Philosophy 4900: Seminar on Emotion

 

 

Instructor:   Dr. Eve Browning

                    307 ABAH    email ebrownin@d.umn.edu  

General Introduction to the Seminar:

     Although no one could deny the importance of the emotions in human nature and human life, emotion itself has not often been a central philosophical subject within our western tradition.  From the time of the closing of the ancient Greek and Roman philosophical schools until quite recently, the number of philosophical treatises devoted to an understanding of the emotions per se was rather small. 

 

     For the Greeks and Romans, understanding emotion was an important part of the philosophical life, for a number of reasons. 

 

     In Plato’s view, emotion could be a potent force for good or ill; sometimes distracting the mind from its pursuit of illumination, sometimes providing an essential motive force in that pursuit.  All readers of ancient philosophy will recall the extended diatribe against “the poets”, and artists generally, which Socrates offers in the Republic.  What’s so worrying about art?  It arouses the emotions in a powerful way, and the better the art, the stronger the disturbance.

 

     But Plato also describes a very positive role for emotion to play, in the search for wisdom.  The desire for the “vision of the Beautiful”, which keeps philosophers struggling to achieve that vision, is itself a strong emotion or passion, akin to eros or erotic love.  The further reaches of dialectic, to which the philosopher must attain, are distant and difficult.  Only if our desire is passionate enough will we attain them, and glimpse the Form of the Good.

 

     Plato’s star student Aristotle takes a characteristically practical view of emotion.  In our response to art, the emotions are “processed” in a beneficial way - so Aristotle argues in his Poetics.  In our search for wisdom, emotion plays a role, though a somewhat tamer one than that above ascribed to Plato.  “All human beings by nature desire to know”, as the first book of Aristotle’s Metaphysics so famously begins.  The knowing process is natural to us and is intrinsically pleasant.  And emotion has a central place in our moral lives as well.  Becoming a good human being is largely a process of attuning our emotional responses harmoniously to the kind of political culture we inhabit.

 

     For the Stoics, whose long history extends into the centuries after Christ, emotion or passion constitutes a grave threat to the ideal life, the life of “freedom from passion”.  In this sense they hark back to the Platonic distrust of emotional disturbances; Socrates, the original “sage” and the Stoic’s moral ideal, displayed a phenomenal degree of emotional self-control.   Becoming like Socrates in this respect, able to walk calmly through the turbulent scenes of which Roman life possessed such an abundance, was the goal.  Hence some theoretical attention is paid by Stoic writers to the causes, dynamics, and methods of controlling the emotions.

 

     As the sun sets on the pagan philosophical world, emotion recedes into a kind of twilight background, where it remains a matter of presuppositions and assumptions rather than a subject of intrinsic philosophical importance, for many centuries.

 

     Only in recent decades of the 20th century has emotion once again attracted philosophers’ attention in a serious way.  Our winter seminar will devote itself to this renaissance of theoretical interest in emotion.  We will examine some of the ways in which philosophers are thinking about emotion in our era, and we will contribute our own creative energies to the exploration of this deeply important aspect of human life and experience.

 

     We will begin, appropriately, with a brief perusal of the section of Aristotle’s Rhetoric which deals with emotion (book II, chapters 1-18).  Aristotle’s purpose here is to give a sketch of the principle human emotions and their causes, useful to people who wish to direct their public speeches to the arousal of one emotion or another.  So he doesn’t give a lot of theoretical detail.  But his psychology of emotion is thought-provoking and will provide a good conversation-starter for us. 

 

***For example: is it true that “Anger is accompanied by pain, but hatred is not; for he who is angry experiences pain, but he who hates does not”? (Aristotle, Rhet.II.4.31).  Think about it.

 

     We will then turn to some essays selected from an anthology entitled Explaining Emotion, edited by Amelie Oksenberg Rorty.  These show contemporary philosophers wrestling with various problems surrounding emotion, and various specific emotions, in a whole range of different ways.  Observing their different methods of approaching the topic of emotion will enable us to critically evaluate methodologies; which methods of approach are best suited for this particular topic?  Which don’t appear to be working as well?   And why?

 

     Our third and final text is a book written by a philosopher and an anthropologist/psychotherapist in collaboration.  In Valuing Emotions (Cambridge University Press, 1996) Michael Stocker and Elizabeth Hegeman are interested in understanding what emotion does in human moral life; they seek therefore a functionalist analysis of emotion in relation to ethics.  I find this book to be deeply interesting and expect it will lead to some good discussions in seminar. 

 

     Some overarching questions for the seminar (ones to which we will be returning regularly, in response to specific readings) include:

 

Þ      What is the relation between emotion and cognition? 

 

Þ      Are there emotions which are intrinsically good or bad?   If so, why, and which ones are they?

 

Þ      What is the role of emotion in ethics and in human moral life generally?

 

Þ       To what extent might emotions be understood as “adaptive strategies”?  And:

 

Þ       Are emotions distinctively human, or might other animals also experience emotion?

 

      

Course Requirements:

(1)  Attendance and preparedness are essential to the success of the seminar.

(2)  Q&A: Each student will be expected to post a thought question (arising out of the readings) to the rest of the class, via the class email alias, by Tuesdays.  These thought questions will arise out of the readings and class discussions.  Each student will also be required to respond to someone’s thought question, via email, by the following Thursday.  A portfolio of questions and responses will thus emerge for each member of the seminar, as the quarter goes on.  This portfolio will be graded at the end of the term.

(3)  One of the questions or answers posted in this ongoing conversation will then form the basis for a term paper, of 8-10 pages in length, to be submitted at the last class meeting.

(4)  There will be three tests during the term, each dealing only with the material covered during the preceding third of the quarter.  Test dates are:

                        December 19th

                        January 23rd

                        February 19th

 

Grade Base in Percentages:

                        Q/A Portfolio: 25%

                        Term Paper:    25%

                        Tests:               50% (3 tests averaged)

 

 

 

 

Reading Schedule:

 

Week 1:   Aristotle, Rhetoric book II.1-18.

Week 2:   Rorty, Explaining Emotions, pages 1-102.

Week 3:   Rorty, EE, pages 103-196.   Test #1

Week 4:   Stocker and Hegeman, Valuing Emotions, Part I.

Week 5:   Stocker and Hegeman, VE, Part II.

Week 6:   Stocker and Hegeman, VE, Part II (continued).  Test #2

Week 7:   Rorty, EE, pages 251-338.

Week 8:   Stocker and Hegeman, VE, Part III.

Week 9:   Stocker and Hegeman, VE, Part III (continued).

Week 10: Summary and Conclusions: no additional reading. Test #3