‘It’s not what you say but how you say it that matters,’ they say, and I’m not sure about what is presupposed here: That we prefer feeling good to the truth? – I presuppose myself now that we’re dealing with truth not with an abusive situation in this case.

I often think of this, especially since my whole career is built on teaching.

I’ve written lately about how I prefer the sword to the cup, but as I was going through some old student material, I pondered on my own consistency. I never appeal to feeling. I appeal to cognition and the capacity a student has to see precisely where I’m going. That’s the aim. Feeling doesn’t interest me in the slightest, as I see no reason to treat feeling as if it has any substance whatsoever. It doesn’t.

Cognition, on the other
hand, leads to clarity when time is…