Nietzsche famously discusses a psychological condition he calls ressentiment, a condition involving toxic, vengeful anger. I offer a free-standing theory in philosophical psychology of the familiar...

Emotions have long been of interest to philosophers and have deep historical roots going back to the Ancients. They have also become one of the most exciting areas of current research in philosophy, the cognitive sciences, and beyond. -/- This book explains the philosophy of the emotions, structuring the investigation around seven fundamental questions: What are emotions? Are emotions natural kinds? Do animals have emotions? Are emotions epistemically valuable? Are emotions the foundation for value and morality? Are emotions the basis (...) for responsibility? Do emotions make us better people? -/- In the course of exploring these questions, the book also discusses cutting-edge empirical research on emotion, feminist approaches to emotions and their value, and methodological questions on how to theorize about the emotions. The book also contains in-depth discussions of specific emotions like compassion, disgust, anxiety, and curiosity. It also highlights emerging trends in emotion research. (shrink)

One common reaction to criticism is to try to deflect it by calling into question the motivations of the person doing the criticizing. For example, if I feel like you are blaming me for something that you yourself are guilty of having done in the past, I might respond with the retort, "Who are you to blame me for this?", where this retort is meant to serve not as an excuse but rather as a challenge to the standing of the (...) blamer. The notion of standing has taken center stage in much recent literature on the ethics of blame, though there is no consensus on how best to understand the precise force of the "who are you" retort. In this paper, I look at a different sort of retort, one that also calls into question the motivations of the criticizer. Instead of accusing the criticizer of being motivated by self-righteousness, however, this retort accuses the criticizer of being motivated by envy. How are these two retorts related to each other? If the accusation of envy isn't a challenge to the blamer's standing, then what sort of challenge is it and what normative force does it carry (if any)? Taking my cue from the ethics of blame literature, I try to address these and other questions about the interaction between envy and blame. (shrink)

In this chapter, I argue that a certain kind of envy is not only morally permissible, but also, sometimes, more fitting and productive than admiration. Envy and admiration are part of our emotional palette, our toolbox of evolutionary adaptations, and they play complementary roles. I start by introducing my original taxonomy of envy, which allows me to present emulative envy, a species of envy sometimes confused with admiration. After reviewing how the two emotions differ from a psychological perspective, I focus (...) in particular on the distinct and complementary roles they play in the ethical and political domains. (shrink)

In this paper, I examine the role played by the emotion of admiration in formulating moral judgments. First, I discuss whether and when admiration is a reliable source of moral knowledge, or, on the contrary, it misleads the subject, leaving her prey to forms of uncritical devotion to unworthy objects of admiration. To do so, I try to elucidate which underlying theory of emotions best allows one to characterize admiration as a reliable source of moral knowledge. Second, I introduce the (...) notion of transformative moral experience, understood as a subclass of transformative experiences, and I argue that it is precisely admiration that ensures the rationality of the choices made in such experiences. Finally, in light of this analysis, I show how admiration—together with the constellation of positive and negative emotions connected to the perception of moral exemplarity—acts as a central element for the maintenance of moral integrity. I defend, in particular, the idea that integrity should not be understood as mere coherence, nor as a static maintenance of the moral status quo, but as being firmly rooted in one’s own identity yet open to novelty and especially to the novelty represented by transformative moral experiences. (shrink)