Emotions shape the landscape of our mental and social lives. Like geological upheavals in a landscape, they mark our lives as uneven, uncertain, and prone to reversal. Are they simply, as some have claimed, animal energies or impulses with no connection to our thoughts? Or are they rather suffused with intelligence and discernment, and thus a source of deep awareness and understanding? If the latter, the emotions cannot be sidelined in accounts of ethical judgment, as they often have been in the history of philosophy. They must then form part of our system of ethical reasoning, and we must be prepared to grapple with the messy material of grief and love, anger and fear, and in so doing to learn what role these tumultuous experiences play in our thinking about the good and the just.
In her compelling new book, Martha C. Nussbaum presents a powerful argument for treating emotions not as alien forces but as highly discriminating responses to what is of value and importance. Beginning from an intensely personal experience of her own, the grief felt at the death of her mother, she explores and illuminates the structure of a wide range of emotions, in particular, compassion and love. She shows that there can be no adequate ethical theory without an adequate theory of the emotions, and that this involves understanding their cultural sources, their history in infancy and childhood, and their sometimes unpredictable and disorderly operations in our daily lives.
The range of reference in this book is remarkable. Nussbaum engages with recent research in psychology and anthropology, and examines what philosophers such as Plato, Augustine, and Spinoza have contributed on the subject. She also demonstrates through careful readings of Dante, Emily Bronté, Whitman, Proust, and Joyce, and musical works by Mahler, that a genuine grasp of the complex intelligence of emotions will lead us to reassess literary and musical works as sources of ethical education.
No professional in moral or political philosophy, psychology, anthropology, literary and religious studies, or music can afford to ignore this book. General, nonacademic readers interested in understanding the role of emotions will find here a lucid and stimulating account of a much-misunderstood subject.
Martha C. Nussbaum is Ernst Freund Distinguished Service Professor of Law and Ethics at the University of Chicago, appointed in the Philosophy Department, the Law School, the Divinity School, and the College. She is an Associate in the Classics Department, an Affiliate of the Committee for Southern Asian Studies, and a member of the Board of the Committee on Gender Studies.
Author(s): Martha C. Nussbaum
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Year: 2008
Language: English
Pages: 751
City: Cambridge; New York
Cover
Description
Half Title
Copyright
Dedication
Contents
Introduction
PART I: NEED AND RECOGNITION
1. Emotions as Judgments of Value
I. Need and Recognition
II. The Adversary: Intentionality, Belief, Evaluation
III. Necessity and Constituent Parthood
IV. Judging and Acknowledging, and Sufficient Conditions
V. Eudaimonism, Intensity, the Personal Point of View
VI. Are There Necessary Noncognitive Elements?
VII. Are There Other Cognitive Elements? Imagining the Object
VIII. Background and Situational, General and Concrete
IX. "Freshness" and the Diminution of Grief
X. Emotional Conflict
2. Humans and Other Animals: The Neo-Stoic View Revised
I. Animals Grieving
II. The Decline of Reductionist Theories of Emotion
III. The Resurgence of Intentionality: Seligman, Lazarus, Ortony, Oatley
IV. Nonreductionistic Physiological Accounts: LeDoux, Damasio
V. Animal Emotion in Narrative Form: Pitcher
VI. Revising the Neo-Stoic Account
VII. Appetites, Moods, Desires for Action
VIII. Nonemotional Animals
3. Emotions and Human Societies
I. Grief and Social Norms
II. Human-Animal Differences: Time, Language, Norms
III. Sources of Social Variation
IV. Types and Levels of Variation
V. American Grief
VI. Culture and Understanding
4. Emotions and Infancy
I. The Shadow of the Object
II. The Golden Age: Helplessness, Omnipotence, Basic Needs
III. Early Emotions: "Holding," Love, Primitive Shame
IV. Disgust and the Borders of the Body
V. Playing Alone, the Ambivalence Crisis, and the Moral Defense
VI. "Mature Interdependence" and the Facilitating Environment
VII. The Neo-Stoic View Revised Again
VIII. Imagination and Narrative
Interlude: "Things Such as Might Happen"
5. Music and Emotion
I. Expression and the Implied Listener
II. A Dilemma and Three Responses
III. Music as Dream
IV. Music and Human Possibilities
V. The Kindertotenlieder: Loss and Helplessness
PART II: COMPASSION
6. Compassion: Tragic Predicaments
I. Emotions and Ethical Norms
II. The Cognitive Structure of Compassion
III. Empathy and Compassion
IV. Compassion and Altruism
V. Impediments to Compassion: Shame, Envy, Disgust
VI. Compassion and Tragedy
7. Compassion: The Philosophical Debate
I. Compassion and Reason
II. Three Classic Objections
III. Mercy without Compassion
IV. Valuing External Goods
V. Partiality and Concern
VI. Revenge and Mercy
8. Compassion and Public Life
I. Compassion and Institutions
II. Victims and Agents
III. Getting the Judgments Right
IV. Implementing Rational Compassion: Moral and Civic Education
V. The Role of the Media
VI. Political Leaders
VII. Economic Thought: Welfare and Development
VIII. Legal Rationality: Equality, Criminal Sentencing
PART III: ASCENTS OF LOVE
9. Ladders of Love: An Introduction
I. Love at Balbec
II. A Disease and Its Cure
III. The Philosophers' Dilemma
IV. Pupils of the Ascent
V. The Neo-Stoic Theory and the Need for Narrative
VI. Normative Criteria
10. Contemplative Creativity: Plato, Spinoza, Proust
I. Contemplative Ascent
II. Aristophanes: Love and Original Wholeness
III. Diotima: Love as Creation in the Fine and Good
IV. Spinoza: The Bondage of the Passions
V. Spinoza: Freedom through Understanding
VI. Proust: Using Individuals as Steps
VII. The Pursuit of Wholeness
11. The Christian Ascent: Augustine
I. Omnipotence and the Sin of Pride
II. Hunger and Thirst
III. The Platonic Ladder and Rational Self-Sufficiency
IV. Incompleteness and the Uncertainty of Grace
V. The Virtue of Longing
VI. The Merely Provisional World
12. The Christian Ascent: Dante
I. Signs of the Old Love
II. Agency and the Romance of Grace
III. Perceiving the Individual
IV. Christian Love Is Love
V. The Transformations of Beatitude
13. The Romantic Ascent: Emily Bronte
I. The Leap of Desire
II. Dark Outsiders
III. Lockwood's Shame
IV. Pity and Charity
V. Our Own Heart, and Liberty
VI. "Don't Let Me See Your Eyes"
VII. Phantoms of Thought
14. The Romantic Ascent: Mahler
I. The Hot Striving of Love
II. The Redeeming Word
III. For the Sake of Striving Itself
IV. The Self in Society
V. A Cry of Disgust
VI. I Will Not Be Warned Off
VII. The Unseen Light
VIII. Imagination and Justice
15. Democratic Desire: Walt Whitman
I. A Democracy of Love
II. "I Am He Attesting Sympathy"
III. A Counter-Cosmos: The Democratic Body
IV. The Reclamation of the Body
V. Caressing Death
VI. Mourning the Sun
16. The Transfiguration of Everyday Life: Joyce
I. Scholastic Questions
II. The Holy Office
III. A Dividual Chaos
IV. "The Love that Might Have Been"
V. Bloom's Spinozistic Ascent
VI. The Female Word
VII. The Opposite of Hatred
VIII. Ascents of Love
Bibliography
Acknowledgments
Name Index
Subject Index
