Aquinas on Our Responsibility for Our Emotions

Journal of Nietzsche Studies 8 (2):163-205 (1999)
  Copy   BIBTEX

Abstract

INTRODUCTIONPhilosophical investigations of the concept of responsibility, mirroring its most common function in ordinary language and thought, have been geared for the most part to clarifying intuitions concerning moral and legal accountability for actions. But the resurgence of interest in ethical theories concerned with human virtues has resurrected old questions about our responsibility for our character, attitudes, and emotions. The philosophical tradition that takes virtues as a central moral category has taught us to think of virtues not only as involving dispositions to actions, but also dispositions to desires and emotions. It has also taught us to think of actions as only one of the proper objects of moral evaluation, alongside, for example, motives, intentions, beliefs, desires, and emotions. So it is natural that interest in ethical theories concerned with the virtues would yield interest in responsibility for our attitudes and emotions.Robert Adams has already done much to draw our attention to the different concept of responsibility we are forced to define if we focus on our intuitions about moral accountability for emotions, attitudes, and beliefs, rather than for actions. See R. Adams, “The Virtue of Faith,” in Adams, The Virtue of Faith (Oxford University Press, 1987), pp. 9–24; and “Involuntary Sins,” Philosophical Review 94 (1985): 3–31. I disagree with his account of responsibility for such states, but I am indebted to his illuminating discussions of the topics. Thomas Aquinas, who of course is one of the most important architects of the tradition that takes virtues to be central moral categories, holds a very complex set of views about our responsibility for our emotions. My aim in this essay is to develop and explain Aquinas’s views about whether and when, why, and to what extent we can be responsible for our emotions. I hope to show, in so doing, that his view is plausible, and fits well with some of our own conflicting intuitions about the question.

Other Versions

No versions found

Links

PhilArchive



    Upload a copy of this work     Papers currently archived: 101,636

External links

Setup an account with your affiliations in order to access resources via your University's proxy server

Through your library

Similar books and articles

Attitudes, Agency, and Responsibility.Angela Marie Smith - 1999 - Dissertation, Harvard University
How Should We Feel About Recalcitrant Emotions?Krista Thomason - 2022 - In Andreas Brekke Carlsson (ed.), Self-Blame and Moral Responsibility. New York, USA: Cambridge University Press.
Emotions in the Moral Life.Robert Campbell Roberts - 2013 - New York: Cambridge University Press.
Epistemic Reactive Attitudes.Deborah Perron Tollefsen - 2017 - American Philosophical Quarterly 54 (4):353-366.
Aquinas on the function of moral virtue.Jeffrey Hause - 2007 - American Catholic Philosophical Quarterly 81 (1):1-20.
Moral Rebukes and Social Avoidance.Linda Radzik - 2014 - Journal of Value Inquiry 48 (4):643-661.
Emotions: An Essay in Aid of Moral Psychology.Robert Campbell Roberts - 2003 - New York: Cambridge University Press.
The Source of Responsibility.Randolph Clarke - 2023 - Ethics 133 (2):163–188.

Analytics

Added to PP
2010-08-10

Downloads
85 (#247,876)

6 months
17 (#177,808)

Historical graph of downloads
How can I increase my downloads?

Citations of this work

Eustratios of Nicaea.Katerina Ierodiakonou - 2011 - In H. Lagerlund (ed.), Encyclopedia of Medieval Philosophy. Springer. pp. 337--339.

Add more citations

References found in this work

No references found.

Add more references