Emotions

Although emotions did not play a significant role in modern philosophical discussion up to the 1970s, today they form an important subject of philosophical inquiry. If one considers a broader historical context, however, this discovery of emotions in practical philosophy turns out to be a rediscovery. from antiquity to the Middle Ages, a discourse on “passions” and “affections” was an integral part of moral philosophy and ethics. Although Aristotle, the Stoics, Saint Augustine of Hippo, and Saint Thomas Aquinas had widely diverging opinions about the role emotions should play in ethics, they all agreed upon the importance of emotions for the moral life. Up to the 18th century, when the English and Scottish moralists (Shaftesbury, Butler, Hume, and Smith) centered their moral philosophies around “moral sentiments” and when Rousseau traced back any sort of moral behavior to the pure feeling of “commiseration,” emotions continued to be at the core of morality. Yet, with the triumph of positivism in the social sciences and the birth of scientific psychology in the 19th century, emotions were reduced to mere biophysiological phenomena that had to be dealt with in a purely functional sense. Against the background of the Cartesian distinction between spirit and matter, emotions were categorized as belonging to the body without having any cognitive content. Emotions as a whole were thus reduced to what the classical discourse on emotion had classified as “appetites” and “passions.” from such noncognitive drives, the classical discourse had distinguished more subtle emotional phenomena like “affections” or “sentiments” that belonged to the higher parts of the soul.

The contemporary revisionist discourse on emotions has taken up this strand of thought. The now-prevailing cognitive approach to the emotions distinguishes emotions proper from mere physical drives like bodily appetites by their cognitive content. from the cognitivist's viewpoint, emotions are individuated by reference to their characteristic beliefs. One cannot describe the pain that is peculiar to fear without saying that it is pain at the thought of a certain sort of future event that is believed to be impending. It is this intentionality, or “aboutness,” of emotions that sets them apart from mere biophysiological reactions to an external or internal stimulus.

This new conception of emotion as a cognitive phenomenon has several consequences for the conception of the interplay of emotionality, sociality, and morality. First, because emotions are no longer seen as mere passive responses to given stimuli, their productive role in shaping and constructing social reality can be addressed. Second, emotions do not only structure social interactions but are, in turn, shaped by social circumstances. They are social constructs. Third, the question of how [Page 403]development and emotionality are linked on the personal and societal level arises. Fourth, the role of emotions in rational decision making and moral reasoning has to be reconsidered. In all of the four points, special emphasis is put on the relationship between emotions and time.