KALTES Denken, WARMES Denken

Fast and slow thinking has become a catchphrase thanks to Daniel Kahneman, but it is far from sufficient to capture the richness of human thought. Wolfgang Schmidbauer explains why we must also integrate emotionality – what he calls warm thinking. It differs from cold thinking primarily in that it does not solely serve the enforcement of a thought or the exercise of intellectual power, but encompasses the entire, illustrious range of emotions. It does not separate personal feelings from the logic of thought; instead, it keeps access to them open while allowing for side thoughts in the realm of empathetic imagination that deal with the feelings triggered in those being addressed. In his new book, Wolfgang Schmidbauer discusses the prototypical areas of cold and warm thinking, with jurisprudence on one side and psychological empathy on the other. In between lies the human being, and what he can learn from the temperature of thoughts.