Abstract

What are emotions? What role do they play in our lives? Are emotions irrational responses or essential to theoretical and practical reasoning? Do they help us achieve goals? How do emotions feel? Because emotions occupy such a central place in our lives they have increasingly come under philosophical scrutiny. Today a complex body of thought exists on emotion, offering competing accounts of the interrelation between emotion, cognition, and feeling. The Philosophy of Emotion opens with a clear overview of theories of emotion from Darwin and Freud to contemporary analysis in philosophy of mind and moral psychology. The book goes on to examine why emotions matter to us, exploring the connections with thought, judgment, sensation, moral value, aesthetic value, action, and the question of our responsibility for our emotions. The Philosophy of Emotion presents a comprehensive introduction to philosophical approaches to the emotions and the search to explain how and why emotions are valuable.