Abstract
It is often said that we can have reasons for our emotions. But can such reasons be the basis for some form of knowledge? I attempt here to give a positive answer to this question, through an examination of two negative emotions, anger and contempt. I suggest that these emotions are apt to deliver, albeit in an indirect way, a form of moral knowledge, and examine their expression in the writings of Jonathan Swift.
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
- 3.
Stocker (1987) talks of “emotionally laden beliefs” which are ways the beliefs are taken. But what is justified? The beliefs, or their emotional charge?
- 4.
See in particular Brady (2013).
- 5.
De Sousa says that the role of emotions is often to attract our attention: “Paying attention to certain things is a source of reasons” (1987, p. 196). So the kind of skepticism about the perceptual model expressed by Brady (2013) need not entail the falsity of the correctness account of emotions. De Sousa (2011) suggests a more coherentist model. Pelser (2014) and Tappolet (2016) have proposed more sophisticated accounts of the perceptual model.
- 6.
There is no lexical item in English corresponding to what is the formal object of anger, in the ways the admirable is the formal object of admiration.
- 7.
Indeed many contemporary American feminists would balk at this.
- 8.
See e.g. Doris (2005). This is the line taken by “situationism” about character or virtue.
- 9.
Tappolet (2016, p. 85 sq.).
- 10.
I thus would disagree with Tappolet (2016), who aims to defend such a sophisticated version of the perceptual view.
- 11.
This feature has been well analyzed in the pioneering work of Livet (2002).
- 12.
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Acknowledgements
Without my friends in Geneva, I wouldn’t have learnt anything about emotions. Four years ago, Patrizia Lombardo asked me to write on contempt, but I failed to produce anything decent. Her work on these issues, and everything that she did on literature (such as Lombardo 2014), inspired me a lot. Thanks to Santiago Echeverri for his comments. I owe a huge debt to Laura Candiotto, who not only organized a wonderful conference in 2017 in Edinburgh, but also has been so generous and patient.
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Engel, P. (2019). The Grapes of Wrath and Scorn. In: Candiotto, L. (eds) The Value of Emotions for Knowledge. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-15667-1_10
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