Integration of Reason and Emotion

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In Chapter 4 of Lesbian Ethics, Sarah Hoagland argues that desire is a socially and politically constructed perception and that in today’s heterosexual society the current concept of desire forces and perpetuates the split between reason and emotion. Hoagland focuses on sexual desire, however her analysis can be applied to the desires of any person, object, or action. I will give an account of Hoagland’s view on desire, and reason and emotion; I will analyze three things that I desire: my career, developing a family, and making enough money for that family to live comfortably, why I desire them and how my desires are socially constructed; I will finish by determining, based on my analysis of desires, that I agree with Hoagland, that reason and emotion are inseparable and attempts to separate them are damaging. In today’s heterosexual and patriarchal society sex and sexual desires revolve around men, and Hoagland sets out seven patterns showing how this is the case. Sex is thought of as a “powerful and uncontrollable urge” and male sexuality therefore is a basic component to male health, sexual acts show male conquest and domination, sexual freedom gives men total access to and over women, rape is, by this logic, natural and women who resist a man’s advances are “‘frigid’”, sex involves losing control and sexual desire, when described as erotic, “involves a death wish (eros)”. The bottom line is that in today’s heterosexual and patriarchal society sex is all about men having a natural power over women; sex involves a total loss of control which creates a split between reason and emotion since being in control is a matter of reason controlling emotions, “we tend to believe that to be safe we must be rational and in control but to... ... middle of paper ... ... and that this split is destructive. This separation forces us to act with only one aspect of ourselves at a time. The rational portion is what we act upon if we want to be taken seriously since using emotions or being emotional is equivalent to being out of control and is therefore bad (in today’s heterosexual and patriarchal society). This separation can be seen in our current interpretations of desire as nonrational, as erotic and therefore out of control. True desire however involves reason and emotion, both to determine what we want, reason to help decipher how to attain it and emotion to give us the drive to work towards it. Reason and emotion are inseparable and when we try to separate them is when we end up fragmenting ourselves. Works Cited Hoagland, S. L. (1988). Lesbian ethics :Toward new value (1st ed.). Palo Alto, Calif.: Institute of Lesbian Studies

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