Modern speech often blurs the distinction between thinking and feeling. People routinely begin statements with “I feel like…” when what follows is actually a claim about history, politics, morality, economics, science, or some other subject external to the individual who is speaking. There is nothing wrong with having strong feelings about such matters. But the strength of a feeling does not determine whether a claim is true or not. “I feel strongly that X is true” tells us something about the person speaking. It does not yet tell us whether X is true.
Waypoints
Thinking, Feeling, & Judgment
Human beings both think and feel. Both capacities are important, and they are not the same.
Begin ReadingA feeling is an internal and often emotional experience: fear, affection, anger, sympathy, uneasiness, enthusiasm, disgust, joy. Feelings can also include physical sensations—we feel pain, hunger, and exhaustion.
Feelings can alert us to something that deserves our attention. They can influence what we notice, what questions we ask, what we care about, and what we prioritize.
But a feeling is not, by itself, an argument or a conclusion. If someone says, “I feel anxious,” there is no reason to object that his feeling is false. He is describing an experience occurring within himself.
But consider a different statement: “I feel that this argument is wrong.” Now the speaker is no longer merely describing an emotion. He is making—or beginning to make—a judgment about something outside himself. That judgment requires reasons.
A reasoned judgment is different. It can be stated in a form that others can examine: I think X is true because of A, B, and C. Now there is something to consider. Are A, B, and C accurate? Do they actually support X? Is important evidence missing? Does the conclusion follow from the premises? Reason gives human beings a way to move beyond merely announcing what they feel. Reason invites others to join the exercise in reasoning. Telling others how you feel in the moment announces something about or within you, nothing more.
Reasons Can Be Examined
Suppose a student knows that Abraham Lincoln became President in 1861, that he was assassinated in 1865, and that he delivered the Gettysburg Address while he was President.
From those facts, the student can reason that Lincoln must have delivered the Gettysburg Address sometime between 1861 and 1865.
That conclusion does not depend upon whether the student likes Lincoln, dislikes Lincoln, feels happy or sad about the Civil War, or finds the Gettysburg Address inspiring. The reasoning can be examined independently of those feelings.
Another person can ask whether the premises are true and whether the conclusion follows from them.
This capacity to give reasons—to explain what we think and why—is essential to education. The Greek word logos can refer to speech, reason, argument, or an account. To give an account of something is to do more than announce a preference. It is to make one’s thinking available for examination by another mind.
That makes genuine disagreement possible as well.
Two people who disagree do not have to retreat immediately to “my truth” and “your truth.” They can ask which claims are supported by better evidence, which distinctions are clearer, which arguments are more coherent, and whether one or both of them might be mistaken.
Disagreement Does Not Prove Relativism
Historians
Descriptive Relativism
Human beings disagree about many important things. Cultures disagree. Philosophers disagree. Historians disagree. Even intelligent and well-informed people sometimes reach different conclusions. But the existence of disagreement does not establish that there is no truth.
Logical
Logical point
People have disagreed about the movement of the planets, the causes of diseases, the age of the Earth, and countless other matters. Their disagreement did not cause reality itself to become relative. The same logical point applies to moral and political questions. The fact that different individuals or cultures disagree about justice does not, by itself, prove that there is no truth about justice. It proves merely that human beings disagree about it.
That distinction is important. Descriptive relativism observes that different people and cultures hold different beliefs and standards. That is plainly true. Many modern Western people, for example, have a view of human sacrifice that is strikingly different from the views held by ancient Aztecs.
A much stronger claim is moral or philosophical relativism: the assertion that no belief about right and wrong can be objectively truer than another because all moral judgments are merely arbitrary products of individual preference, culture, history, or perspective.
The Problem of “No Truth”
An even more radical form of relativism denies the possibility of truth itself. But the assertion creates a problem.
Consider the statement: There is no truth.
Is that statement true? If it is true, then at least one truth exists: namely, that there is no truth. The proposition undermines itself. The person denying the existence of truth must nevertheless appeal to truth in order to present his denial as correct.
Similar difficulties arise when someone insists that all claims are merely expressions of perspective. Is the claim that “all claims are merely perspectives” itself only one perspective? If so, there is no reason another person must accept it. If it is supposed to describe reality as it actually is, then the speaker has already appealed to a truth that transcends individual perspective.
None of this means human beings possess perfect knowledge. We do not. The possibility of truth and the possession of certainty are different things.
We can be mistaken. We can discover new evidence. We can revise conclusions. We can distinguish between what we know, what we believe, what we suspect, and what remains uncertain.
Socrates, whom Cicero credited with bringing philosophy “down from the heavens,” placing it within the city, and turning it toward questions of life and morals, was continually challenged by the inadequacy of his own knowledge. He understood the resulting search for wisdom not merely as an intellectual preference but as a pious duty.
Interpreting the Delphic oracle as a divine command to examine himself and others, Socrates continued questioning despite poverty, hostility, prosecution, and ultimately execution.
Genuine open-mindedness requires the premise that truth is possible. To be open- minded is not to believe that every opinion is equally valid. It is to acknowledge that I might be wrong and someone else might have reasons that can show me why.
Understanding Before Judging
This distinction is especially important when reading primary sources.
A careful reader should first attempt, as far as possible, to understand an author as the author understood himself. What question is he asking? What does he mean by his terms? What premises does he assume? What argument does he make? What conclusion does he reach?
Only then can the reader judge the argument fairly.
Historical context can help enormously. We should understand the circumstances in which an author wrote and the audience he addressed. But explaining the origin of an idea is not the same as determining whether the idea is true.
To say, for example, that a thinker believed something because he lived in a particular century, belonged to a particular social class, or inherited a particular culture may help explain how he encountered an idea. It does not settle whether the idea itself is true or false.
It also does not account for the possibility that a serious thinker may accommodate the prejudices of his own time while writing in such a way that more careful or future readers can see beyond them.
A reader who assumes in advance that claims about justice, virtue, liberty, or the good are merely expressions of culture or perspective will have difficulty understanding thinkers who regarded those subjects as questions about reality. Great books and important historical documents deserve more attention than that.
Waypoints asks students to distinguish among feeling, opinion, argument, evidence, and judgment. Feelings matter. Perspectives matter. Historical circumstances matter. None should simply be ignored. And none eliminates the question of truth.
Why This Matters for Waypoints
Waypoints asks students to distinguish among feeling, opinion, argument, evidence, and judgment.
Feelings matter. Perspectives matter. Historical circumstances matter. None should simply be ignored. And none eliminates the question of truth.
When students encounter an argument in Plato, Locke, Jefferson, Madison, Lincoln, Douglass, Wilson, or any other thinker, the task is not merely to learn that someone once held a particular opinion.
The first task is to understand. Then come the questions that make serious education possible:
- What reasons does the author give?
- Are those reasons sound?
- What evidence supports them?
- What objections might be raised?
And, finally:
Is it true?
Education should cultivate the capacity to make such judgments carefully and responsibly. That requires more than strong feelings and more than the accumulation of information. It requires the willingness to listen, question, reason, reconsider, and judge.
Waypoints proceeds from the premise that human beings are capable of doing exactly that.
Waypoints at a Glance
Waypoints is a serious civic learning platform. It helps you study and teach America’s essential documents—and the ideas behind them.
The Waypoints Library includes beautifully published primary-source documents accompanied by written and video tutorials. Together, these materials help teachers, parents, students, and lifelong learners explore American history, political philosophy, economics, liberty, and the challenge of self-government.
No. Waypoints is supplemental by design.
Waypoints is not meant to replace an existing history, civics, government, economics, or humanities curriculum. It is designed to strengthen the curriculum you already use by helping teachers, parents, and students study essential primary sources more deeply.
Not exactly. Waypoints is not a warehouse of ready-made daily lesson plans. Waypoints is a primary-source teaching and learning resource designed to help teachers understand essential documents and bring them into the classroom with confidence. Many tutorials include discussion questions, writing assignments, and classroom activities, but Waypoints begins with the documents themselves.
Waypoints is for teachers, school and district resource recommenders, homeschooling parents, lifelong learners, and anyone who wants to study America’s essential documents and the ideas behind them.
It is especially useful for those who want to understand liberty, constitutional self-government, and the moral and civic principles that shape the American experiment.
The Free Trial gives you access to selected Waypoints materials so you can see how the platform works before choosing a plan.
You can explore selected primary-source documents from the Waypoints Library, along with related written and video tutorials. It is the best way to see how Waypoints helps users study and teach primary sources with greater confidence.
Choose the Home Plan if you are a homeschooling family, parent, individual learner, or small household seeking access to Waypoints.
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