ABSTRACT
Who Is in the Driver’s Seat? Because they both initiate behavior, the nature of the relationship between rationality
and emotion has interested philosophers for centuries. But which one of these drivers is
really in control of the train? The name Carl Linnaeus gave our species in 1735-Homo
sapiens (“wise man” or “thinking man”)—was happily accepted by the majority of
Enlightenment philosophers and scientists, clearly showing that they opted for ratio-
nality. Many thought that if emotions took over, they would derail the train. The great
philosopher of reason, Immanuel Kant, called emotions “pathological,” and the eminent
calculator Gottfried Leibniz called them “confused passions” (Solomon, 1977:41).
Perhaps influenced by Descartes’s mind/body dualism (mind ¼ rationality; body ¼ emotionality), for thinkers such as these, rationality is the exercise of reason, and emo-
tions are feelings inimical to reason. The assumption of human rationality is explicit or
implicit in almost all criminological theories, and if emotions are considered at all, they
are treated negatively. It will be shown in this chapter that “the long-standing juxtapo-
sition of emotion and rationality as polar opposites is simply wrong” (Turner & Stets,
2005:21).
