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ON THE PROPRIETY OF THE VERB “TO FEEL”
Another Sort of Learning Web Site ^ | JAMES V. SCHALL

Posted on 01/20/2004 3:59:46 PM PST by johnb2004

If someone feels sick, I cannot argue with him. But if someone “feels” that God does not exist, or that euthanasia, including my own, is all right, there is little I can do about it unless we can somehow reestablish the connection between our thoughts and the appropriate feelings that ought to go with truth and reality.

(Excerpt) Read more at georgetown.edu ...


TOPICS: Apologetics; Catholic; Charismatic Christian; Current Events; Evangelical Christian; General Discusssion; Humor; Judaism; Mainline Protestant; Moral Issues; Orthodox Christian; Other Christian; Religion & Culture; Skeptics/Seekers
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With her daughter, once a Georgetown student, B. F. Smith, the Crisis columnist often appearing just before Schall, was in town from Atherton. They were visiting their Pentagon-stationed son/brother, the one with no fear of flying, to recall one of Mrs. Smith’s witty accounts (“Up in the Air,” Crisis, September, 2000). Knowing Mrs. Smith’s almost infallible instinct for precise language, with her daughter not far behind, I asked them, “What is the most common verb appearing on term papers?” I forget what daughter Whitney said. But her mother was on target. “To feel,” she replied without the slightest doubt. “Right,” I replied, duly impressed.

On term papers, I circle in black or red pencil wherever a student uses any form of the verb “to feel” when he clearly means “to think,” “to hold,” “to argue,” or “to decide.” This “feel” usage has been around for at least a decade, probably longer. Sometimes, I can return a short paper with twenty or thirty encircled “feels.” Bewildered students later wonder why so many marked words? They are genuinely puzzled. Obviously, something must be wrong with Schall’s vocabulary, not wholly impossible, to be sure.

It is not just that the student himself “feels,” but everyone he writes about likewise “feels.” The main “intellectual” activity that many students experience is that they “feel.” The greats of philosophy, politics, and history in essays mainly “feel.”. Georgetown’s most famous graduate may have contributed to this scourge by going about the country telling us how much he “feels our pain.” Actually, I think, that is the one thing we cannot, in precise language, do, that is, “feel” someone else’s pain.

We can have “compassion,” perhaps, but even that noble word is almost completely destroyed when it becomes a tool to subjectivize objective reality. We have so much “compassion” for the doer of wrong deeds that the deeds themselves lose their objective standing. We “feel” so much for the “pains” of others that what was wrong in the actions of others disappears. The result is that those who insist in the primacy of objective order become insensitive bigots for not “feeling the pain.”

After a few corrected papers, in any case, I know what Augustine “felt,” what Machiavelli “felt,” what Hegel “felt,” what, Lord save us, Aristotle “felt.” This is the chief “buzz” verb of our era. The word sometimes is used in a proper sense – to wit, “when Alexander the Great sat on a tack, he felt a considerable pain.” Nero was livid; he felt “anger.” In these days, however, “to feel” is a substitute verb. If we use the word “to feel” when we mean “to think” or its equivalents, we imply that we have no articulate reasoning behind our position. If someone feels sick, I cannot argue with him. But if someone “feels” that God does not exist, or that euthanasia, including my own, is all right, there is little I can do about it unless we can somehow reestablish the connection between our thoughts and the appropriate feelings that ought to go with truth and reality.

No doubt, the most incisive modern analysis of this intellectual disease is found in the early pages of C. S. Lewis’ The Abolition of Man (1947). The first symptoms unsurprisingly appeared in an English class. Lewis is bitingly amusing in his analysis. The grammar school students, he tells us, were told of two tourists. One called a waterfall “sublime” and the other called it “pretty.” The poet Coleridge said the first usage was correct, the second disgusting. Two English professors, analyzing this situation, explained, on the contrary, that when the tourist called the waterfall “sublime,” he was not referring to anything about the actual waterfall, but only how he “felt” about the waterfall. He could know nothing about the waterfall itself, which he erroneously called sublime.

Lewis with much humor pointed out that such use of language is wholly mistaken. Thus, were a man to say, “You are contemptible,” he would logically mean “I have contemptible feelings.” It would have noting to do with the other man himself, contemptible or not. It is the waterfall itself that is “sublime,” not our feelings about it; our feelings are reverential, not themselves sublime.

How conclude? The use of the verb “to feel” in place of “to think” signifies a refusal to make a judgment about things, to state the truth about things. If you “feel” something is wrong or right, there is nothing I can say about your feelings, except that they seem odd if they have no basis in fact that can be tested and argued about. The verb “to feel,” used for “to think,” is the infallible sign of philosophic relativism. In this sense, “to feel” means precisely not “to think.”

1 posted on 01/20/2004 3:59:47 PM PST by johnb2004
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To: johnb2004
You hit on one of my pet peeves.

When you say "I feel" a person should be able to substitute the words "I am" for "I feel" and the sentence will still make sense.

Example:
I feel sick.
I am sick.

I feel scared.
I am scared.

If you can add the word "that" after the words "I feel" you are expressing a thought or a judgment.

I feel you are mistaken in your assessment of church policies.
I feel that you are mistaken in your assessment of church policies.

Thus, this sentence is a thought or judgment and should be written:
I think you are mistaken in your assessment of church policies.
Or
I judge you are mistaken in your assessment of church policies.

Hope these two hints help everyone. Many Americans use "feel" when they really mean "think" or "judge". I usually ask them politely if they mean think of judge.......and I smile, of course.

Usually there is a sheepish pause to think and then a grin with an answer that they are indeed expressing a thought or a judgment and not a feeling. Play with it.........you will be amazed at how people with thank you later.
2 posted on 01/20/2004 4:21:14 PM PST by Salvation (†With God all things are possible.†)
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To: johnb2004
For those who 'feel' God exists, they sure spend a lot of time and treasure on something without empirical evidence. But that's their burden. Then, to have them moralize to someone who 'feels' there is no invisible man in the sky - that's just laughable.
3 posted on 01/20/2004 4:36:40 PM PST by gcruse (http://gcruse.typepad.com/)
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To: gcruse
try this
4 posted on 01/20/2004 4:46:19 PM PST by johnb2004
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To: gcruse
RE spending time and treasure on something without empirical evidence

Where did creation come from? Or if you prefer, how did the Big Bang come about?

If life on earth is an accident, so are you, sir. (all of us of course.) And that means if something truly bad happens to you today, logically, nobody even owes you a "tough luck, get over it." Any compassion would just be silly, a waste of time, a sign of weakness.

People may be atheists/agnostics for a variety of reasons; for some, it is a means to an end.

5 posted on 01/20/2004 4:54:24 PM PST by Piers-the-Ploughman
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To: johnb2004
Great post!

I go crazy with people saying, "Well, I feel God wants me to...(fill in the blank)." or "I feel God wouldn't do...(fill in the blank)." People use this saying to justify anything they want.

Few people think anymore. They just "feel".
6 posted on 01/20/2004 5:04:54 PM PST by HarleyD (READ Your Bible-STUDY to show yourself approved)
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To: johnb2004
Oh man, now you've done it. It's going to stay with me all night - Carol Burnett's rendition of "Feelings".

Feelings...
Nothing more than feelings....
Feelings!
Wo wo wo
Feelings!

(Where's a karaoke bar when you need one?)

7 posted on 01/20/2004 6:55:37 PM PST by xJones
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To: Piers-the-Ploughman
People may be atheists/agnostics for a variety of reasons; for some, it is a means to an end.

Yes, some are atheists because their early church grounding taught them that some things they later liked were wrong and harmful. If there is no God, then there is no sin. IOW, deny God and enjoy your particular forbidden fruit. It was very important to some of the leading Victorian atheists that God couldn't exist because they didn't want to think about hell.

8 posted on 01/20/2004 7:07:39 PM PST by xJones
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To: Salvation
"you will be amazed at how people with thank you later."

I've been ranting about this for over a decade, but have yet to be thanked.

Except for going away and leaving my victims to wallow in their woah-oh-oh feeeeeeeewiiiiiiiings...
9 posted on 01/20/2004 9:20:12 PM PST by dsc
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To: johnb2004
If we use the word “to feel” when we mean “to think” or its equivalents, we imply that we have no articulate reasoning behind our position.

BRAVO! This drives me insane - almost as bad as the misuse of personal pronouns (see my tagline).
10 posted on 01/20/2004 9:24:22 PM PST by Desdemona (I ran. He ran with ME. I ran BY MYSELF. (myself is reflexive) grammar rant off (pet peeve))
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To: johnb2004
read later
11 posted on 01/20/2004 9:43:14 PM PST by LiteKeeper
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To: johnb2004; NYer; american colleen
Howard Dean got in touch with his "feelings"...with his...uh...ahem...
....inner child... He just felt his way out of primetime...

"As Dr. Dean introduced Americans to the strange, exotic, high-weirdness realm of his subconscious id, a volcanic rush of repressed instincts and wild Dionysian feelings exploded with frenzied terror. Smug, smarmy, suburban SUV-driving, Starbucks-swilling liberals, socialists, and trendy Ben&Jerry's Vermont Communists sat in shocked disbelief as their dreams of expanding totalitarian statist control combined with unbridled perversion sank into the dark despair of bewilderment and sobering confusion... Not since William Jefferson Clinton sat red-faced before video cameras discussing cigars and the meaning of the word is had the denudation of a socialist buffoon appeared so surreal and yet....so illuminating..."

12 posted on 01/21/2004 10:01:34 AM PST by Kermit the Frog Does theWatusi
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