Brad Hachten: Arts and emotion are integral and inseparable from reason

Re “Arts education keeps kids in school, pays off in real jobs” (Perspective, March 6): In support of the recent editorial by the superintendents on the importance of the arts in education, I’d also like to draw attention to developments by neuroscientists – such as the prolific Antonio Damasio, Ph.D, at USC – that demonstrate that the ability to reason is inseparable from emotion. Thus, this notion of setting aside emotion for clarity of reason is false.

Shouldn’t we ask ourselves how to generate the positive emotion that lends itself to greater integrity of reason? And does this provide an opportunity for both the arts and the community in general? To my view, it’s no accident that both the arts and reason flourished simultaneously in ancient Greece, which calls for appreciating why Aristotle saw poetry as being more important than history. By thinking outside the modern mindset, I’m suggesting a higher, poetic state of the spirit might be realized beyond our current modern era; and the community that becomes the gateway on the issue will naturally reap the cultural and economic benefits of being that gateway.

This story was originally published March 9, 2015 at 1:35 PM with the headline "Brad Hachten: Arts and emotion are integral and inseparable from reason."