important shit

Thursday, 19 September 2013

Day 459 Import-Attributing Desires and Feelings

"Thus we have to see our emotional life as made up largely of import-attributing desires and feelings, that is, desires and feelings which we can experience mistakenly..........But once we admit that our feelings are import-attributing, then we admit the possibility of error or false appreciation.  And indeed, we have to admit a kind of false appreciation which the agent himself detects in order to make sense of the cases where we experience our own desires as fetters. How can we exclude in principle that there may be other false appreciations which the agent does not detect? That he may be profoundly in error, that is, have a very distorted sense of his fundamental purposes?" 

(Charles Taylor "What's Wrong with Negative Liberty?" P.425-427)


Some interesting perspective can be garnered from Charles Taylor's words:


How do I know I am living a purposeful life and that I don't have a very distorted sense of what is fundamental purpose?


Am I afraid to investigate the facts about myself that may be unpleasant and harsh from the perspective of realising and understanding errors and mistakes?


If I avoid investigating the possibility of error within myself, how can I have any integrity and dignity?


Does it make a difference to me how many other people are living a life of very distorted senses of fundamental life purposes?



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