Should Luke Trust His Feelings?

I was watching Star Wars with my kids during our vacation last summer, and repeatedly heard Obi-Wan tell Luke to trust his feelings. I usually dismiss this as New Age claptrap; but this time I pondered it for a while: what does it mean, to trust your feelings? And is there a sense in which Luke truly ought to trust his feelings?

It seems to me that the word “feelings” has at least three distinct meanings: emotions (which is what people usually mean, I think), sensory perceptions, and acts of will.

Emotions are those things in us that move us to action: hunger, hot anger, attractions and repulsions of various kinds. Emotions are, of themselves, morally neutral: they are a reaction to the situations in which we find ourselves, and are driven by “feelings” in the second sense: our sensory perceptions.

We use the word “feeling” of our emotions by analogy with the sense of touch: I can feel the arm of the chair I’m sitting in, and it feels smooth, or rough, or soft, depending on what it is made of. This is not an emotion; it’s a direct perception of the world around me. Sights, smells, sounds, and tastes are also feelings in this sense.

Emotions, as I said, are a reaction to our sensory perceptions (and to our intellectual reflections upon them). They are not direct perceptions of reality. But what if they were?

Luke has the power of the Force; and suppose this power were to give him new ways of perceiving reality, reliable ways that do not resemble sight, sound, smell, taste, or touch? These new perceptions would be “feelings” just as much as sight or touch. Luke might do well to trust these kinds of feelings, and in context in the movies it’s clear that something of the sort is what’s going on. A Jedi can sense what his opponents are going to do, can sense just where he is in relation to that exhaust port so as to know when to release the bomb.

But that’s a movie. In real life, my emotions, my natural reactions to the things around me, are useful but not always reliable. Emotions are especially unreliable in matters of proportion, in judging which of two good acts is better or which of two bad acts is worse. Emotions are sub-rational, and if we always follow our emotions we will find ourselves doing things that don’t make sense.

Ideally we should act rationally; and in acting rationally we will find ourselves doing things in the absence of emotion that we would do if our emotions were reliable and proper. For example, I frequently have warm emotions for my wife and children, and those emotions move me to act lovingly toward them. But in practice, I am not always filled with warm, loving emotions. Sometimes I’m annoyed, or tired, or angry, or frustrated, and am moved to behave selfishly. (And too often I behave as I’m moved.) But ideally, I should always be loving towards them; and that’s an act of the will, an act I can make whether I have the corresponding emotions or not.