Emotions and values (forthcoming)

The Routledge handbook of phenomenology of emotion, 2020

Second, talking of a 'rediscovery' of emotions in philosophy is, in fact, highly misleading. After all, emotions have never been completely ignored in the history of philosophy. Quite the contrary, the nature of affectivity and the role of emotions in human existence and social reality as well as the notorious relation of emotions and rationality always been at issue in philosophy-even where explicit discussion of the emotions is missing or is deliberately relegated to the conceptual background. Moreover, the relation of philosophical reasoning to emotions, and the role that emotions (ought to) play therein, has never been philosophically neutral. 'What's your take on emotion' seems, then, to be the 64,000-dollar question for philosophers, ever since emotions entered philosophical thinking (see Landweer and Renz 2012). 2 Affects and emotions have played a central role in Western 3 philosophy ever since they were introduced by Plato, Aristotle, and the Greek and Roman (Neo-)Stoics (cf. Nussbaum 2001). They were extensively discussed as key factors in rhetoric, political life, moral psychology, and social interaction. Most classical authors, such as Aquinas, Montaigne, Pascal, Descartes, Malebranche, or Spinoza, up until the Scottish moralists, explored a panoply of particular affects, sentiments, and emotions, taxonomizing the so-called 'passions of the soul' (Descartes); many of these authors also offered general theories of emotions. It is, however, also true that after Kant and Rousseau, starting roughly with the dominance of German Idealism, emotions ceased to play any systematic role in philosophy. 4 In this period of relative marginalization, we find only a few isolated discussions of specific emotions, such as compassion in Schopenhauer 5 or anxiety and fear in Kierkegaard.

The New Modernist Studies, 2021

International Journal of Philosophical Studies, 2019

Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, 2003

ROYAL INSTITUTE OF PHILOSOPHY SUPPLEMENT: 52, 2003

Looking inside oneself for the springs of such passion might make a nice case of soul-searching, but is not necessarily the best means for advancing philosophical inquiry. The papers in this volume arise from an international symposium on emotions, and provide material for a continuing dialogue among researchers with different philosophical itineraries. Each essay addresses, in varying detail, the nature of emotions, their rationality, and their relation to value. Chapters I to VIII map the place of emotion in human nature, through a discussion of the intricate relation between consciousness and the body. Chapters IX to XI analyse the importance of emotion for human agency by pointing to the ways in which practical rationality may be enhanced, as well as hindered, by powerful or persistent emotions. Chapters XII to XIV explore questions of normativity and value in making sense of emotions at a personal, ethical, and political level.

Qualitative Sociology, 2002

What Emotions Really Are, by Griffiths, Paul E. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1997. 286 pages, ISBN: 0-226-30871-5.

Dialogue, 2008

spectrum will have to do. It is a well written, well argued and thorough defence of presentism which, in my view, gives that theory its best chance to date of being true. University of Otago H D True to Our Feelings: What Our Emotions are Really Telling Us. B R C. S. (Oxford UP, . Pp. x + . Price £..) Robert Solomon died on  January , aged almost . Ronald de Sousa's obituary captures the essence of the man, and can be found at http://www.aestheticsonline.org/memorials/solomon.html. This book was his last, and thus reflects his final thoughts on a topic on which he had published much over his academic life. The emotions are a popular topic in philosophy these days. After an extended period of dominance by approaches that highlight the cognitive content of emotions, there is now a change of direction: in America, in particular, philosophical study has joined with those of the empirical sciences (both empirical psychology and neuroscience). Although there is no consensus, those working in this field incline to the view put forward by William James, that emotions are biological reactions to external events. James focused on the autonomic nervous system and endocrinal changes, while recent theories focus on the central nervous system, and on the brain in particular. Arguably such an approach was a necessary corrective to an excessive cognitivism which came close to identifying emotions with cognitive states. To the eyes of the modern Jamesians, Solomon's approach will look old-fashioned. In this book, he continues to espouse cognitivist views with which he has always been associated. There are concessions: he no longer thinks that feelings and physiology are irrelevant to emotions, only that 'no physiological response even counts as emotional unless it has the property of intentionality' (p. ). The exact nature of the way these elements fit together remains unclear. Emotions are variously characterized by Solomon as 'engagements with the world', as involving 'evaluative judgements', or as 'structured by judgements' (pp. , ). Some points of contrast between Solomon and the neo-Jamesians may be useful. There is a view, associated with the work of Paul Ekman, that there are a certain number of basic emotions. These include surprise, joy, sadness, fear, anger, disgust and possibly contempt. These are identified with fairly tightly defined 'affect programs'. Empirical work can then be done to show which bits of the brain are associated with which emotion. One of the more interesting, an apparently well substantiated claim, is that the facial expression of these emotions has been shown to be pan-cultural. Reaching for the comfort of grounding problematic phenomena in natural kinds, there is a temptation to identify these as 'the real emotions'. However, as Solomon points out, the limitations of laboratory work (brain scans, photographs of faces in immediate reaction) have a strong tendency to pull this work towards phenomena of brief duration. This neglects the fact that the concept of the emotions we have includes phenomena that are significantly more long-term: it is said that Hemingway hated his mother for twenty-five years. Solomon is surely right

In Oxford Classical Dictionary. Oxford University Press, 2015. Article published August 23, 2023; last modified, August 23, 2023. , 2023

"Emotion" is a vernacular rather than a scientific concept. It has no agreed definition and it is impossible to specify a set of necessary and sufficient conditions for membership of the category. The experiences that we call emotions in English are a subset of a wider range of affective experiences. Categories of particular emotions similarly constitute families whose members are by no means homogeneous. As perceptions of the world and of ourselves as experiencers of the world emotions are richly permeated by cognition. As syndromes of multiple factors they have an event-like structure that lends itself to narrative explanation. Historical analysis of emotion(s) thus requires close attention to conceptual history and to contexts, both immediate and cultural/historical. Classicists can explore the historical contingency of concepts analogous to the modern "emotion" in Greek and Latin, both in the theories of the major philosophical schools and in a variety of ancient texts. But the burgeoning field of (ancient) emotion history now uses a much wider range of literary, documentary, visual, and material evidence. Understanding emotion is an essential aspect of a range of contemporary approaches to Classics, especially in ancient history, classical literature and rhetoric, and ancient philosophy, just as the visual and physical remains of the classical world are rich in emotional implications and deeply implicated in the representation, performance, and pragmatics of ancient emotion.