Affection in Triune Consciousness

Abstract

In Head and Heart: Affection, Cognition, Volition as Triune Consciousness (1997) Andrew Tallon is concerned to argue against a rationalist focus on reason and will to the exclusion of feeling or affection as a mode of human consciousness.¹ The book, he says, ‘defends the right of feeling — meaning the whole realm of passion, emotion, mood, and affection in general — to be admitted to equal partnership with reason and will in human consciousness’ (Tallon, 1997, 1–2). Triune (or triadic) consciousness is thus conceived as the union of affection, cognition and volition in an operational synthesis, a union in equal partnership of three distinct, irreducible but inseparable kinds of consciousness. The broad aim of the study is to show ‘how affection works, how it operates in synthesis with those two [reason and will]’ and to present this concept of triune consciousness as a paradigm for the human spirit (1997, 2).