Choose a scenario, pick a position, and explore structured Socratic pushback
Descartes / Kant
Reason side
Moral truth is accessed through pure reason. Emotions are unreliable guides that potentially bias or mislead our judgments.
Hume / Jaggar
Emotion side
Reason alone can never motivate action. Emotion is the engine of moral life. "Outlaw emotions" can reveal injustice that reason misses.
Aristotle / Nussbaum
Integration
The virtuous person feels the right emotions at the right time. Emotion and reason are both essential to practical wisdom (phronesis).
Choose a scenario to analyze:
Which faculty should guide this decision?
✓ Strengths of your position
⟳ Socratic pushback
💬 Discussion question
✍ Reflection prompt
Jaggar argues that emotions aren't just feelings — they can be a form of epistemic access to moral truth. Think of a time when an emotion (anger, empathy, guilt) gave you moral knowledge that pure reasoning alone might have missed. How does this connect to the Cartesian view of emotion you studied in Module 2?