Abstract
The role of emotions in morality is disputable. There is a long intellectual tradition suggesting that emotions are morally disruptive and hence must be eliminated or controlled. The assumed immoral character of emotions is based on ontological assumptions concerning the nature of emotions and in particular their differences from intellectual deliberations. In light of these ontological assumptions it has been claimed that moral responsibility cannot be assigned to emotional behavior and that emotions have a negative role in morality. In this contribution I argue that the ontological assumptions concerning the relationships between the intellectual and emotional systems can be interpreted differently. In light of such interpretation we can assign moral responsibility to emotions and can consider emotions to have a significant role in moral behavior.
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References
See also A. Ben-Ze’ev, The Perceptual System: A Philosophical and Psychological Perspective (New York: Peter Lang, 1993 ), 4. 4.
Ben-Ze’ev, The Perceptual System,chap. 4.
H. Bergson, Creative Evolution (New York: Holt, 1911), 155.
See, e.g., B. Spinoza Ethics. In E. Curley (Ed.), The Collected Works of Spinoza (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1985), II, p.40s1,2; p. 47; V5, p.33. On the importance, in 17th century philosophy, of emotions to knowledge, see S. James, Passion and Action: The Emotions in Seventeenth-Century Philosophy (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), chaps. 9–10.
See B. Pascal, Pensees (London: Dent, 1960), 225; see also James, Passion and Action, 234–242; W. Wainwright, Reason and the Heart: A Prolegomenon to a Critique of Passional Reason (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995 ), 3, 148–154.
For discussions concerning the second difficulty, see A. Ben-Ze’ev, The Subtlety of Emotions (Cambridge, Ma.: MIT Press, forthcoming); Ben-Ze’ev. Ben-Ze’ev, The Subtlety of Emotions (Cambridge, Ma.: MIT Press, forthcoming); Ben-Ze’ev, ‘Emotions and Morality,’ The Journal of Value Inquiry, 31 (1997), 195–212.
J. Oakley, Morality and the Emotions (London: Routledge, 1991), chap. 4.
J. Horder, Provocation and Responsibility ( Oxford: Clarendon Press 1992 ), 1–2.
N. Sherman, Making a Necessity of Virtue: Aristotle and Kant on Virtue (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 75–93. J. Elster examines and rejects the claim that emotional dispositions as well as occurrent emotions can be the result of rational choice; see J. Elster, Alchemies of the Mind: Rationality and the Emotions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999 ), IV. 3.
Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics: 1106b16–23. The indirect nature of emotional regulation has been indicated by other philosophers as well. For example, Descartes argues that our passions ‘cannot be directly aroused or suppressed by the action of our will, but only indirectly through the representation of things which are usually joined with the passions we wish to have and opposed to the passions we wish to reject’; see R. Descartes, The Passions of the Soul. In J. Cottingham, R. Stoothoff & D. Murdoch (Trans.), The Philosophical Writings of Descartes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), art. 45. Similarly, Spinoza claims that ‘An affect cannot be restrained or taken away except by an affect opposite to, and stronger than, the affect to be restrained’; see Spinoza, Ethics,IV, 7.
For a more detailed discussion of the different types, see A. Ben-Ze’ev, ‘The Affective Realm,’ New Ideas in Psychology, 15 (1997), 247–259.
R. E. Thayer, The Origin of Everyday Moods (New York: Oxford University Press, 1996 ), 126, 128.
See also Elster, Alchemies of the Mind; P. Greenspan, Emotions and Reasons (New York: Routledge, 1988), 10, 155; Oakley, Morality and the Emotions, chap. 4; E. Sankowski, ‘Responsibility of Persons for their Emotions,’ Canadian Journal of Philosophy, 7 (1977), 829–840.
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Ben-Ze’ev, A. (2000). Emotions, Responsibility and Morality. In: van den Beld, T. (eds) Moral Responsibility and Ontology. Library of Ethics and Applied Philosophy, vol 7. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-2361-9_16
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-2361-9_16
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