Arthur Conan Doyle’s estate has issued proceedings, complaining thatEnola Holmes, a recently released film about Sherlock Holme’s Sister, portrays the great detective as too emotional.Sherlock Holmes was famously [46](1. appreciative 2. envious 3. suspicious) of emotions.’Love is an emotional thing’,he icily observed,’and whatever is emotional is opposed to that true cold reason which I place above all things. I am a brain’, he told Watson.’The rest of me is a mere [47](1.generalization 2. name 3. appendix)’. I can imagine that many professional scientists and philosophers would feel affronted if they were accused of being emotional animals. Holmes is a model for them. He’s rigorous, empirical, and relies on induction.
But here’s the thing.He’s not actually very good. Mere brains might be good at anticipating the behaviour of mere brains, but they’re not good for much else. In particular Holmes is not a patch on his rival, Chesterton’s Father Brown, a Roman Catholic priest.Gramsci writes that Brown ‘totally defeats Sherlock Holmes, makes him look like a [48](1.pessimistic 2. pretentious 3. progressive) little boy, shows up his narrowness and pettiness.’ Brown is faster, more efficient, and, for the criminal, deadlier. This is because of,not despite , the use of his emotions.
He’s just as rigorous as Holmes, buttends to rely on deduction rather than induction. If You are dealing with emotional humans, you’re unlikely to [49](1.benefit 2. escape 3. suffer) from a denial of or an ignorance of their emotions, and unlikely to be very good at understanding their emotions if you have no emotions yourself Father Brown has three supreme advantages over Holmes: First: Brown is emotional himself,and knows that the [50](1.resemblance 2. repulsion 3. resonance) one emotional creature has with another can provide great insight into a case. Second: Brown, in his role as a priest,knows the human heart,and can [51](1. detach 2. alter 3. trace) the often convoluted connections between wrong thought and wrong action. And third, he has a set of principles, informed by his theology,which give him – If you’re hunting down criminals, that is a valuable tool.
Every philosopher knows, [52](1. by 2. in 3. of)theory,that you need premises to get anywhere at all, though many are keen to deny that they have any premises that could be characterised as moral or anthropological convictions. Utilitarianism, without a theory of [53](1. value 2. cause 3. beauty)―a way of saying what is regarded as the desirable end, and why—is an empty and useless game. In moral philosophy unless you have a clear idea of what ‘good’ is. And in reconstructing (if you’re a detective) or prescribing (if you’re an ethicist)the behaviour of humans, you’ll get nowhere unless you know what humans are. Have ethicists really got very far?’Only a man who knows nothing of motors talks of motoring without petrol’, observes Father Brown.’Only a man who knows nothing of reason talks of reasoning without strong, undisputed first principles.’Brown’s first are that humans are both made in the image of God and fallen. One might dispute them, but they give him a framework within which the [54](1. complexity 2. creativity 3. credibility) of humans can be acknowledged and examined. Holmes knows that some humans are mean, others cruel, and others altruistic. What he doesn’t know is that we are all mean, cruel, and altruistic. That leaves him shallow and limited―a slave to his own presumptions.
In science it is rather more important to find out the right answer than to identify an answer that will fit one’s currently ruling [55](1.paradigm 2. paraphrase 3. paradox). In moral philosophy it is rather more important to find the morally correct course than to identify one that doesn’t outrage the zeitgeist*.Father Brown can help.Sherlock Holmes can’t.
Note:
*zeitgeist:the defining spirit or mood of a particular period
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