The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion

by Jonathan Haidt

To ease that pain, Jefferson wrote Cosway a love letter using a literary trick to cloak the impropriety of writing about love to a married woman. Jefferson wrote the letter as a dialogue between his head and his heart debating the wisdom of having pursued a “friendship” even while he knew it would have to end. Jefferson’s head is the Platonic ideal of reason, scolding the heart for having dragged them both into yet another fine mess. The heart asks the head for pity, but the head responds with a stern lecture: Everything in this world is a matter of calculation. Advance then with caution, the balance in your hand. Put into one scale the pleasures which any object may offer; but put fairly into the other the pains which are to follow, & see which preponderates.7 After taking round after round of abuse rather passively, the heart finally rises to defend itself, and to put the head in its proper place—which is to handle problems that don’t involve people: When nature assigned us the same habitation, she gave us over it a divided empire. To you she allotted the field of science; to me that of morals. When the circle is to be squared, or the orbit of a comet to be traced; when the arch of greatest strength, or the solid of least resistance is to be investigated, take up the problem; it is yours; nature has given me no cognizance of it. In like manner, in denying to you the feelings of sympathy, of benevolence, of gratitude, of justice, of love, of friendship, she has excluded y...