there are some good people<\/em> in the world who don\u2019t deserve for bad things to happen to them (308). And if you believe you are invulnerable to this sort of suffering, Aristotle says you won\u2019t feel pity. (309)<\/p>\nAristotle\u2019s list of significant impediments (ones that might be pitiable) include: death, bodily assault, old age, illness, lack of food, friendlessness, separation from friends, ugliness (\u201cwhich impedes friendship,\u201d Nussbaum adds), weakness, having a disability, being disappointed, \u2026etc.<\/p>\n
Nussbaum concludes that for Aristotle, \u201cemotions have a rich cognitive structure.\u201d They aren\u2019t \u201cmindless surges of affect, but discerning ways of viewing objects: and beliefs of various types are their necessary conditions.\u201d Beliefs are \u201cconstituent parts of the emotion itself\u201d (309). The structure is: \u201cIf they think X, they will experience emotion Y.\u201d Though, she explains that it\u2019s much more complicated than that.<\/p>\n
The beliefs involved in the central cases of emotion, Nussbaum says, all involve the \u201cascription of significant worth to items in the world outside of the agent<\/em>, items that she does not fully control\u201d (312). If you didn\u2019t value other people and things that can be harmed in the world, you wouldn\u2019t feel love, pity, fear, anger. Love, Nussbaum notes, requires a belief in your own non-selfsufficiency (312). We express this with phrases like \u201cI need you,\u201d \u201cI\u2019m nothing without you,\u201d \u201cYou complete me,\u201d and so on. \u201cDeep attachment to uncontrolled things or persons in the world can provide the basis for any and all of the major emotions, given the appropriate changes in circumstance\u201d (313).<\/p>\nNussbaum contrasts Aristotle\u2019s approach with Plato\u2019s: Plato believed the only significant value is virtue, so a good man is indeed pretty much invincible and self-sufficient. In the Republic<\/em>, Plato considers pity, fear, and grief the wrong emotional responses. Only a lapse in virtue is significant, but that\u2019s under one\u2019s control, so you shouldn\u2019t pity this person but blame them. Tragic poetry teaches the wrong emotions, he argues, by portraying loss of loved ones, fortune, political standing, etc., as worth caring about. That\u2019s why Plato bans tragic poetry from the Republic.<\/p>\nAristotle disagrees, arguing that there are<\/em> things you should care about in the world, including friends, family, your own life and health, etc., each of which can sometimes be damaged by forces beyond your control. So fear is a rational and good emotion to have in some cases (315).<\/p>\nBoth Plato and Aristotle talked about a pedagogy of the emotions<\/em>. They believed that emotions require education, that emotions must be trained, normed, according to society\u2019s values. Emotions, Nussbaum writes of Aristotle, need to be \u201ceducated and brought into harmony with a correct view of the good human life\u201d (316). The correctly educated person will possess a practical wisdom that will guide them to respond to specific situations in emotionally appropriate ways.<\/p>\nPractical wisdom, in other words, is not detached<\/em> reason but deliberation immersed in one\u2019s world and that consults the emotions along with other pertinent judgments. A decision reached in this way is more<\/em> and not less rational, Nussbaum suggests. (Though reason itself has its limits, let\u2019s admit.)<\/p>\nJudgment is bound up with emotions, according to Aristotle, and good judgment is bound up with properly educated<\/em> emotions. This emotional education takes place first and foremost in the family (318). Before one can engage philosophical training successfully, one must have endured proper emotional shaping via the family and other relations, including institutions.\u00a0<\/p>\nThis is a gigantic ethical<\/em> problem, of course, and there\u2019s no way around it: if emotions are not simply natural but normed<\/em>, if they involve beliefs and convictions that you\u2019re taught from a very young age and that are so engrained that you don\u2019t question them, then your feelings may be a rational guide to what is ethical according to those normative beliefs<\/em>, but may not be a good guide to an ethics beyond those norms. Nussbaum: \u201cthe emotions may depend upon a type of belief and judgement that is less accessible to dialectical scrutiny<\/u> than are most of the person\u2019s other beliefs\u201d (319).<\/p>\nIf you are taught that animals are machines that don\u2019t feel pain, you will not feel compassion when one is tortured. If you are taught that a certain type of person is not valuable or worthy of your concern, you will not feel pity or anger or fear on their behalf\u2014nor love. If you\u2019re taught to fear every male teen in a hoodie, that fear will limit your capacity for compassion when that teen is wrongly accused. And so on.<\/p>\n
Also, and we\u2019ll get to this later, organizations devoted to helping former hate-group members detach from hateful beliefs have discovered that simply changing one\u2019s conscious beliefs about a former target of hate won\u2019t necessarily keep their body from being unconsciously \u201ctriggered\u201d to feel that hate again (even if they don\u2019t act on it). So two things, for later in the semester: first, it appears that a deep-level belief may condition the body in ways that are difficult for the body<\/em> to overcome, even after those beliefs consciously change; and second, on the flip side, bodily sensation may condition normative beliefs, as well as the other way around.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Emotion can be rational or irrational, based on belief. According to Nussbaum, the ancients in general did not view reason and emotion as opposites: they assessed emotions as rational or irrational depending on the situation. For them, \u201call emotions are to some degree \u2018rational\u2019 in a descriptive sense\u2014all are to some degree cognitive and based […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":91,"featured_media":0,"parent":197,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-2530","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.dwrl.utexas.edu\/davis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2530","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.dwrl.utexas.edu\/davis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.dwrl.utexas.edu\/davis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.dwrl.utexas.edu\/davis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/91"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.dwrl.utexas.edu\/davis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2530"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.dwrl.utexas.edu\/davis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2530\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2531,"href":"https:\/\/sites.dwrl.utexas.edu\/davis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2530\/revisions\/2531"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.dwrl.utexas.edu\/davis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/197"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.dwrl.utexas.edu\/davis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2530"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
![Jason<\/a> from Friday the 13th<\/sup> suddenly shows up in your bathroom while you\u2019re in the shower, it\u2019d be reasonable<\/em> for you to be very afraid. But if he turns out to be your partner in disguise, your panic-fear will immediately dissipate. On the other hand, if Jason actually shows up and you believe<\/em> it\u2019s your partner in a mask, it\u2019s reasonable for you to not be afraid, right up until the point where he gets<\/em> you.<\/p>\nPity is parallel to fear with different beliefs. Three necessary beliefs for pity: you must believe that the suffering person doesn\u2019t deserve it; that you are vulnerable to this particular evil, too; and that the suffering is not trivial but significant. Therefore a pitier must already believe that there are some good people<\/em> in the world who don\u2019t deserve for bad things to happen to them (308). And if you believe you are invulnerable to this sort of suffering, Aristotle says you won\u2019t feel pity. (309)<\/p>\nAristotle\u2019s list of significant impediments (ones that might be pitiable) include: death, bodily assault, old age, illness, lack of food, friendlessness, separation from friends, ugliness (\u201cwhich impedes friendship,\u201d Nussbaum adds), weakness, having a disability, being disappointed, \u2026etc.<\/p>\nNussbaum concludes that for Aristotle, \u201cemotions have a rich cognitive structure.\u201d They aren\u2019t \u201cmindless surges of affect, but discerning ways of viewing objects: and beliefs of various types are their necessary conditions.\u201d Beliefs are \u201cconstituent parts of the emotion itself\u201d (309). The structure is: \u201cIf they think X, they will experience emotion Y.\u201d Though, she explains that it\u2019s much more complicated than that.<\/p>\nThe beliefs involved in the central cases of emotion, Nussbaum says, all involve the \u201cascription of significant worth to items in the world outside of the agent<\/em>, items that she does not fully control\u201d (312). If you didn\u2019t value other people and things that can be harmed in the world, you wouldn\u2019t feel love, pity, fear, anger. Love, Nussbaum notes, requires a belief in your own non-selfsufficiency (312). We express this with phrases like \u201cI need you,\u201d \u201cI\u2019m nothing without you,\u201d \u201cYou complete me,\u201d and so on. \u201cDeep attachment to uncontrolled things or persons in the world can provide the basis for any and all of the major emotions, given the appropriate changes in circumstance\u201d (313).<\/p>\nNussbaum contrasts Aristotle\u2019s approach with Plato\u2019s: Plato believed the only significant value is virtue, so a good man is indeed pretty much invincible and self-sufficient. In the Republic<\/em>, Plato considers pity, fear, and grief the wrong emotional responses. Only a lapse in virtue is significant, but that\u2019s under one\u2019s control, so you shouldn\u2019t pity this person but blame them. Tragic poetry teaches the wrong emotions, he argues, by portraying loss of loved ones, fortune, political standing, etc., as worth caring about. That\u2019s why Plato bans tragic poetry from the Republic.<\/p>\nAristotle disagrees, arguing that there are<\/em> things you should care about in the world, including friends, family, your own life and health, etc., each of which can sometimes be damaged by forces beyond your control. So fear is a rational and good emotion to have in some cases (315).<\/p>\nBoth Plato and Aristotle talked about a pedagogy of the emotions<\/em>. They believed that emotions require education, that emotions must be trained, normed, according to society\u2019s values. Emotions, Nussbaum writes of Aristotle, need to be \u201ceducated and brought into harmony with a correct view of the good human life\u201d (316). The correctly educated person will possess a practical wisdom that will guide them to respond to specific situations in emotionally appropriate ways.<\/p>\nPractical wisdom, in other words, is not detached<\/em> reason but deliberation immersed in one\u2019s world and that consults the emotions along with other pertinent judgments. A decision reached in this way is more<\/em> and not less rational, Nussbaum suggests. (Though reason itself has its limits, let\u2019s admit.)<\/p>\nJudgment is bound up with emotions, according to Aristotle, and good judgment is bound up with properly educated<\/em> emotions. This emotional education takes place first and foremost in the family (318). Before one can engage philosophical training successfully, one must have endured proper emotional shaping via the family and other relations, including institutions.\u00a0<\/p>\nThis is a gigantic ethical<\/em> problem, of course, and there\u2019s no way around it: if emotions are not simply natural but normed<\/em>, if they involve beliefs and convictions that you\u2019re taught from a very young age and that are so engrained that you don\u2019t question them, then your feelings may be a rational guide to what is ethical according to those normative beliefs<\/em>, but may not be a good guide to an ethics beyond those norms. Nussbaum: \u201cthe emotions may depend upon a type of belief and judgement that is less accessible to dialectical scrutiny<\/u> than are most of the person\u2019s other beliefs\u201d (319).<\/p>\nIf you are taught that animals are machines that don\u2019t feel pain, you will not feel compassion when one is tortured. If you are taught that a certain type of person is not valuable or worthy of your concern, you will not feel pity or anger or fear on their behalf\u2014nor love. If you\u2019re taught to fear every male teen in a hoodie, that fear will limit your capacity for compassion when that teen is wrongly accused. And so on.<\/p>\nAlso, and we\u2019ll get to this later, organizations devoted to helping former hate-group members detach from hateful beliefs have discovered that simply changing one\u2019s conscious beliefs about a former target of hate won\u2019t necessarily keep their body from being unconsciously \u201ctriggered\u201d to feel that hate again (even if they don\u2019t act on it). So two things, for later in the semester: first, it appears that a deep-level belief may condition the body in ways that are difficult for the body<\/em> to overcome, even after those beliefs consciously change; and second, on the flip side, bodily sensation may condition normative beliefs, as well as the other way around.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Emotion can be rational or irrational, based on belief. According to Nussbaum, the ancients in general did not view reason and emotion as opposites: they assessed emotions as rational or irrational depending on the situation. For them, \u201call emotions are to some degree \u2018rational\u2019 in a descriptive sense\u2014all are to some degree cognitive and based […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":91,"featured_media":0,"parent":197,"menu_order":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"","meta":{"footnotes":""},"class_list":["post-2530","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.dwrl.utexas.edu\/davis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2530","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.dwrl.utexas.edu\/davis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.dwrl.utexas.edu\/davis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.dwrl.utexas.edu\/davis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/91"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.dwrl.utexas.edu\/davis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2530"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/sites.dwrl.utexas.edu\/davis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2530\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2531,"href":"https:\/\/sites.dwrl.utexas.edu\/davis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2530\/revisions\/2531"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sites.dwrl.utexas.edu\/davis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/197"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sites.dwrl.utexas.edu\/davis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2530"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}](\"https:\/\/i.ytimg.com\/vi\/CzbL7AJIhJI\/maxresdefault.jpg\"){kind=link}