it is a
purely physical pain or a physical emotion, which understandably will cause a reaction.

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Regarding a negative psychological emotion, it is ambivalent to which extent this in any given
situation will encourage knowledge or instead be an obstacle to knowledge. I know from my
own mathematical experience, that if there is something I feel a strong dislike for it will often
be imprinted in my brain and continue to exist as knowledge, even if as something negative.
Meanwhile, if there is an aspect of mathematics, which I do not feel a particular hatred for but
that certainly does not evoke a positive emotion either, that is, there is only a vague emotion;
it will not benefit me as a guide to further knowledge. Essentially emotion, whether negative
or positive, is “the energy required to learn anything.”iv Without emotion, knowledge passes
us by unrecognized.

Biography

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Cathcart, Thomas, and Daniel Klein. Plato and a Platypus Walk into a Bar...
2006. London: Penguin Books, 2008.

Rapaille, Clotaire. The Culture Code. New York: Broadway Books, 2006.

Endnotes

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i
Rapaille, Clotaire. The Culture Code. New York: Broadway Books, 2006.
ii
Samuel Taylor Coleridge 1772-1834
iii
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, 1770-1831
iv
Rapaille, Clotaire. The Culture Code. New York: Broadway Books, 2006.