ABSTRACT
The humanities are valued for the humanizing effect that they purport to have upon the individuals who encounter them. This chapter discusses the relationship between thought and feeling, specifically the relationship between reason, imagination and empathy, and to advance the thesis that empathy fosters critical and creative thinking and that its enhancement should be adopted as an important educational goal. There is a long tradition in both philosophy and psychology that distinguishes thought from feeling, maintaining that the two are fundamentally different in nature, in the capacity to be controlled, and in their value to rationality and moral action. The common polarizing differentiation made between critical thinking and creative thinking is deceptive, since it often leads one to see creative thinking as the discrete opposite of rational thought. There are several perspectives from which to argue that empathy can have a positive effect on reasoning.
