On the Epistemic Role of Our Passional Nature

Abstract

On the Epistemic Role of Our Passional Nature Frederick D. Aquino and Logan Paul Gage* "Love is itself a form of knowledge." 1 –Gregory the Great – Can our passional nature play a legitimate epistemic role in our lives? In this article, we argue that John Henry Newman was right to think that our passional nature can indeed play such a role. First, we unpack the standard objection to Newman's understanding of the relationship between our passional nature and the evidential basis of faith. We use "passional nature" as an umbrella term to cover the affective side of the person (passions, affections, emotions) that often bears on the pursuit of epistemic goods like true belief, knowledge, and wisdom. Second, we argue that the standard objection to Newman operates with a narrow definition of evidence (where evidence is synonymous with arguments and a third-person perspective). After challenging this notion, we then offer a broader and more humane understanding of evidence. Third, we survey recent scholarship arguing that emotions, a key aspect of our passional nature, are cognitive. In this light, they plausibly have a proper epistemic role. Fourth, we defend Newman's reliance on the passional nature in epistemic matters by showing how reasonable it is in light of this recent work on evidence and the nature of emotions. New-man's insistence that the formation of a right state of heart and mind is crucial for epistemic success is far from untenable. the standard objection Newman claims that seemingly non-epistemic factors such as desire, hope, fear, and love play an important role in forming and sustaining Christian belief. [End Page 41] For example, he says that the "desire" of faith "is its main evidence."2 "Faith is influenced by previous notices, prepossessions, and (in a good sense of the word) prejudices. . . . The mind that believes is acted upon by its own hopes, fears, and existing opinions."3 While he clearly thinks that faith is rational or an "act of Reason," it is a reasoning "upon holy, devout, and enlightened presumptions."4 In other words, a properly disposed mind or a "right state of heart" creates and disciplines faith, while guarding it from deficiencies such as superstition, fanaticism, and dogmatism.5 Love, Newman boldly insists, is the very safeguard of rational faith. An immediate challenge, however, involves clarifying how these seemingly non-epistemic factors play an epistemic role in the formation and sustenance of Christian faith. In fact, a standard criticism is that Newman's emphasis on these non-epistemic factors falls prey to a kind of subjectivism, fideism, or relativism.6 The charge here has been framed primarily as a problem of adjudication. For example, Jay Newman argues that John Henry Newman's emphasis on love as a safeguard of faith fails to solve the problem of adjudicating Christian beliefs in a publicly accessible manner. John Henry Newman's claim that love serves as the safeguard of faith exacerbates the problem by giving others the same kind of justification for their own perspective. Although it is somewhat expected that a Christian philosopher would "assign to love a conspicuous place in his philosophy," Newman has "gone above and beyond the call of duty in assigning to love the highest place of honor in his epistemology: he has argued that love is the true safeguard of faith, the corrective principle which keeps implicit reason in line."7 If the reason involved in faith is implicit and dependent on one's loves or affections, how can any particular faith be more rational than any other? Taking on Jay Newman and other critics of the appeal to the passional nature, William Wainwright has defended its epistemic role. Wainwright follows William James in thinking of our passional nature as including, for example, "our temperament, needs, desires, concerns, fears, hopes."8 Importantly, Wainwright insists that our passional nature is not necessarily detrimental to the process of assessing religious belief. It may play a legitimate role in shaping our evaluation [End Page 42] of the evidence. Though wishes, desires, and dispositions can certainly get in the way of forming true beliefs, they may have "positive epistemic value."9 Wainwright agrees with John Henry Newman...