Understanding Emotions

Understanding Emotions presents eight original essays on the emotions from leading contemporary philosophers in North America and the U.K: Simon Blackburn, Bill Brewer, Peter Goldie, Dan Hutto, Adam Morton, Michael Stocker, Barry Smith, and Finn Spicer. Goldie and Spicer's introductory chapter sets out the key themes of the ensuing chapters: surveying contemporary philosophical thinking about the emotions, and raising challenges to a number of prejudices that are sometimes brought to the topic from elsewhere in the philosophy of mind and moral philosophy. Brewer, Hutto, Goldie and Smith explore the conceptual and epistemological problems of other minds that the emotions raise, and how the emotions can be a source of knowledge of the world around us. The chapters by Stocker, Blackburn and Morton are broadly concerned with issues in morality: Stocker argues for the traditional Aristotelian view that emotions reveal value and are constitutive of value; Blackburn, from a more Augustinian perspective, argues that the virtuous person, like the rest of us, will be emotional but he or she will have the right emotions towards the right objects; Morton questions against the idea of emotions and narrative as sources of self-understanding. An extensive bibliography completes the book. Focusing on issues in the philosophy of mind, epistemology and moral philosophy, this book offers a wide and deep understanding of the emotions, and will be of interest across the philosophical spectrum to students and researchers of this fascinating and important topic.

'... this volume is a worthwhile contribution to the growing literature on the emotions. The disparate nature of the papers should serve to demonstrate the richness of the emotions as a topic of study... I would expect this book to be of real influence in directing future work within this area.' Metapsychology Online Book Reviews '... this book will be of interest across the philosophical spectrum to students and researchers of this topic.' Bulletin of Science, Technology and Society

Autorentext
Peter Goldie

Zusammenfassung
A collection of essays that give philosophical consideration to the subject of the emotions. Each piece of work moves away from the idea of "right-thinking" as central to the study of emotion, freeing the field for study from a variety of related philosophical angles.

Inhalt
Contents: Preface; Introduction, Peter Goldie and Finn Spicer; Emotion and other minds, Bill Brewer; The world is not enough: shared emotions and other minds, Daniel Hutto; Beware stories: emotions and virtues, Adam Morton; Some ways to value emotions, Michael Stocker; How emotional is the virtuous person?, Simon Blackburn; Emotion, personality and simulation, Peter Goldie; Keeping emotions in mind, Barry C. Smith; Bibliography; Index.