Emotions, Cognition, Affect: On Jerry Neu's A Tear is an Intellectual Thing

Abstract

Jerome Neu has been one of the most prominent voices in the philosophy of emotions for more than twenty years, that is, before the field was even a field. His Emotions, Thought, and Therapy (1977) was one of its most original and ground-breaking books. Neu is an uncompromising defender of what has been called the “cognitive” theory of emotions (as am I). But the ambiguity, controversy, and confusions own by the notion of a “cognitive” theory of emotion is what I would like to focus on here. In so doing I will indicate some of the way sin which my own theory has developed.