Being a human is not just about
sensing, imagining and reasoning, which all are relatively passive
capacities. In addition, human beings are active and change the world
around them. Yet, they do not just act haphazardly, but for reasons:
they act, beacuse they feel that they should do something. In other
words, they value different situations according to some standards.
Wolff introduces the human faculties of valuing out of the blue. We have seen him defining perfection as an
objective value not dependent on any human being: if something is
perfect, it is perfect, no matter what. Now Wolff suggests that human
beings can intuit or perceive things as perfect or as imperfect.
These perceptions he calls respectively Lust
and Unlust, which
could be translated perhaps as like and dislike. Note that the two
feelings of like and dislike are not the only options: one can also
perceive things as indifferent.
Like and dislike
need not be connected with true perfection – we can like things
that just appear to be perfect. In other words, knowing what is
objectively good and bad – say, for our health – is completely
different from feeling it in our guts that something is nice
(candies) or disgusting (Brussels sprouts). Wolff also makes the
suggestion that the difference between the two is only a matter of
clarity and that by clarifying one's notions of good and bad, one
could learn to like what is truly or invariably good. Yet, this
suggestion seems somewhat implausible: although I know very well that
candies are bad for my teeth, I still feel enjoyment when eating
them.
Even more
unsatisfying is Wolff's inability to distinguish like and dislike
concerning bodily feelings from those concerning other things. We
have already noted that Wolff has clear dualistic tendencies and that
body is for him just some external thing that happens to be
constantly connected with human soul. Now, just because the body is
there always disturbing the clarity of our thoughts, we have to take
a special care of its perfection.
At times, the body
is somehow broken – Wolff speaks in a very literal manner of a cut
in the continuity of a body, such as a wound is, but I think we need
not follow him in this regard. Such a state of brokenness Wolff calls
Schmertz, which would usually be translated as pain, but the
word is truly unsuitable here: pain is a feeling, while Wolffian
Schmertz is just a state of a body. Of course, this state is
usually accompanied by a feeling of dislike, but only because the
imperfection of the body is constantly there to remind us. If I had
an ugly painting constantly in my field of vision, I would find the
situation not just less uncomfortable, but also qualitatively
different from a situation where I would be having a constant
headache – the ugliness of painting would not concern me, but something external to me.
Wolff's account of
pain has a further difficulty. If Wolff is right, I will always feel
pain, when I am conscious of the imperfection of my body. Yet, there
are cases where this is not true. For instance, I could know that I
have a tumour somewhere in my body without having any pain to show
for it. Wolff might answer to me by insisting that I would indeed
have a sensation of pain in this case, but it would be of so small a
magnitude that I would not be aware of it.
Still, Wolff's
explanation fails to account for an experience familiar to all who
have gone through dental surgery, that is, the anesthesia of one's
mouth. When the anesthesia is working, you literally cannot feel any
pain within your mouth – for instance, you might even bite your
tongue accidentally, causing Wolffian pain, but feel nothing until
the anesthesia stops working. In this example, the quantity of the
supposed pain cannot just be very small, because then one would still
have the possibility of enlarging the pain to a level of conscious
awareness – but this very awareness of pain is prevented by the
anesthesia.
So much for pain.
Next time, we shall discuss affects.
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