Comparing Bump and Bate

In Jerome Bump's The Logic of Humanities Essay and W. J. Bate's  The Sympathetic Imagination, both author's particularize tenable generalizations. "When we focus on human questions especially we must be wiling to suspend theory in order to focus on what the person or object in front of us might teach us". (332) Bump's notion of logic in regards to humanities bumps traditional theory aside and draws on a more rounded notion of humanities from an individual-based perspective. "In the questions of human nature, therefore, such as those concerning the creative process, the emphasis in the arts and the humanities often remains on individuals". (333) 

 

 

Both authors clearly understand that reason and emotion are, indeed, inseparable. Bate defines his propositional comparative notion of The sypathetic  imagination  vs.  reason by elaborating that, "By its sympathetic identification the imagination perceives, as abstract reason cannot, the fundamental reality and inner working, the inner "truth" and nature of the particular, concrete object". (339) Bate's comparative analysis is prompted by the definition of The sympathetic imagination: "is the ability of a person to penetrate the barrier which space puts between him and his object, and by actually entering into the object, so to speak, to secure a momentary but complete identifications with it". (339) Interestingly, Bate's syllogistic reasoning leads his imagination as uses a quote from Keats, "If a sparrow comes before my Window, I take part in its existence and pick about the gravel." (339)

 

The readings of Bump and Bate correlate similarly. Bate's thoughts are elaborated, "As we have no immediate knowledge of what other men feel, we can form no idea of the manner in which they are affected, but by conceiving what we ourselves should feel in the like situation. Though our brother is upon the rack, as long as we ourselves are at our ease, our senses will never inform us of what he suffers". Bump's more concise statement is streamlined in a less verbose fashion. He writes,  "Lists statistical summaries, and generalizations result all too often in stereotypes,"  Extending his thought Bump quotes Newman's Grammar of Assent (1870), "there is no such thing as stereotyped humanity;"(333) "General laws are not inviable truths; much less they are necessary causes. 

 

In summary, both authors expand on the consciousness of concrete reasoning as opposed to traditional syllogistic logic. Though traditional logic often comes in handy, it is also our intuition and ability to sense, feel, observe, relate and reason in other fashions that drive the most sound devices of thinking.