The Retreat of Reason Part 3 ppsx

Some Leftovers

I have distinguished agent-oriented and comparative emotions from plain ones with an

ulterior purpose in mind: the discussion of responsibility and causal origin in Part V has a

special bearing on the rationality of the former two. Nonetheless, this tripartition could

have a point even were one to classify emotions for no other purpose than to understand

their nature. But I am willing to concede that, from this perspective, my tripartition

would leave something to be desired. For instance, although remorse is probably a

species of regret, the former comes out as agent-oriented and the latter as plain.

Moreover, because of its link to anger, jealousy must be counted as an agent-oriented

emotion rather than as comparative. But envy is more of a comparative emotion, yet

these emotions are so similar that they are often confused. However, this need not worry

me as long as my typology does not miss any fundamental emotion to which reference is

relevant in the discussion of responsibility in Part V.

Of course, I do not claim to have surveyed every kind of emotion, for there is an indef￾inite number of them. Feeling lonely, locked up, confident, on top of the world, and so on

may all be different kinds of emotion, caused by beliefs to the effect that one is lonely, in a

situation like that of being locked up, etc. Presumably, though, they are merely specifica￾tions of such emotions as sadness, fear, hope, joy, etc.

In my review, some para-cognitive attitudes are missing, although they are often cited

as prime examples of emotion, namely, love and hate.⁹ The reason for this omission is

that they straddle the distinction between desire and emotion. To love, or like, doing

something is to desire to do it, just as to hate, or dislike, doing something is to want to

avoid doing it.¹⁰ Loving, or liking, somebody, because of certain features of hers, is an

emotional state by the passivity criterion of being a state which is identified by its cause,

but it is a conative state of loving or liking to engage with her in various activities related

to the desire-arousing features.

Loving somebody differs from merely liking her in that it typically includes what in

Part IV I shall call concern for (the well-being of ) her, that is, desires to the effect that the

desires of her be satisfied for their own sakes. Liking can be purely instrumental: if one

likes someone because she is good at something, one will desire to engage in this activity

with her, and one may desire that her desires be fulfilled only to the extent that this is

necessary to make the engagement in this activity profitable. Similarly, dislike of somebody

94 The Nature of Para-cognitive Attitudes

⁹ For instance, in the tripartition of emotions that Ortony et al. (1988) present, they constitute the third category, emo￾tions that focus on objects, alongside emotions that focus on events—which roughly correspond to my plain emotions—

and emotions that focus on agents—which roughly correspond to my agent-oriented and comparative emotions.

¹⁰ Contrast Gaus who asserts that liking and disliking are emotions (1990: 65) and who even goes as far as to claim that

“the overwhelming majority of emotions, if not all, can be described—not fully, but partly—as a type of liking or disliking

of something” (1990: 69). The latter claim—with which Ben-Ze’ev chimes in (2000: 94)—must be false if, as argued in the

foregoing chapter, it is false that all emotions involve desiring or wishing. Contrast this claim to Dent’s view that

“love . . . underpins all our other emotional responses” (1984: 82)—even hate (p. 84)! As his discussion of hate shows, this

claim does not mean that love is an ingredient of all other emotional responses, but rather that they arise fromit. This is in line

with my concession in the foregoing chapter that something like concern dispositionally understood can feature in the

explanation of an emotion.

A Typology of Emotion 95

need be nothing more than a desire to stay away from her and, if one dislikes her on the

ground of some aspect of her behaviour, a desire that she be hindered from indulging in

this form of conduct. In contrast, hate also involves malevolence, that is, a desire that life

in general for this individual be made difficult.

Loving and hating somebody differ from the agent-oriented emotions of anger and

gratitude in that, while one may be angry with or grateful to somebody, because of a sin￾gle fact noticed about her, love or hate are normally sustained by multiple grounds that

are proverbially hard to sort out. It seems typical of hatred of somebody that it grows out

of being angry with this person for several things, over time, in circumstances in which

one is unable to avenge oneself. There may be a transition from anger, via resentment of

various aspects of a person, to hate of the whole person. In opposition to this, love does

not primarily grow out of gratitude, though it may partly do so. To love somebody is to

be attracted to her, while to hate is not exactly to be repelled by someone or finding her

unattractive. The opposite of love is rather both hate and something like repulsion or dis￾gust than simply hate. Love and hate will be further discussed, largely by implication, in

Part IV when I examine their constituents (that is, in the case of love, liking, and concern).

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PART II

Reason and Value

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