Robert C. Solomon: ‘Emotion and Choice’. In: Amélie Oksenberg Rorty
(ed.):
Explaining Emotions.Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980. pp. 251-281.
This article originally appeared in: The Review of Metaphysics, XVII, I
(September 1973)
EMOTIONS AND CHOICE
ROBERT
C. SOLOMO
[p.251]
Do we choose our emotions? Can we be held responsible for our anger? for feeling jealousy? for falling in love or succumbing to resentment or hatred? The suggestion sounds odd because emotions are typically considered occurrences that happen to (or "in") us: emotions are taken to be the hallmark of the irrational and the disruptive. Controlling one's emotion is supposed to be like the caging and taming of a wild beast, the suppression and sublimation of a Freudian "it."
Traditionally,
emotions have been taken to be feelings or sensations. More recently, but also
traditionally, emotions have been taken to be physiological disturbances.
Accordingly, much of this century's literature on emotions is dedicated to
mapping out the relationship between sensations and correlative occurrences.
William James, for example, takes consciousness of emotions to be
consciousness of physiological occurrences. Other philosophers and
psychologists, for one reason or another, have tried to reduce the emotion to a
physiological occurrence, or, alternatively, have focused on the feeling of
emotion and denied any conceptual role to the physiological occurrence. But
these traditional worries should be quite irrelevant to any analysis of the
emotions, for an emotion is neither a sensation nor a physiological occurrence,
nor an occurrence of any other kind. "Struck by jealousy,"
"driven by anger," "plagued by remorse," "paralyzed by
fear," "felled by shame," like "the prick of Cupid's arrow,"
are all symptomatic metaphors betraying a faulty philosophical analysis.
Emotions are not occurrences and do not happen to us. I would like to suggest
that emotions are rational and purposive rather than irrational and
[p.252]
disruptive,
are very much like actions, and that we choose an emotion much as we choose a
course of action. *1
Emotions
are intentional; that is, emotions are "about" something. For
instance, "I am angry at John for stealing my car." It is not
necessary to press the claim that all emotions are "about"
something. Kierkegaard's dread may be an emotion which is not "about"
anything, or, conversely, may be "about" everything. Similarly, moods,
which are much like emotions, do not have a specific object. Euphoria,
melancholy, and depression are not "about" anything in particular,
though they may be caused by some particular incident. We might wish to say
that such emotions and moods are "about" the world rather than
anything in particular. In fact, Heidegger has suggested that all
emotions are ultimately "about" the world and never simply
"about" something particular. But we will avoid debating these issues
by simply focusing our attention on emotions that clearly seem to be
"about" something specifiable.
"I am
angry at John for stealing my car." It is true that I am angry. And it is
also true that John stole my car. Thus we are tempted to distinguish two
components of my being angry; my feeling of anger and what I am angry about.
But this is doubly a mistake. It requires that a feeling (of anger) be
(contingently) directed at something (at John's having stolen my car). But
feelings are occurrences and cannot have a "direction." They can be
caused, but to say that I am angry "about" John's having stolen my
car is very different from saying his stealing my car caused me to be angry.
John's act might cause me to be angry "about" something else, e.g.,
my failure to renew my insurance. It might be false that John stole my car,
though I believe that he did. Then it is false that John's stealing my car
caused me to be angry, but still true that what I am angry "about" is
John's stealing my car. One might suggest that it is not the alleged fact
of John's stealing my car that is in question, but rather my belief that
he did. But what I am angry "about" is clearly not that I believe
that John stole my car, but rather that John stole my car.
Feelings do not have "directions." *2 But I am angry "about" something. The relationship between my being angry and what I am angry about is not the contingent relation between a feeling and an object. (Though it is surely contingent that I am angry at John
[253]
for
stealing my car.) An emotion cannot be identified apart from its object;
"I am angry" is incomplete-not only in the weak sense that there is
more information which may be available ("Are you angry about anything?
") but "I am angry" requires that there must be more
information available (" What are you angry about?"). But
feelings have no such requirements. Anger is not a feeling; neither is anger a
feeling plus anything else (e.g., what it is "about").
Neither can
"what I am angry about" be separated from my being angry. Of course,
it makes sense to say that John's having stolen my car is something different
from my being angry at him for doing so. But it is not simply the fact that John stole my car that is what
I am angry about; nor is it, as I said above, my belief that John stole my car about which I am angry. I am angry
about the intentional object "that John stole my car." Unlike the fact that John stole my car, this
intentional object is opaque; I am not angry that John stole a vehicle
assembled in Youngstown, Ohio, with 287 h.p., though that is a true description
of the fact that John stole my car. I am not angry that someone 5'7" tall
got his fingerprints on my steering column, yet that is a true description of
the fact that John stole my car. Sartre attempts to point out this feature of
what emotions are "about" by saying that their object is "transformed";
D. F. Pears points to this same feature by noting that it is always an
"aspect" of the object that is the object of an emotion. What
emotions are "about," as in beliefs, can only be identified under
certain descriptions, and those descriptions are determined by the emotion
itself. This does not mean that what emotions are about are beliefs-only that
emotions share an important conceptual property of beliefs. "Being angry
about . . . " is very much like "believing that . . . . " To be
angry is to be angry "about" a peculiar sort of object, one that is
distinguished by the fact that it is what I am angry "about." Husserl
describes this peculiarity of mental acts in general by insisting that an
intentional act and an intentional object are "essentially correlated." For our purposes, the point to be
seen is that emotions cannot be discussed in terms of "components,"
by distinguishing feeling angry and what I am angry about. (Pears, e.g., begins
by making this distinction.) In Heideggerian phrase, I am never simply angry,
but there is always "my-being-angry-about-. . . . "
[p.254]
If there is
no legitimate distinction between feeling angry and what I am angry
"about," or, to put it in a different way, if the connection between
my being angry and what I am angry "about" is a conceptual and not
causal connection, then it is easy to explain a feature of emotions that has
been pointed out by many analysts. A change in what I am angry
"about" demands a change in my anger; if I no longer feel wronged by
John, who only bought a car that looks like mine, I cannot be angry at John
(for stealing my car) any longer. One cannot be angry if he is not angry
"about" having been wronged. Similarly, one cannot be ashamed if he
does not accept some responsibility for an awkward situation, nor can he be embarrassed
if he does not find the situation awkward. If emotions were feelings, it would
be a peculiar coincidence that the feelings were so faithful to our views of
our situation, that they did not hold onto us with a momentum of their own
after opinions had passed, that they were not so "irrational" as to
pay no attention to our opinions at all. But emotions are not feelings, nor
feelings plus what they are "about"; the format of an emotion is
"... -about- . . . . " And so it is no surprise that emotions change
with our opinions, and so are "rational" in a very important sense.
Emotions
typically involve feelings. Perhaps they essentially involve feelings. But
feelings are never sufficient to differentiate and identify emotions, and an
emotion is never simply a feeling, not even a feeling plus anything. Moreover,
it is clear that one can have an emotion without feeling anything. One can be
angry without feeling angry: one can be angry for three days or five years and
not feel anything identifiable as a feeling of anger continuously through that
prolonged period. One might add that one must have a disposition to feel angry,
and to this, there is no objection, so long as being angry is not thought to mean "having a disposition to feel
angry." I do not know whether it makes sense to suppose that one can be
angry without ever feeling angry. But I do know that it does not even make
sense to say that one feels angry if one is not angry. This might seem
mysterious, if we accept the traditional view that anger has an identifiable
feeling attached to it (for then, why could one not have the feeling without
whatever else is involved in anger?). And this might seem obvious on the
traditional view that anger is a feeling (for then being angry is nothing but
having the feeling of anger). But on our account, anger is not a feeling,
[p.255]
nor does it
involve any identifiable feeling (which is not to deny that one does feel
angry-that is, flushed, excited, etc., when he is angry). One can identify his
feeling as feeling angry only if he is angry. It is true that I often feel
something when I become angry. It is also true that I feel something after I
cease to be angry. I am angry at John for stealing my car. Then I discover that
John did not steal my car: I cease (immediately) to be angry. Yet the feeling
remains: it is the same feeling I had while I was angry (flushing, etc.). The
feeling subsides more slowly than the anger. But the feeling, even if it is
the same feeling that I had while I was angry, is not a feeling of anger. Now
it is just a feeling. Sometimes one claims to feel angry but not be angry. But
here, I would argue that the correct description is rather that one does not
know exactly what one is angry "about" (though one is surely angry
"about" something); or perhaps one is angry but does not believe he
ought to be. One cannot feel angry without being angry.
A familiar
move in the analysis of emotions subsequent to the discovery that emotions are
not feelings or occurrences, is the thesis that emotions are conceptually tied
to behavior; that is, the ascription of an emotion to a person is the
ascription to him of various sorts of behavior. Thus, to be angry is
necessarily to "angerbehave." Of course, it is evident that one can pretend to be angry, that is,
anger-behave without being angry, and so pretending has become a major topic in
the analysis of emotions. (More on this in Part II.) What is generally agreed
is that a single piece of behavior is never conceptually sufficient to identify
an emotion, or to distinguish emotions from pretense. E. Bedford, for example,
suggests that what is always needed is at least "more of the same."
Since Ryle's Concept of Mind, this
"more of the same" is provided by the suggestion that ascribing an
emotion to a person is not to simply describe one or more episodes of behavior
but rather to ascribe to him a disposition to behave. But there is considerable
confusion about the nature of such disposition-ascriptions, and the suggestion
is clearly unsatisfactory as an analysis of my
having an emotion. The behavioral analysis does maintain one important feature
of emotions, their intentionality, though authors (e.g., Ryle, Armstrong) who
favor this analysis are often intent to reject "intentionality" as
well. But for our purposes, we can remain uninvolved in these issues that have
become virtually definitive of "philosophy of
[p.256]
mind."
We can agree that it is undeniably true that if a person is angry he has a disposition
to anger-behave and leave it entirely open whether this connection between
emotions and behavior is conceptual, or causal or something else. The purpose
of this essay is to show that emotions are very much like actions, and if it
should turn out that emotions are actions in any such straightforward sense,
this can only make our task easier. And so, we can simply say of the behavioral
analysis: insofar as it is true, it supports our thesis.
"Emotions
are caused." The idea that emotions are occurrences naturally gave rise to
the idea that emotions are caused. Many philosophers would argue that, if
emotions are occurrences, then they must be caused, and conversely, that if
emotions are caused they must be occurrences. But if, as I am arguing, emotions
are not occurrences, then they cannot be caused.
But surely
this is wrong. We do speak of the cause of anger, the cause for sadness, a
cause for fear. And surely emotions, as intentional, are typically if not
necessarily reactions to something
that happens to us. Sometimes this cause is manifest in what the emotion is
"about"; for example, I am angry about your hitting me; your hitting
me is the event which caused me to become angry. But sometimes the cause for an
emotion is not what the emotion is
"about." The cause of my anger might be too little sleep and too much
coffee. The cause of my love might be sexual deprivation. But I am not angry
"about" lack of sleep and hyperstimulation, and I am not in love with
my sexual deprivation (nor is my love "about" a cure for my sexual
deprivation).
The cause
of an emotion is a function in a certain kind of explanation. The cause must
in every case be distinguished from what my emotion is "about" (its
"object"). The cause is always an actual event (or state-of-affairs,
etc.). The object of my emotion is always an intentional object. The cause is
subject to certain lawlike generalizations in a way that objects of emotions
are not. If I claim t~ be angry because of a harsh review of my book, pointing
out that I have not become angry at previous harsh reviews of my book is
sufficient to show that the cause of my becoming angry is not (my reading of)
the review of my book, but it is not sufficient to show that I am not angry
"about" the harsh review. I am not in any special position to know
the cause of my emotion (though only I
[p.257]
know, as a
matter of fact, that I did not sleep last night, that I have had four cups of
coffee); I am always in a privileged position to identify the intentional
object of my emotion. This is not to say that my knowledge of the object
of my emotion is "immediate" or "direct," nor is it to
claim that my identification of the object of my emotion is
"incorrigible." It is possible and not unusual that I should misidentify-sometimes
in a gross way-what I am angry about, or whom I love, or why I am sad. I may
identify the object of my anger as John's having stolen my car, but I am really
angry at John for writing a harsh review of my book. I may think that I love
Mary, when I really love my mother. And I may think that I love Mary when I am
really angry about the harsh review of my book. The problem of
"unconscious emotions" would take us far beyond our current argument.
For now, it should suffice for us to insist that the difference between
identification of the cause of an emotion and its object is not a difference
between direct and indirect knowledge-as traditionally conceived-or a
difference between corrigible and incorrigible identification. The cause of an
emotion is an occurrence (state-of-affairs, etc.) of a type that stands in a
lawlike connection with emotions of that type. The object of an emotion is
simply "what the emotion is about " whether or not it is also the
cause, whether or not it is even the case, and whether or not the subject
himself knows it to be the object of his emotion.*3
We have
noted that emotions are interestingly similar to beliefs. We can now explain
this similarity by claiming that emotions are judgments-normative and often
moral judgments. "I am angry at John for taking (“stealing” begs the
question) my car" entails that I believe that John has somehow wronged me.
(This must be true even if, all things
considered, I also believe that John was justified in taking my car.) The
(moral) judgments entailed by my anger is not a judgment about my anger (although someone else might make such judgments to
the effect that my anger is justified or unjustified, rational, prudent,
foolish, self-indulgent, therapeutic, beneficial, unfortunate, pathological, or
amusing). My anger is that judgment.
If I do not believe that I have somehow been wronged, I cannot be angry (though
I might be upset, or sad). Similarly, if I cannot praise my lover, I cannot be
in love (though I might want her or need her, which, traditional wisdom aside,
is
[p.258]
entirely
different). If I do not find my situation awkward, I cannot be ashamed or
embarrassed. If I do not judge that I have suffered a loss, I cannot be sad or
jealous. I am not sure whether all emotions entail such judgments; moods
(depression and euphoria) surely present special problems. But emotions in
general do appear to require this feature: to have an emotion is to hold a
normative judgment about one's situation.
The idea
that an emotion is a normative judgment, perhaps even a moral judgment, wreaks
havoc with several long cherished philosophical theses. Against those
romantics and contemporary bourgeois therapists who would argue that emotions
simply are and must be accepted without judgment, it appears that
emotions themselves are already judgments. And against several generations of
moral philosophers who would distinguish between morality based upon principle
and morality based upon emotion or "sentiment " it appears that every
"sentiment," every emotion is already a matter of judgment, often
moral judgment. An ethics of sentiment differs from ethics of principle only
in the fact that its judgments are allowed to go unchallenged: it is an ethics
of prejudice while the latter is typically an ethics of dogma.
We can now
see why "what an emotion is about" is not simply a fact; nor is it
even a fact under certain descriptions. The object of an emotion is itself
"affective" or normative. It is not an object about which one makes a judgment but is rather defined, in part, by
that normative judgment. The peculiar emotional object, that John stole my car, can only be fully characterized as the
object of my anger. "That John stole my car" is also the name of the
object of my belief, of course, and perhaps of any number of other propositional
attitudes I hold. But the object of my anger, that John stole my car, is an
inseparable piece of my being angry. This sounds strange, no doubt, if the
intentional object of the emotion is thought to be a fact or a proposition. But
my anger-at-John-for-stealing-my-car is inseparable from my judgment that John
in so doing wronged me, while it is clear that the fact that John stole my car is very different from my anger or my
judgment. My anger is my judgment
that John has wronged me.
It has always
been recognized that there is some difference between our ascriptions of
emotions to ourselves and our ascriptions of emotions to others. I know that I
am angry and what I am angry
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about very
differently than I know that John is angry and what he is angry about. (This
first person privilege remains the presupposition of, and is not undermined
by, either the Freudian concept of "unconscious emotions" or by
recent philosophical attacks on "incorrigibility. ") On the
traditional view in which emotions are feelings, this difference has been
explained by appeal to the peculiar "privacy" of sensationlike
occurrences. But emotions are not feelings and not occurrences, we have
argued, but rather judgments. Yet the difference between first- and other-person
cases can still be made out, and in a far more convincing way than on the
feeling-analysis of emotions. You
can say of me, "he is angry because he thinks John stole his car, which he
did not." You can say of me,
"he is angry about the review, which actually was favorable, but only
because of his lack of sleep and his having drunk too much coffee." You can say of me, "he doesn't
really love Mary, but rather a mother-surrogate." But I cannot say these things of myself.
"I am angry at John because I think that he stole my car, which he
didn't" is nonsense. If emotions are judgments, then the sorts of
"pragmatic" paradoxes that have long been celebrated regarding
judgments in general will apply to emotions also. "I am angry about x, but
not x" raises the same problems as "P, but I do not believe P."
No feeling-account of emotions can account for such paradoxes. But, if emotions
are intentional, emotions must partake in conceptual relationships in a way
that mere occurrences, feelings, or facts do not. If I am angry about John's
stealing my car, there are certain beliefs which I logically cannot hold, for
example, the belief that John did not steal my car.
The
difference between first- and other-person ascriptions of emotions lies in the
realm of the "pragmatic paradoxes." Given that I have a certain
emotion, there are certain beliefs which you can have (including beliefs about
me) but which I cannot have. The most interesting set of beliefs in this
regard are those which pertain to the cause
of an emotion. Earlier, we argued that the cause of an emotion is a fact (state
of affairs, etc.) which can be variously ("transparently") described
and occupies a role in lawlike generalizations. The object of an emotion, however, is limited by certain judgments (is
"opaque") which are determined in the subject's having that emotion.
But this distinction, we can now add, breaks down in the first-person case. If
I am angry about John's stealing
[p.260]
my car (the
object of my anger), then I cannot believe that the sufficient cause of my anger is anything other than
John's stealing my car. You can
attribute my unjust anger to my lack of sleep. I cannot. If I attribute my anger to lack of sleep, I cannot be
angry at all. And this is not simply to say that my anger is "not
reasonable." (I cannot say that of myself either, except perhaps in
extremely peculiar circumstances, for example, following extensive
psychoanalytic treatment, which here, as elsewhere, confuses all distinctions
as well as the patient regarding first- vs. other-person ascriptions of
emotions, motives, intentions, etc.) I can only be angry so long as I believe
that what has caused me to be angry is what I am angry about. Where the cause
is different from what I am angry about, I cannot know that it is.
One can
argue that the person who is angry (or in love, or sad) is in the worst
position to pick out the cause for his anger (or love or sadness) as opposed to its object. *4 We can only
add that this thesis marks out a conceptual necessity. We earlier pointed out
the familiar phenomenon that our emotions change with our opinions and argued
that this was not a causal matter and not a coincidence, but a consequence of
the thesis that emotions are themselves judgments. We can now add that our
emotions change with our knowledge of the causes of those emotions. If I can
discover the sufficient cause of my anger, in those cases in which the cause
and the object are different (and in which the newly discovered cause is not
itself a new object for anger, as often happens), I can undermine and abandon
my anger. It is here that Freud's often debated notion that emotions are
"defused" by bringing them to consciousness contains an important
conceptual truth too often and too easily dismissed by philosophers. Once one
becomes aware of the cause of his emotion as opposed to its intended object, he
can indeed "defuse" his emotion. And in those familiar Freudian cases
in which one mistakenly identifies the object of his emotion (he thinks he is
angry at his teacher: he is "really" angry at his father), correcting
this identification can, in those cases where the correctly identified object
is also the cause of the emotion, also "defuse" it. Where Freud
opened himself to unnecessary criticism, I believe, was in his construing this
as a causal relationship, a
"catharsis" of repressed emotional air bubbles in the mental
digestive system. But it is not as if my recognition of the true cause of my
anger causes
[p.261]
the easing
of my emotion. Rather, my recognition of the true cause of my emotion amounts
to a denial of the judgment which is my emotion. When I see that my anger is
wholly a result of my lack of sleep and overdose of coffee, I thereby abandon
my anger. Of course, the flushing, pulsing, irritable feelings of anger may thus be caused
to diminish by the disappearance of my anger, but these are, as we have argued,
in no case my anger.
If emotions
are judgments and can be "defused" (and also instigated) by considerations
of other judgments, it is clear how our emotions are in a sense our doing, and how we are responsible
for them. Normative judgments can themselves be criticized, argued against, and
refuted. Now if you criticize my
anger at John by maintaining that he has not wronged me, you may conclude that
my anger is unreasonable, unfair, and perhaps unbecoming. But if you should
convince me that John has not wronged
me, I do not simply conclude that my anger is unreasonable, unfair, or
unbecoming.
I cease to be angry. Similarly, I can
make myself angry at John by allowing myself to be convinced that he has
wronged me. I can dwell on minor behavioral misdemeanors on John's part,
building them into a pattern of overall deceit and abuse, and then become angry
at any one or any number of these incidents.
Since
normative judgments can be changed through influence, argument, and evidence,
and since I can go about on my own seeking influence, provoking argument, and
looking for evidence, I am as responsible for my emotions as I am for the
judgments I make. My emotions are
judgments I make. Now one might argue that all we have shown is that one can
take steps to cause changes in his
emotions, such as one can take steps to diminish a pain by pulling out a
splinter or take steps to prevent being hit by a bus by crossing only on the
proper signals. And it is true, of course, that one cannot simply choose to be angry or not to be
angry, but can make himself angry or cease being angry only by performing other
activities. But this is true of judgments in general: I cannot simply choose
to judge a situation fortunate, 'awkward, or dangerous.*5 It is worth noting
that I cannot simply perform most
actions either: I cannot simply assassinate a dictator. I must do something else
(pull the trigger of a rifle, let slip the string of the bow, push the button
activating the detonator). Yet, although it is also true that I cause the
death of the dictator (I do not cause the killing of him), I kill the
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dictator. Similarly,
making judgments is something I do,
not something that happens to me and not something I simply cause, even though
I cannot simply make a judgment in
many cases. (Legal judgments by an appropriately empowered judge or judiciary
should not be taken as paradigm cases
here.)
I must be
in appropriate circumstances to pass judgment, have some evidence, know
something of what the judgment is about. Of course, one can make judgments
rashly, with minimal evidence and with superficial knowledge of what the
judgment is about. Emotions, we can now see, are rash judgments, something I
do, but in haste. Accordingly, the evidence upon which I become emotional is
typically (but not necessarily) incomplete, and my knowledge of what I am
emotional about is often (but again not necessarily) superficial. I can take
any number of positive steps to change what I believe and what judgments I hold
and tend to make. By forcing myself to be scrupulous in the search for evidence
and knowledge of circumstance, and by training myself in self-understanding
regarding
my prejudices and influences, and by placing myself in appropriate
circumstances, I can determine the kinds of judgments I will tend to make. I
can do the same for my emotions.
II
Against the
near-platitude "emotions are irrational," we want to argue that
emotions are rational. This is not only to say that they fit into one's overall
behavior in a significant way, that they follow a regular pattern (one's
"personality"), that they can be explained in terms of a coherent set
of causes. No doubt this is all true. But emotions, we have argued, are
judgments, and so emotions can be rational in the same sense in which judgments
can be rational. (Of course, judgments can be irrational, but only within the
context of a rational activity.) Judgments are actions. Like all actions, they
are aimed at changing the world. But, although the expression of a judgment may
actually produce such a change, the judgment itself is more like the winding of
the mainspring of an intention to change the world rather than the overt
activity which will do so. But if emotions are judgments, and judgments are
actions, though covert, emotions too are actions, aimed at changing the world
(whether or
[p.263]
not their
expression actually does succeed in changing the world). In other words,
emotions are purposive, serve the ends of the subject, and consequently can be
explained by reasons or
"in-order-to" explanations.
Because
emotions are usually thought to be occurrences that we suffer, the idea that
emotions are purposive actions has not been given sufficient attention. But
consider the following very familiar sort of case:
Joanie
wants to go to a party: her husband does not. She begins to act bored and
frustrated; he watches television. She resigns herself to reading, sighing
occasionally. He asks if she has picked up some shirts from the laundry: she
says "no." He flies into a rage. He needs shirts (he has hundreds).
He needs one of those (they are all
the same). She is negligent (she was busy). She takes advantage of him (she
stays with him). Naturally, she rebels, but she is upset, with mixed guilt and
anger. She thinks him unreasonable, impossible, and slightly neurotic. Their
encounter is short-lived. She goes off to read; he settles back before the
television. The party is out of the question.
What are we
to say of this familiar sort of case? It appears to be given that the husband's
anger is inappropriate to the incident. His being angry about his wife's
failure to pick up his shirts seems unreasonable; and the intensity of his anger is most surely unwarranted. To this, the
standard response, since well before Freud, has been to suppose that the
husband is really angry about something else; perhaps he is redirecting anger
from his day at his office-anger which could not be expressed as safely toward
his superiors as it could to his wife. Or perhaps the anger is accumulated
anger from weeks or months of minor marital frictions. Or perhaps, it might be
suggested, the anger is caused by the fact that the husband is tired.
But, in
this case-and many other cases-there is an alternative sort of explanation that
is available and persuasive. The anger can be explained, not in terms of what
it is "about" or what causes it, but in terms of its purpose. The husband, in this case, has used his anger to manipulate his wife.
He has become angry "about" the shirts in order to get his wife's mind off the party and in order to stop
her irritating reminders. His anger is not a disruption of his activities
(watching television, refusing to go to the party) but a part
[p.264]
of it, its
winning strategy. The best explanation of his anger is not that it was caused
by anything (although that is not precluded) and not that it was
"about" anything in particular (although that is surely true), but
that he got angry at his wife in order to continue watching television
and in order to insure that his refusal to go to the party would be successful.
But if
emotions are rational and purposive, why is it that emotions are so often
counterproductive and embarrassing to us, detours away from our aspirations
and obstacles blocking our ambitions? Why do emotions so often appear as
disruptions in our lives, threats to our successes, aberrations in our rational
behavior? We can outline three distinct accounts of the apparent
"irrationality" of emotions.
First, it
is the situation in which one becomes emotional that is disruptive, a detour,
an obstacle, a threat, and not the emotional response. Emotions are urgent
judgments; emotional responses are emergency behavior. An emotional response
occurs in a situation in which usual intentions are perverted or frustrated; an
unusual response is necessary. The normative judgments involved in having an
emotion are inseparable from the overall network of our motives, beliefs and
intentions. The fact that emotions typically lead to apparently
"pointless" behavior is not a consequence of emotions being
irrational, but a natural consequence of the fact that emotions are responses
to unusual situations in which usual behavior patterns seem inappropriate. The
intentions of an emotional reaction are not infrequently impossible. The angry
or sad man may wish to undo the past; the lover may want to possess, and be
possessed by, his loved one. This is why Sartre calls the emotions
"magical transformations of the world." One can always reduce the
range of his emotional behavior by developing stereotyped responses, by
avoiding all unusual situations or by treating every situation as "usual."
These are common but perhaps pathological ways of choosing our emotions. But
such common "control" is not the avoidance or the suppression of a
wild psychic beast; it is simply the avoidance of situations (or recognition of
situations) where one's usual behavior patterns will not suffice. Emotions are
rational responses to unusual situations. They differ from "cool"
judgments and normal rational deliberate action in that they are prompted in
urgency and in contexts in which one's usual repetoire [sic]
[p.265]
of actions
and considered judgments will not suffice. An emotion is a necessarily hasty
judgment in response to a difficult situation.
It must be
added that the "hastiness" of a judgment does not entail that it is
made quickly. For example, one can make a hasty judgment after weeks of
halfhearted deliberation. Similarly, although emotions are typically urgent
and immediate responses, one can become increasingly angry over a period of
time, or one finds that an emotion that is formed in urgency is then maintained
in full force for weeks or even years. But what distinguishes emotions from
ordinary judgments is their lack of "cool," their seeming urgency,
even after weeks of simmering and stewing. There are no cold emotions, no cool
anger, no deliberate love. Emotions are always urgent, even desperate,
responses to situations in which one finds oneself unprepared, helpless,
frustrated, impotent, "caught." It is the situation, not the emotion,
which is disruptive and "irrational."
Second, and
consequently, emotions are short-term responses. Emotions are rational in that
they fit into a person's overall purposive behavior. But this is not to say
that a person's various purposes are always consistent or coherent. Short-term
purposes are often in conflict with rather than a means toward the fulfillment
of long-term purposes. My desire to drink at the reception may tend toward
disaster regarding my meeting of the celebrity who is my reason for going to
the reception. My desire to visit Peking may undermine my ambition to become an
FBI agent. Similarly, emotions often serve short-term purposes that are in
conflict with longer-term purposes. I may be angry with John because I feel I
have been wronged, but this may be inconsistent with my desire to keep a close,
unblemished friendship with John. I may love Mary, but this might be totally
inconsistent with my intention to preserve my marriage, to remain celibate, or
to concentrate on my writing. Thus, the husband in our example might succeed in
staying home from the party by becoming angry, but break up his marriage in so
doing. It is in this sense that emotions are "blind"; more accurately,
they are myopic. Emotions serve
purposes and are rational; but because the purposes emotions serve are often
short-sighted, they appear to be nonpurposive and irrational on a larger view.
For the sake of a passion, we destroy careers, marriages, lives. Emotions are
not irrational; people are irrational.
[p.266]
Third,
there is an anthropological response to the idea that emotions are irrational.
In a society that places taboos on emotional behavior-condemns it in men and
belittles it in women-it is only to be expected that emotions will be counter
to ambitions. A society that applauds "cool" behavior will naturally
require strategies that are similarly "cool." In such a society,
emotional behavior appears as "irrational" because it is bad
strategy, not because it is not purposive. Perhaps it is not at all difficult
to envision a society in which only emotional behavior would appear
rational-where only short term emotional responses had any meaning at all. But
it is surely not Anglo-American society in which "reason is and ought to
be the slave of the passions."
Against our
view that emotions, as actions, are purposive and that a person chooses his
emotions rather than being victimized by them, there is a uniquely powerful
objection. A person cannot identify at the time the purpose of his emotion. The
husband who uses his anger to manipulate his wife cannot identify the purpose
as opposed to the object-cause of his anger. If he were to identify the
manipulative function of his anger, the effect would be the destruction of his
anger. One cannot be angry and know that his anger has a purpose.
This is
much more, of course, than a mere pragmatic claim. It is certainly true that
the husband cannot tell his wife that his anger is purposive, for the very
purpose of the anger is to distract his wife from that purpose. But the claim
here is that the husband cannot even think to himself, "I am being angry
in order to. . . ." If the husband is unusually self-aware, he may know
that he, in general, uses his anger to manipulate people; but he still cannot
entertain that thought at the time of his anger and remain angry. If he does,
he ceases to be angry and continues, at most, only to act angry-to feign anger.
One's
inability to see the purpose of his emotion is a conceptual matter, just as
before we pointed out that one cannot (conceptually) make certain judgments, such
as the judgment that what he is angry about is not the case, or that the cause
of his anger, where this is different from the object of his anger, is a
sufficient explanation of his anger. We can now add to this list of conceptual
inabilities the inability of one to suspect the purpose of his emotion.
Now many philosophers would argue that, regarding intentional actions
[p.267]
in general,
one cannot fail to be aware of his motives and intentions at the time of
acting. It would take us too far astray to argue against this view here, but
notice that this inability to notice one's purpose is not limited to
emotions. Consider, for example, Nietzsche's account of belief in God as a
belief whose function is to serve certain purposes (achievement of salvation; a
basis for "slavemorality" and self-righteousness; to seek power).
Yet, even if a purposive analysis of belief in God is true, this neither denies
that people do in fact believe in God nor need it suggest that believers could
state these purposes. To the contrary, we can add, if they were to think
seriously that their belief was held to serve a purpose rather than because it
was true, we would have to conclude that they did not believe at all. (A
conclusion that Nietzsche too easily comes to on the basis of an argument from
the third person to the first person case.) To believe is not to believe for a
purpose; yet beliefs can still be purposive.
Judgments
in general, not only emotions, can be purposive but cannot be recognized (by
the person who makes them at the time that he makes them) as purposive. If I
judge, calmly and deliberately, without a hint of that urgency and intensity
that characterizes anger, that John has wronged me by stealing my car again (he
does it all the time), I may be rationalizing an opportunity to take out John's
wife. In fact, I may even say to myself, "since he has wronged me so, I
feel justified in taking out his wife." But I cannot believe that my
judgment that John has wronged me has been made for this purpose. I can at most
believe that since he has wronged me, I am justified. . . . Similarly, I may
judge, calmly and deliberately, that Mary is a magnificent woman, attractive
and intelligent, strong-willed and sensitive, but without the slightest hint of
that urgency and intensity that characterizes love. But, knowing that Mary is
John's wife, I may be so judging as a way of rationalizing an opportunity to
run off with John's mistress. Now I may openly judge that John does not need
his mistress, since his wife is so magnificent, and so I can feel justified in
running off with his mistress. But I cannot believe that my judging that Mary
is magnificent is made for this purpose. In other words, judgments, no matter
how calm and deliberate, when they are made for some purpose (leaving open the
question whether all are so made), cannot be recognized as having been made for
a purpose. In this sense, all judgments are
[p.268]
"blind."
To recognize the purpose for which a judgment is made is to undermine the
judgment. One cannot judge that he has been wronged and at the same time
recognize that he has judged that he has been wronged only in order to . . . .
One must
also consider apparently "unintentional" actions, to which emotions
bear a striking resemblance. Some act-types allow for only intentional acts,
for example, murder, fishing. Others allow for only unintentional acts, for
example, forgetting, slipping, stumbling, tripping, losing, in short, most of
those actions that make up the subject matter of what Freud calls the "psychopathology
of everyday life." Yet Freud demonstrated that such
"unintentional" actions function in a remarkable accordance with a
subject's overall purposes and intentions. Freud surely does not want to say
that these simply appear to be intentional (as some authors have argued,
e.g., R. S. Peters, A. MacIntyre), but rather that they truly are intentional,
the difference being, in his terms, the "inaccessibility" of the
intention to the subject. The status of such actions remains a matter of
controversy, but we feel reasonably confident that most philosophers and most
everybody else would agree that such "actions" are indeed actions and
can be demonstrated in at least some cases to be done for a purpose; yet the
subject cannot state their purpose. And once again, the "cannot" is
a logical "cannot," since a man who knows that he is losing
his wedding ring in order to show his opinion of his marriage is making a
gesture, not losing his ring. And a man who knows he is forgetting to call his
office in order to avoid extra work is not forgetting but refusing to call his
office. Thus we can see in what senses such actions may appear to be both
intentional and "unintentional." They are intentional insofar as
they clearly fit into the purposes and intentions of the subject; they appear
to be unintentional insofar as they cannot be stated as purposive or
intentional by the subject. Similarly, anger is purposive and intentional
insofar as it can be clearly shown to fit into the structure of the subject's
purposes and intentions; it appears to be "unintentional" and thus
differs from many straightforward actions, in that these purposes and
intentions cannot be known by the subject at the time. Emotions, when they are
purposive and intentional, are essentially devious.
Can one
feign anger? One might think, "Of course, act angry
[p.269]
when you
are not angry." But what is it that constitutes the anger apart from
acting angry? The traditional answer to this is simple enough: a feeling. To
feign anger is to act angry but not feel angry. To feign love is to act
lovingly but not feel love. To feign an emotion would be, in general, to
pretend one has a feeling which one does not have, as a child pretends-usually
badly-to have a cramp in order to stay away from school. But we have seen that
an emotion is not a feeling. This traditional analysis does lend support to
our contention that to have an emotion in order to . . . , is not to have that
emotion. But, on our account, the difference is not due to the presence or lack
of a feeling. Rather, to have an emotion is to make certain judgments; to feign
an emotion, then, is to pretend that one holds certain judgments which one does
not hold.
But this
makes the notion of feigning emotion much more difficult than has been supposed
on the simple "feeling" analysis. Andre Gide has written that feigned
emotion and "vital" emotion are indistinguishable, and in this there
is an often unseen giant of a truth, one that would appear absurd on the thesis
that emotions are feelings. Miss Anscombe, replying to J. L. Austin, has
distinguished
between mock performances and real pretenses. The most obvious difference
between the two is that one is intended to mislead others, the other not.
Accordingly, the one should be more cautiously consistent and prolonged than
the other: a successful mock performance may be announced as lasting only 35
seconds, a real pretense must go on as long as it must go on. But the most
important difference between mock performances and real pretenses is the context (what we have been calling
"the situation"). A mock performance may be performed on a stage, in
any context in which it can be announced or in which it is evident that this is
a mere pretense. A real pretense,
however, requires that the context of performance be appropriate; anger can
only be feigned in real pretense if the situation is one in which anger is
appropriate. One can only pretend to be in love with someone whom it is
plausible that he should love. But the appropriateness of the situation is not
a causal determinant of a feeling of love or anger. Rather it is the context in
which judgments of the requisite kinds make sense and are plausible. But if to
feign anger is to act angry in a context in which the anger-related judgments
are plausible, it is easy to see how one could, upon prolonged pretense, come
to accept those
[p.270]
very
judgments. If, over a protracted period of time, I pretend to love a woman whom
I have married for her father's wealth, it is more than likely that I shall
grow to love her (if I do not first come to openly despise her). And if I
pretend to be angry about a political issue in order to be accepted by my
friends, it is not at all unlikely that I shall come to be really angry about
that same issue. Perhaps there is no better way to choose to have an emotion
than to decide to pretend that one has it. As Sartre has said, the best way to
fall asleep is to pretend that you are asleep. And here, I think we may say
that Gide's theory has a plausibility which cannot be explained on the idea
that what one pretends to have is a feeling.
Emotions
are intentional and rational, not disruptive and "irrational."
Emotions are judgments and actions, not occurrences or happenings that we
suffer. Accordingly, I want to say that emotions are choices and our
responsibility. Yet I am never aware of making such a choice. Emotions, we
argued, are hasty and typically dogmatic judgments. Accordingly, they cannot be
made together with the recognition that they are dogmatic and not absolutely
correct. What distinguishes emotions from other judgments is the fact that the
former can never be deliberate and carefully considered. Emotions are
essentially nondeliberate choices. Emotions, in this sense, are indeed
"blind" as well as myopic; an emotion cannot see itself. Few things
are more disconcerting than suddenly watching one's angry reflection in the
mirror, or reflecting on one's anger to see its absurdity in media res.
If emotions
are judgments or actions, we can be held responsible for them. We cannot simply
have an emotion or stop having an emotion, but we can open ourselves to
argument, persuasion and evidence. We can force ourselves to be
self-reflective, to make just those judgments regarding the causes and purposes
of our emotions, and also to make the judgment that we are all the while choosing
our emotions, which will "defuse" our emotions. This is not to opt
for a life without emotions: it is to argue for a conception of emotions which
will make clear that emotions are our choice. In a sense, our thesis here is
self-confirming: to think of our emotions as chosen is to make them our choices. Emotional control is not learning to employ
rational techniques to force into submission a brutal "it" which has
victimized us but rather the willingness to become self-aware, to search out,
and challenge the normative
[p.271]
judgments
embedded in every emotional response. To come to believe that one has this
power is to have this power.
In response
to our argument, one might conclude that we have only argued that one can
choose and is responsible for his interpretation of his situation and his
emotions. But then I simply want to end by once again drawing Nietzsche to my
side and quipping, with regard to emotions, "there are only interpretations
. . . . "
APPENDIX
Against
Plato and the rhetoricians (e.g., Gorgias), Aristotle defended the view that
some emotions were both practical and intelligent (righteous anger, for
example), essentially involving both goals
and cognition. *6 Anger, for example, was a desire for vengeance because of an
unjustified offense or slight.*7 Aristotle also developed a theory of the
intentionality of emotions and understood the linkage between logic and
rhetoric in changing emotions.*8 Centuries later, Seneca defended the view that
emotions are judgments, within our power. *9 He then went on to chastise
emotions as irrational judgments, incompatible with reason, and so
promoted his Stoic concept of apatheia, in direct contrast to Aristotle
who took at least certain passions as essential to moral virtue and the eudaimon
life.*10 The idea that emotions are akin to judgments and within the bounds of
human responsibility is thus a very old theory. How pathetic then that the
emotions have been so removed from their cognitive and activist moorings by
modern philosophy, from Descartes's "animal spirits" to James's
visceral spasms and Freud's "id." How this has happened is not my
concern. But what does concern me-passionately-is to resurrect and defend the
older view, with a decided existentialist twist.
"Emotions
and Choice" (1973) was a polemic. It hit some raw nerves, but it soon
became obvious that its bolder claims had to be qualified and defended by a far
more detailed analysis of emotions, which I developed in The Passions
(1976).*11 Subsequent discussions and criticisms convinced me that some of
these claims require still further defense and modification, but I remain
convinced that no noncognitive view of emotions will ever allow us to
understand
[p.272]
them' *12
and no view that does not involve the idea of responsibility will have any but
a deleterious effect on both moral philosophy and psychology. But let me review
the arguments:
EMOTIONS
ARE INTENTIONAL
In
"Emotions and Choice," my defense of the distinction between the
object and cause(s) of emotion had to take priority over a careful analysis of
intentionality. At the time, the notion of intentionality was under severe
attack, and several articles and books have straightforwardly attempted to
eliminate this notion altogether by reducing all talk of "objects" to
accounts in terms of causes. *13 The motivation behind this attack has turned
in part on well-known historical abuses of "intentionality" and a
recent fetish for extensional accounts, as well as a reaction against the
still platitudinous obscurity surrounding that sacramental concept in the
writings of some phenomenologists. But more importantly, it was a reaction
against the now classic account of the intentionality of emotions suggested by
Anthony Kenny in his Action, Emotion and
Will (1963).* 14 Kenny analyzed emotions as intentional feelings: what he
did not provide was any way of understanding how it might be possible for a
"feeling" to be intentional. Kenny argued, following a tradition that
stretches back to Aristotle (if not Plato)*15 that there must be a formal connection between the feeling
and its object; but again, he provided us with no understanding how this might
be possible. *16 And, finally, pointing out that some emotions clearly have
"inexistent" objects (for example, emotions concerning the future),
he disastrously concludes that the objects of all emotions must be understood in terms of "a special
non-causal sense." Kenny rightly insists on the distinction between
objects of emotions and their causes, but he gives no adequate analysis of
"a special non-causal sense." Thus he provokes one recent critic to
accuse him of rendering the connection between emotion and object, and the
notion of "object" itself, both "otiose" and
"mysterious." *17
What is
needed is an account of the intentionality of emotions which avoids these
obscurities. Accordingly, the opening move of The Passions is one of ontological frugality; the distinction
between cause and object is made to be functional, not a distinction between
[p.273]
two types
of entities. The traditional emphasis on existence and "inexistence"
of emotional objects is replaced by a phenomenological concept of
"subjectivity," where the emphasis is wholly on the idea of an object
as experienced. *18 Whether an
experience also provides an accurate account of the world is not part of an
analysis of either emotions or their intentionality, although it may enter into
discussions of their rationality or their justification. Whether the
description of the object can also function as a description of the cause of an
emotion, in other words, in a causal explanation, is also something other than
the analysis of emotion requires. But this is not to say anything about the
identity of cause and object. The notion of intentionality is ontologically
innocent.
The
simpleminded disjunction between the existence or "inexistence" of
emotional objects and discussions thereof has a more disastrous consequence.
Consider, for example, the Freudian claim that a certain young man, Dorian,
does not in fact love his wife but his mother. Whether or not this claim is
defensible in general, whether or not it is defensible in this particular case,
it is clear that here we have a critical test case for any analysis of the
emotion of love: What characteristics are essential for the love of a
particular "object"/person? But what is clearly not at stake is any
question about the ontological status of the disputed object, only its
phenomenological
("subjective") identity in the eyes of Dorian. In this way, the
concept of intentionality opens up a rich field of new investigations: to
ontologize is to forfeit them.
To account
for the fact that emotions are intentional, I reject Kenny's claim that
emotions are a species of feelings and insist that emotions are a species of
judgments. This explains, as no "feeling" analysis could, how it is
that emotions are "about" the world in a "noncausal sense."
It also explains, in a nonmysterious way, why so many authors (Aristotle, Hume,
and Kenny, for instance) have felt compelled to insist upon the
"formal" connection between emotion and object and the
"essential" or "natural" connections between emotions and
beliefs. What a judgment is about defines the judgment. Similarly, what an
emotion is about defines the emotion.
In
"Emotions and Choice," I attack what I call a "components"
analysis of emotions, for just this reason. As soon as one distinguishes
between the "feeling" of emotion and its object, as Kenny
[p.274]
does, for
example, there is no way to understand either how emotions intend their
objects or how their objects define emotions. *19 In The Passions, I counter this "components" view by
developing a (quasi-Heideggerian) notion of what I call "surreality,"
a theory of intentional structures, given conceptual shape by judgments of a
number of specifiable types which I there describe in detail. In "Emotions
and Choice," the nature of these intentional structures is not discussed,
and so my attack on the "components" view and the analysis of
intentionality remain dangerously incomplete.
EMOTIONS
ARE JUDGMENTS
This is the
key slogan of my entire campaign, but as a slogan, it should not be taken as a
theory as such. I repeatedly insist that emotions essentially involve
desires, expectations, purposes, and attitudes. Emotions are motivated by
desires, sometimes distinguished by desires, and in virtually every case some
desire is essential to an emotion. But I take this claim to be so widely
accepted even by Descartes, to whom I am most vehemently opposed *20 -that I
saw little point in defending it. But it certainly does not follow that by so
"opening up" my analysis beyond the "emotions are
judgments" slogan I am thereby bound to include also dispositions to
behave and feelings and all sorts of things. *21 It is the heart of my argument
that "feelings" and physiology and, with qualifications, dispositions
to behave, do not play an essential
role in the constitution of emotions and cannot be used in even the most
rudimentary account of the definitive properties of either emotions in general
or particular emotions. My central claim is that emotions are defined primarily
by their constitutive judgments, given structure by judgments, distinguished
as particular emotions (anger, love, envy, etc.) as judgments, *22 and related
to other beliefs, judgments, and our knowledge of the world, in a
"formal" way, through judgments. No alternative theory, it seems to
me, has ever made the slightest progress in explaining the central features of
emotion, as opposed to their red-in-the-face and visceral cramp symptomatology.
We often
think of "making a judgment" as a distinctively deliberate act; to
counter this, I argued in "Emotions and Choice" that emotional
judgments are essentially nonreflective and prior to
[p.275]
deliberation.
This was, however, an overreaction, and in The
Passions I discussed several examples of deliberate emotions, for example,
making oneself angry. In the book I also stress the affinities between my
notion of judgment and Kant's concept of "constitutive judgment,"
but what is "constituted" in emotions is not knowledge but meanings.
In my more recent work, I prefer to talk more in terms of emotions setting up
"scenarios," within which our experiences and our actions are endowed
with personal meaning. Each emotion, so characterized, is a specifiable set of
judgments constituting a specific scenario. Anger, for example, is to be
analyzed in terms of a quasi-courtroom scenario, in which one takes the role of
judge, jury, prosecuting attorney and, on occasion, executioner. ("I'll
be judge, I'll be jury, said cunning old fury." -Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland.) The object of
anger is the accused, the crime is an offense,*23 and the overall scenario is
one of judgmental self-righteousness. (One might add that the court is almost
of the kangaroo variety, with self-esteem taking clear priority over justice.)
The scenario helps to explain, among other matters, the tendency to
self-righteousness in anger, which in turn can be used to explain the
motivation of petty anger and "bad tempers" and provide, in general,
the beginning of a functional account of emotions. In the context of
"Emotions and Choice ", the
scenario analysis provides a far more complete portrait of emotional
experience than the bald claim, "emotions are judgments."
With these
additions, it is possible to map out a refutation of the most common objection to
my theory, which is that it is possible to make a judgment, the same judgment
that I claim to be constitutive of an emotion, and not have that emotion. If
that is true, then emotions cannot be judgments. *24 But an emotion is never a
single judgment but a system of judgments, and although one might well make
one or several judgments of the system without having the emotion, my claim is
that one cannot make all of them and
not have the emotion. To make all essential judgments is to create the
relevant scenario and take one's part in it. Of course, one might simply act as if one were taking part, but the
distinction between pretending and really taking part is none too clear, as I
argued in "Emotions and Choice," and insofar as one is merely acting,
the set of judgments, and thus the scenario, cannot possibly be completed.
(This example shows why it is so important that the scenario be understood as a
[p.276]
way of
experiencing a situation and not as the situation itself-as it might be
described by others, for example.) Finally, to have an emotion requires not
only a specifiable set of judgments but certain desires as well. One might make
a judgment-or even much of a set of judgment *25 - in an impersonal and
uninvolved way, without caring one way or the other. But an emotional (set of)
judgment(s) is necessarily personal and involved. Compare "What he said to
me was offensive" (but I don't care what he thinks) and "He offended
me!" Only the latter is constitutive of anger. (The first is a judgment
about the perlocutionary act potential of a certain utterance; the latter is,
in part, a judgment about my own self-esteem.)
EMOTIONS
AND CHOICE
My most
cavalier move in "Emotions and Choice" was my easy inference from
"emotions are judgments" to the idea that we "choose" them.
The suppressed sequence of moves was something like this: emotions are
judgments and we "make" judgments; ergo emotions are activities, and
activities are "doings"; "doings" are voluntary and what is
voluntary is chosen. So, emotions are chosen. I agree with my critics that this
is much too glib, much of it unsound, and I tried to weaken the argument
accordingly in the book. I do insist, even in the essay, that emotions, like
many activities, cannot "simply" be done. (One cannot "simply"
decide to love someone.) But this is not enough. *26 I still insist that
emotions, as judgments, are a species of activity, and thus to be included on
the "active" side of the all-too-simple "active-passive"
disjunction according to which we evaluate most human affairs. This means too
that emotions fall into the realm of responsibility, so that it always makes
sense, at least (as it does not, for example, for headaches, heart attacks,
and hormones) to praise or blame a person, not just for contributing to the
situation that caused the emotion but, in some sense to be worked out, for
having the emotion itself, as one blames a person for bigotry, for example, or
praises them for their courage. What I now question is the once seemingly
innocuous
move from "activities" to "doings," and I reject the
subsequent
moves to "voluntary" then to "chosen." Perception, for
example, is an activity: I am not sure that it is something "done,"
[p.277]
and (as
opposed to an activity such as "looking for") I am sure that it makes
little sense to ask whether perceiving something is voluntary, much less a
matter of choice. Intractable emotions *27 must be treated similarly; they
are still matters of judgment, and as such activities and matters of
responsibility. But they are surely neither voluntary nor chosen. My account in
The Passions is in terms of emotional
"investments," the "cost" of giving up certain emotions.*28
But what this shows is that the whole question of choice and voluntariness,
outside of the overworked realm of intentional action, has yet to be pursued
successfully.
In the
essay, and even in the book, I say far too little about the sociocultural
determinants of emotions, the extent to which the essential sets of judgments
and desires are shared, restricted, suppressed, or encouraged within a given
society. Accordingly, some of my most recent work has been more anthropological
apprenticeship than philosophical analysis.*29 From this, I want to add to my
thesis the sense in which emotions are cultivated responses, within whose
limits one is responsible even if they were learned in childhood and so seem
entirely "natural." This certainly places harsh restrictions on my
original "choice" thesis, but I still take the notion of
responsibility as inescapably central.
EMOTIONS
ARE PURPOSIVE
In
"Emotions and Choice," I insist that emotions can be accounted for in
terms of "in order to" type explanations. This is suggested by the
fact that desires are part of emotions. What I do not do in that essay, but
attempt in the book, is to provide an overall theory about the function of
emotions. In a phrase, it is the maximization of self-esteem.*30 The
concept of self-esteem serves two very different purposes in my theory: First,
it is part of my characterization of emotions as judgments that they be
personally involved judgments, and this can be further elaborated in terms of
self-esteem. Second, I offer an empirical hypothesis about the motivation of
emotions-emotions serve self-esteem. This is not the place to pursue these
claims, since they play a relatively negligible role in "Emotions and
Choice." But it is necessary to point out that, (1) to say that emotions
have a certain purpose or function does not require that there
[p.278]
always be
an intention as such. Often, even usually, emotions do include such (implicit)
intentions; sometimes they clearly don't. (2) To say that the purpose of
emotions is to maximize self-esteem is not to say that they always-or even
usually-succeed in this. Resentment and spite, for example, can be easily
argued to be desperate attempts at self-esteem, but it can also be argued that
they usually fail. (3) Emotions are ready candidates for self-deception, and
sometimes the goal of an emotional strategy is exactly the opposite of what it
seems to be. Resentment, guilt and depression (a mood) are examples. (4) There
are examples that raise difficulties for the claim, for example, grief.*31 A
man who loses his son in an accident does not grieve to increase his
self-esteem to be sure, but, the difference between an appropriate sense of
loss and the emotion of grief may be considerable, and it is in this difference
that self-esteem plays a weighty motivational role. After a certain point,
grief becomes feeling sorry for oneself, and here the strategy for self-esteem
becomes evident.
Much more
could be added, but let me just present my minimal claim: every emotion is at
least a candidate for a purposive account (which can't even be made sense of on
the traditional theories). It always makes sense to ask "what is
motivating that emotion?" and, at least usually, part of the answer will
involve an appeal to self-esteem.
My
preliminary example in part two of "Emotions and Choice" involves a
serious error. In the book, I make a point of distinguishing purposive
explanations of the expression of
emotion (e.g., using angry behavior to intimidate someone) and purposive
explanations
of the emotion itself (e.g., to maximize self-esteem through the
self-righteousness of anger). In my example of marital politics in the essay, I
conflate the two.
EMOTIONS
ARE RATIONAL
Emotions
require rationality (the ability to manipulate concepts) but they may be said
to be rational or irrational (opposed
to non-rational) in a second sense,
according to whether they succeed or fail to satisfy certain purposes or
functions. In the essay, I discuss only the coherence, consistency and
completeness of the evidence in
[p.279]
the making
of emotional judgments. There are also questions about the warrant to making certain claims (e.g., a "right" to
something in jealousy,*32 or whether something is or is not worth getting angry about). What must be
added are questions about the maximization of self-esteem: resentment and spite
are usually irrational because they fail to maximize self-esteem. Moral
indignation, however, succeeds rather well. But one must also add the
"external" consideration of social utility; hatred and love might
equally raise self-esteem, but the social cost of hatred is
considerable-divisive and destructive. Any account of the rationality of
emotions must take into account these features as well as others,*33 and by the
time we have done this, we will have in effect developed a full-scale moral
theory and done a good deal of philosophical anthropology as well.
NOTES
1. Perhaps
we should distinguish getting into an emotional state and being in one (e.g.,
getting angry vs. being angry). But nothing turns on this for being in a state
as well as getting into a state, like God's maintenance of the Universe as well
as his creation of it, requires devoted activity. Accordingly, I shall be
arguing both that we choose an emotion and that we continuously choose our
emotions. There is no need to separate these arguments.
2. I take
this to be definitive of the difference between "emotion" and
"feeling" as I am using those terms here. Emotions are intentional;
feelings are not. I do not deny that the everyday use of "feeling" is
broader than this and includes both of these concepts. I find this ambiguity
less objectionable than others surrounding "sensation" and like
terms.
3. There is
nothing in our analysis which is not compatible with an all-embracing causal
theory. We might agree with writers like A. I. Goldman, who argues that
intentional
characterizations of actions (in terms of ' `reasons") also function in
causal explanations of a Hempelian variety. I do not wish to argue a similar
thesis regarding emotions here, but I want to be careful not to preclude any
such theory. Similarly, nothing I have said here bears on the so-called
"free will problem"; I want to show that emotions should be viewed in
the same categories as actions, whether or not there are further arguments that
might lead us to conclude that not even actions are chosen freely.
4. Freud
has a curious way of defending this thesis, which is surely central to much of
his theory. Because he attempted to maintain a thesis of the intentionality of
the "affects" within a strictly causal model, he obscured the
distinction between object and cause. Without crucifying Freud on this point,
as Peters MacIntyre and others have attempted to do, it is important to see
that Freud typically confuses first person and third person accounts, and the
concept of the "unconscious" as an "assumption" (e.g., see
the essay "The Unconscious," Collected Papers, Vol. VI) often depends
upon the failure of the subject to be capable of applying third person
ascriptions-notably, ascriptions of the cause as opposed to the object of an emo-
[p.280]
tion-to
himself. Without in the least detracting from Freud's overall conception of the
unconscious, we must insist that the subject is never logically privileged with
respect to the causes of his emotions, but that he does have some such
authority (without infallible authority) with respect to what he is
"affected about."
5. Though
perhaps I can simply express such a judgment.
6.
Aristotle, Rhetoric, Book II, 1378 ff. See also W. W. Fortenbaugh, Aristotle on
Emotion (London: Duckworth, 1975), chaps. 1, 4. Gorgias, Hel. 10, 14.
7.
Aristotle, Rhetoric, 1378a30-32.
8. Ibid.,
1378a33-34. '
9. De Ira,
esp. Vol. II (Oxford: Loeb Classical Library). Seneca argues that the
"cause" of emotion is beyond our power, but whether a cause affects
us is not. 10. See Fortenbaugh, Aristotle on Emotion, pp. 63 ff.
11. R.
Solomon, The Passions (New York: Doubleday-Anchor 1976).
12. Here I
still follow E. Bedford, "Emotions," Proceedings of the Aristotelean
Society 57 (1956-57), 281-304. Where we differ is his (too) strong emphasis on
the behavioral expression of emotion.
13. For
example, Robert Gordon, "The Aboutness of Emotions," American
Philosophical
Quarterly, 11, 1 (January 1974), 27-36. J. R. S. Wilson, Emotion and Object
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974) and Donald Davidson, "Hume's
Cognitive Theory of Pride," Journal of Philosophy, LXIII, 19 (November 4,
1976), 744-757.
14. A.
Kenny, Action, Emotion and Will (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1963).
15.
Philebus and Topics (150627 f.). See Fortenbaugh, Aristotle on Emotion, p. 11.
16. Wilson,
Emotion and Object, rightly accuses Kenny of confusing properties of the
emotions themselves here with properties of their description (chap. 3, sect.
iii).
17. Gordon,
"The Aboutness of Emotions," p. 27. 18. Solomon Passions, chap. 2.
19. I have
defended this cryptic suggestion in detail in my forthcoming "Emotions'
Mysterious Objects," Journal for the Theory of Social Behavior (1979).
20.
Descartes, "The Passions of the Soul" Part First Article XL and ff.
in Haldane and Ross, The Philosophical Works of Descartes (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1911).
21.
Frithjof Bergmann, review of The Passions in Journal of Philosophy, LXXV, 5
(May 1978) 208, who insists I either defend just my slogan or nothing.
22.
Aristotle does this too, using the idea of the efficient causes of different
emotions, e.g., Rhetoric, 1382a3-7 ff.
23. Ibid.,
1378a30-32. Cf. Hume on pride in his Treatise on Human Nature ed. L. A.
Selby-Bigge (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1951), Book II, "Of the
Passions,"
esp. p. 277 f.
24. E.g.,
Bergmann review of The Passions, p. 204 f.
25. Some of
the judgments constitutive of an emotion imply their own personal concerns and
desires, for example, judgments of praise and blame, inferiority, superiority
trust, intimacy, and power.
26. See Amelie
Rorty, "Explaining Emotions," this volume. 27. See ibid. Also
Bergmann, review of The Passions.
28.
Solomon, The Passions, chap. 9, esp. sect. 1.
29.
"Emotions and Anthropology," Inquiry (forthcoming, 1978).
30.
Solomon, Passions, chap. 9, esp. sect. 4, and "The Rationality of
Emotions," Southwestern Journal of Philosophy, Vol. VIII, no. 2 (December
1977).
[p.281]
31.
Bergmann, review of The Passions, p. 202.
32. The
idea that jealousy involves "rights" has been disputed, notably, by
Jerome Neu (this volume, Chap. XVIII). But the difference between being merely
"hurt" or disappointed, on the one hand, and being jealous, on the
other, seems to be a kind of vindictiveness and indignation ("That
bastard! ") which requires moral claims, not just sense of loss.
33. See
Rorty, "Explaining Emotions."