When I care, when I receive the other in the way we have been discussing, there is more than feeling; there is also a motivational shift. My motive energy flows toward the other and perhaps, although not necessarily, toward his ends. I do not relinquish myself; I cannot excuse myself for what I do. But I allow my motive energy to be shared; I put it at the service of the other. It is clear that my vulnerability is potentially increased when I care, for I can be hurt through the other as well as through myself. But my strength and hope are also increased, for if I am weakened, this other, which is part of me, may remain strong and insistent. When this displacement occurs in the extreme form, we sometimes hear parents speak of “living for” their children. Clearly, both parents and children are at risk of losing themselves under such conditions, and I shall say more about this when we discuss the cared-for in detail.
Now, just what is the place of emotion or affect in caring, and how is it related to the motivational shift just described? I have claimed that the one-caring is engrossed in the other. But this engrossment is not completely characterized as emotional feeling. There is a characteristic and appropriate mode of consciousness in caring. When we are in problem solving situations, the characteristic and appropriate mode of consciousness is, usually, one of rational objectivity. It is a thinking mode that moves the self toward the object. It swarms over the object, assimilates it. When this mode breaks down under pressure, we respond emotionally. Suppose that I am trying to open a window that is stuck. As I push, one side goes up and the other side goes down. I move very carefully trying to prevent this lopsided movement. No luck. I examine the parts of the window. I hypothesize. I may examine a window that is working properly in the hope of understanding its mechanism. I experiment. Then, suddenly, I deteriorate. I beat and curse the window. Consciousness has entered a mode in which it meets its objects with emotion.
Jean-Paul Sartre calls this a “degradation of consciousness,”2 a condition in which the higher consciousness of rationality gives way to the lower, nonreflective consciousness of emotion. At least his use of “degradation” leads us to infer a movement from higher to lower. In the case I have described, “degradation” seems to be the right word, for my beating and cursing the window seem indicators of an attempt to influence the window as though it had an obstinate will. But, perhaps, in most cases, it would be more fruitful to think in terms of a movement from appropriate and/or effective to inappropriate and/or ineffective, for there is an appropriate change in modes even in problem solving. We can switch from an assimilatory mode to a receptive-intuitive mode which, by a process we do not understand well, allows us to receive the object, to put ourselves quietly into its presence. We enter a feeling mode, but it is not necessarily an emotional mode. In such a mode, we receive what-is-there as nearly as possible without evaluation or assessment. We are in the world of relation, having stepped out of the instrumental world; we have either not yet established goals or we have suspended striving for those already established. We are not attempting to transform the world, but we are allowing ourselves to be transformed. This is, clearly, not a degradation of consciousness, although it may be accompanied by an observable change in energy pattern.
It is a lateral move of some sort. We mentioned earlier Mozart hearing music, Gauss being seized by mathematics, and Miró having his hand guided when he painted. An affective-receptive mode of this kind cannot be thought of as a “degradation” of consciousness. Indeed, emotion may be absent or, at least, the one-receiving may be unaware of it. But it is, clearly, qualitatively different from the analytic-objective mode in which we impose structure on the world. It is a precreative mode characterized by outer quietude and inner voices and images, by absorption and sensory concentration. The one so engrossed is listening, looking, feeling.
The receptive mode seems to be an essential component of intellectual work. We do not pass into it under stress, and this is further evidence that it is not a degradation of consciousness. Indeed, we must settle ourselves, clear our minds, reduce the racket around us in order to enter it. If we are unable to do this, we may remain in an unproductive assimilative mode. Sometimes, for example, mathematics students get “stuck” in an analytic mode. They persist in trying to force a particular structure upon an unyielding problem. They are usually tense, frowning—on the edge of a genuine degradation. Then, the teacher may say, “Wait. Just sit still for a minute. Stop thinking and just look at the problem.” Humor, patience, and quiet enter. The student may say, “What kind of mathematics teacher would tell a person to ‘stop thinking’?” Teacher and student receive each other. Then the student relaxes and receives the problem. Often the result is quite remarkable. Over and over, I have heard students say, as they looked at what was in front of them, “For goodness sake! Why didn’t I see that before?”
The receptive or relational mode seems to be essential to living fully as a person. In caring, a permanent or untimely move from feeling and affective engrossment to abstract problem solving would be a “degradation,” a movement from the appropriate to something qualitatively different and less appropriate. Again, this is not to say that a lateral or temporary move into objective thinking is necessarily a “degradation.” What seems to be crucial is that we retain the ability to move back and forth and to invest the appropriate mode with dominance. When we give over control to the inappropriate mode, we may properly speak of a degradation of consciousness; in the one case we become irrational and in the other unfeeling and unseeing.
THINKING AND FEELING: TURNING POINTS
The receptive mode is at the heart of human existence. By “existence” or “existing,” I mean more than merely living or subsisting. When existentialist philosophers refer to “existence,” they mean to include an awareness of and commitment to what we are doing, what we are living, and I am using the term in this way. Existence involves, then, living with heightened awareness. A receptive mode may be both reflexive and reflective; that is, instead of receiving the world or the other, I may receive myself, and I may direct my attention to that which I have already received. It is in this subjective-receptive mode that I see clearly what I have received from the other, and then I must decide whether to proceed in a state of truth or to deny what I have received and talk myself into feeling comfortable with the denial.
Instrumental thinking may, of course, enhance caring; that is, I may use my reasoning powers to figure out what to do once I have committed myself to doing something. But clearly, rationality (in its objective form) does not of necessity mark either the initial impulse or the action that is undertaken. If I care enough, I may do something wild and desperate in behalf of the other—something that has only the tiniest probability of success, and that only in my own subjective view. Hence, in caring, my rational powers are not diminished but they are enrolled in the service of my engrossment in the other. What I will do is subordinate to my commitment to do something.
I have suggested that we can make lateral moves—that is, moves which are neither up nor down—in modes of consciousness. Clearly we cannot remain perpetually in the receptive mode. Mozart moved to the piano, to pen and paper. Gauss produced proofs. Miró perfected what his hand sketched out. And we, in caring, must respond: we express ourselves, we make plans, we execute. But there, are, properly, turning points. As we convert what we have received from the other into a problem, something to be solved, we move away from the other. We clean up his reality, strip it of complex and bothersome qualities, in order to think it. The other’s reality becomes data, stuff to be analyzed, studied, interpreted. All this is to be expected and is entirely appropriate, provided that we see the essential turning points and move back to the concrete and the personal. Thus we keep our objective thinking tied to a relational stake at the heart of caring. When we fail to do this, we can climb into clouds of abstraction, moving rapidly away from the caring situation into a domain of objective and impersonal problems where we are free to impose structure as we will. If I do not turn away from my abstractions, I lose the one cared-for. Indeed, I lose myself as one-caring, for I now care about a problem instead of a person.
As an ethical