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Feeling(s) as Source of
Values By Gianluigi Gugliermetto 10/10/2025 |
One
of the frames of reference for interpreting reality that I adopt is the Jungian theory of the four psychological functions (sensation, feeling, intuition, and thinking), which I have paired with the Four Paths of Creation Spirituality (via positiva, via negativa, via creativa, and via transformativa). As we have seen from Matthew in Tuesday’s DM, these also overlap very well with Joanna Macy’s understanding of life. It is, in my view, an archetypal frame that is extremely
helpful. |
If we explore this fourfold archetype a bit deeper, we discover that Jung never described thinking as merely abstract, but always as paired with social and political action, which is the same, with compassion, as via transformativa. Also, both Jung and Fox identify a profound subterranean
link between via transformativa/thinking/compassion and via negativa/ feeling/ pain. Fox explains that those who do not feel the pain of others are unlikely to ever act in their favor. Compassion—he |
The spiral of The Work That Reconnects. Image gifted by artist Dori Midnight to Joanna Macy, used with permission. From Joanna Macy’s website. |
writes—is often born of a broken heart, and all persons who live fully have their hearts broken… When our guts turn over, passion for justice-making begins.* But Jung discovered through his psychological practice that a person whose dominant function is thinking finds it hard to deal with
feelings, and likewise, a person whose dominant function is feeling finds it hard to think and act clearly. He also says that the key to wholeness for all people resides in their lower function. This means that if I am mostly feeling, I must learn to think in order to be able to act coherently in the world; but if I am mostly thinking, I must delve into feeling in order to find motivation and values to energize my actions. |
The Gangsta Gardener, Ron Finley, who fought for Los Angeles to change its laws on vegetable gardens in public places to provide healthy food for all. Photo by the New Zealand Embassy, on Wikimedia Commons. | One of the takeaways from this is that values are born not in the head but in the heart. More precisely, although values can be discussed through verbal language, they don’t originate from the intellect, but from feeling. Values need then to be implemented and realized in the world by means of
thinking/action. |
When Albert Einstein was saying that values do not originate in thinking, but in intuition, he was likely operating out of a dual construct. He was right in maintaining that no amount of rational discussion can ever generate values. His fight for a more comprehensive understanding of the human being, then, too often reduced to “his” ideas, was very valuable. But the best name for the source of values, in a quadripartite scheme, is feeling. All of this matters a lot in our present circumstances for a number of reasons: |
- The current attack on empathy amounts to attacking the source of values, making it impossible to act for justice.
- The aim of the present regime is to make the population become unfeeling.
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- Rational
conversation is very important, but it cannot make up for a compromised feeling function.
- Feeling by itself risks becoming sentimentality—which is a travesty of feeling—but unless we restore the proper function to feeling, both in the self and in society, all our efforts will be in vain.
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*Quote from Matthew Fox, Creation Spirituality: Liberating Gifts for the Peoples of the Earth, p. 25
Banner Image: “Four Paths” Via Positiva: “Sunset Radiance” by Artem Sapegin on Unsplash. Via Negativa: A firefighter and koala confront a bushfire, South Australia. Photo from Eden Hills
Country Fire Service . Via Creativa: Dancers, Istanbul, Turkey. Photo by Hulki Okan Tabak on Unsplash. Via Transformativa: A vicar is arrested
during the Extinction Rebellion protests. Photo by John Cameron on Unsplash. |
Queries for Contemplation Do you consider yourself more leaning toward thinking or toward feeling? Can
you think of strategies to bring back feeling and empathy to their proper place in society? |
Responses are welcomed. To add
your comment, or read other comments and enter into dialogue, please click HERE to go to our website and scroll down to the Comments
field. |
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