The idea for the post came from a comment, as is not very difficult to figure out.

The topic can be very general and I am sure one can come up with an epic on psychology and philosophy of judgment. I do not intend to come up with an epic. Still, let me see how far can I go.

Presently I will stick to myself. Why do I judge myself? The advantage in sticking to it is that I am not questioning the philosophy of judgment, in general. Hence the scope of the explanation becomes narrower.

In fact I realize that the answer becomes a bit too simple. I need to judge myself, and a bit too often, because it is not very often that I allow other person's judgment of me to affect me. Therefore, I have to rely solely on my own judgment for myself. I increase the work for myself, you see. But then that's the way it is.

And it works. As I said elsewhere, if one has to depend on somebody's judgment to take decisions, I will depend on mine. Then why make an exception of myself as an object? Even to judge myself, I will depend on my judgment only.

Just one clarification. In general, depending one one's own judgment does not mean that you have to be deaf and blind towards the wisdom of the rest of the world. Just that wisdom itself is subjective. You might want to use somebody else's wisdom, but then whose and when is again your own judgment. So, it would be like using your own judgment to decide whose judgment to use and when. (Too complicated??)

Now, coming to the general question of judgment. Why judge at all? Seeing the kind of controversy that had arisen on one of my earlier posting about "being or not being judgmental", I am afraid I am touching a sensitive topic again. But, what the hell! This is my blog :-)

There is a simple answer again. In life one has to take decisions and that means making choices. You can't make choices unless you judge the alternatives.

But then, am I sure there is no other way of living life? No, I am not sure. Just that I do not know of any other way. I have not been able to figure out one for myself, where I can live without taking decisions or can take decisions without judging. Nor have I seen anyone else living like that. So, I do not have a role-model either.

Hence, the need for judgment.

Now what does judging mean? And what is its relation to "being judgmental" which we often talk about. The difference is nothing very philosophical. When I say I am not being judgmental, I do not mean to say that I never judge anything. Rather it means one of the two things:

• In the given case I do not need to judge the object in question, since I do not have to take a decision related to it. Or,
• Even if I am taking a decision, and hence have to judge it, I do not mean to say that it is a universally correct judgment. The judgment does not affect you and I do not intend to impose it on you. Also, it does not affect me as to what your judgment is in this regard.

You can relax. As I promised, I am not going to write an epic on it. You don't have to read more on it, unless of course, you provoke me with some other string of thought and I keep getting bored with studying "Mangement Accounting".

Categories: Thoughts