Feelings cannot justify actions because only actions measure feelings

Evidence

If values are uncertain, if they are still too abstract to determine the particular, concrete case under consideration, nothing remains but to trust in our instincts. That is what this young man tried to do; and when I saw him he said, “In the end, it is feeling that counts; the direction in which it is really pushing me is the one I ought to choose. If I feel that I love my mother enough to sacrifice everything else for her – my will to be avenged, all my longings for action and adventure then I stay with her. If, on the contrary, I feel that my love for her is not enough, I go.” But how does one estimate the strength of a feeling? The value of his feeling for his mother was determined precisely by the fact that he was standing by her. I may say that I love a certain friend enough to sacrifice such or such a sum of money for him, but I cannot prove that unless I have done it. I may say, “I love my mother enough to remain with her,” if actually I have remained with her. I can only estimate the strength of this affection if I have performed an action by which it is defined and ratified. But if I then appeal to this affection to justify my action, I find myself drawn into a vicious circle. — Jean-Paul Sartre, Existentialism Is a Humanism, 14

Categorization

• XREF: The vicious circle of feeling-justifies-action-action-defines-feeling is a diagnostic move that prefigures existentialist ethics of commitment over settled disposition. — connects to: Emotional behaviors do not express inner states; they are the states — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 904
• DEEPTHINKING: A genuinely circular demonstration that inner conviction is epistemically sterile — the feeling’s existence is only legible in the very deed it claims to license.

Broader Connections

• Emotional behaviors do not express inner states; they are the states #qualifies (0.82) — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness, 904