《Martha C. Nussbaum - Morality and emotions (Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy)》.pdf
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Morality and emotions
Emotions such as anger, fear, grief, envy, compassion, love and jealousy have a close connection to morality.
Philosophers have generally agreed that they can pose problems for morality in a variety of ways: by impeding
judgment, by making attention uneven and partial, by making the person unstable and excessively needy, by
suggesting immoral projects and goals.
The place of emotions in moral theories depends on whether they are conceived of merely as impulses without
thought or intentional content, or as having some sort of cognitive content. Plato argued that emotions form a part
of the soul separate from thought and evaluation, and moved, in the course of his writings, from a sceptical view of
their contribution to morality to a more positive appraisal. Aristotle connected emotions closely with judgment and
belief, and held that they can be cultivated through moral education to be important components of a virtuous
character. The Stoics identified emotions with judgments ascribing a very high value to uncontrolled external
things and persons, arguing that all such judgments are false and should be removed. Their cognitive analysis of
emotion stands independent of this radical normative thesis, and has been adopted by many philosophers who do
not accept it.
Modern theories of emotion can be seen as a series of responses and counter-responses to the Stoic challenge.
Descartes, Spinoza, Kant and Nietzsche all accepted many of the Stoics’ normative arguments in favour of
diminishing the role played by emotions in morality; they differed, however, in the accounts of emotion they
proposed. Focusing on compassion or sympathy, Hutcheson, Hume, Rousseau, Adam Smith and Schopenhauer all
defended the role of some emotions in morality, returning to a normative position closer to Aristotle ’s (though not
always with a similarly cognitive analysis).
Contemporary views of emotion have been preoccupied with the critic
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