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The Trouble with Ambivalent Emotions

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  15 September 2010

Kristján Kristjánsson
Kristján Kristjánsson*
Affiliation:
University of Iceland
*
kk9@hi.is
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Abstract

Mixed or ambivalent emotions have long intrigued philosophers. I dissect various putative cases of emotional ambivalence and conclude that the alleged ‘psychological problem’ surrounding them admits of a solution. That problem has, however, often been conflated with a ‘moral problem’ – of how one should react morally to such ambivalence – which remains active even after the psychological one has been solved. I discuss how the moral problem hits hardest at virtue ethics, old and new. I distinguish between particularist and generalist (Aristotelian) virtue ethics, and pay special attention to the latter. After discussing critically previous attempts at an Aristotelian solution of the ‘moral problem’ by McDowell, Stark and Carr, I pay special attention to the role of phronesis as a second-order meta-emotion and mediator, and consider how that may offer a way out of the impasse. I finally present some concluding remarks about the idea of a constructive dividedness of mind.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy , Volume 85 , Issue 4 , October 2010 , pp. 485 - 510
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 2010

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References

1 On the sincerity and authenticity of emotions, see Salmela, M., ‘What Is Emotional Authenticity?’, Journal for the Theory of Social Behaviour 35 (2005), 209–230CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Greenspan, P.S. started the trend with her paper ‘A Case of Mixed Feelings: Ambivalence and the Logic of Emotion’, Explaining Emotions, Rorty, A.O. (ed.) (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980), 223–250Google Scholar. See also Greenspan, P.S., Emotions and Reason: An Inquiry into Emotional Justification (London: Routledge, 1988)Google Scholar; Stark, S., ‘Virtue and Emotion’, Noûs 35 (2001), 440–455CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Pugmire, D., Sound Sentiments: Integrity in the Emotions (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, Ch. 7; Carr, D., ‘Feelings in Moral Conflict and the Hazards of Emotional Intelligence’, Ethical Theory and Moral Practice 5 (2002), 3–21CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and, most recently, Carr, D., ‘Virtue, Mixed Emotions and Moral Ambivalence’, Philosophy 84 (2009), 31–46CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 Pugmire, op. cit. note 2, 170.

4 For various references to the competing theoretical paradigms in psychology, see Williams, P. and Aaker, J. L., ‘Can Mixed Emotions Peacefully Coexist?’, Journal of Consumer Research 28 (2002), 636–649CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and Larsen, J. T., McGraw, A. P. and Cacioppo, J. T., ‘Can People Feel Happy and Sad at the Same Time?’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 81 (2001), 684–696CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed.

5 See e.g. Solomon's, R. C. chapter entitled ‘Against Valence’ in his Not Passion's Slave: Emotions and Choice (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, Ch. 10, and Kristjánsson, K., Justice and Desert-Based Emotions (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2006), 23–35Google Scholar.

6 Aristotle, On Rhetoric, trans. G. A. Kennedy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), 125 [1378b1–9].

7 Aristotle, op. cit. note 6, 161 [1388a29–38].

8 See Kristjánsson, op. cit. note 5, Ch. 1.2.

9 Larsen, McGraw and Cacioppo, op. cit. note 4, 694.

10 See further in Williams and Aaker, op. cit. note 4.

11 Greenspan, Emotions and Reason, 109.

12 Pugmire, op. cit. note 2, 173.

13 Pugmire, op. cit. note 2, 174.

14 See Jäger, C. and Bartsch, A., ‘Meta-Emotions’, Grazer Philosophische Studien 73 (2006), 179–204Google Scholar.

15 C. Tappolet seems to think that most, or perhaps all, cases of putative emotional ambivalence can be explained in this way: see her ‘Ambivalent Emotions and the Perceptual Account of Emotions’, Analysis 65 (2005), 229–233. Cf. Ben-Ze'ev, A., The Subtlety of Emotions (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2000), 439–441Google Scholar.

16 Larsen, McGraw and Cacioppo, op. cit. note 4.

17 See e.g. Ben-Ze'ev, A., ‘Hating the One You Love’, Philosophia 36 (2008), 277–283CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

18 This observation detracts from the aptness of the case that Carr uses as a paradigmatic one of emotional ambivalence in his two papers, op. cit. note 2, namely that of the heroine Chimene's simultaneous love and hate of the hero El Cid (who had killed her father). Carr could, however, easily reformulate his case in terms of specific emotions, which would then render the potential aptness of his subsequent argument untouched.

19 Greenspan, ‘A Case of Mixed Feelings’, 230.

20 Pugmire, op. cit. note 2, 176.

21 Ben-Ze'ev, The Subtlety of Emotions, 248–267.

22 Greenspan, ‘A Case of Mixed Feelings’, 243.

23 Pugmire, op. cit. note 2, esp. 177, 181–182, 188–189.

24 On a stricter reading of Pugmire's notion of emotional profundity, no non-profound emotion can be a ‘full-bodied’ emotion in the first place, and if an emotion is not ‘full-bodied’, it does not satisfy the normative standards that we demand for objectively warranted emotions. On this reading, a case such as Case 7 can only exist if it involves non-objectively warranted emotions. I would take issue with the demandingness of Pugmire's notion of emotional profundity, but arguing that point here would take me beyond my present purpose.

25 D'Arms, J. and Jacobson, D., ‘The Moralistic Fallacy: On the “Appropriateness” of Emotions’, Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 61 (2000), 65–90CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

26 Carr constitutes a welcome exception here. As can be seen from the titles of his two papers, op. cit. note 2, what he is interested in is moral ambivalence rather than emotional ambivalence per se.

27 Arguably, classical Millian utilitarianism would also make moral demands upon one's emotions and motives as it is concerned with ‘happiness’ in the widest sense.

28 It is easy to think of cases of ambivalent emotions also where the tension is not between two virtues but just, say, between two deeply rooted preferences. In what follows I focus exclusively on the former kind of tension.

29 Hursthouse, R., ‘Applying Virtue Ethics’, Virtues and Reasons: Philippa Foot and Moral Theory, Hursthouse, R., Lawrence, G. and Quinn, W. (eds.) (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1995), 57–75Google Scholar, esp. 61–62.

30 See further in Kristjánsson, K., Justifying Emotions: Pride and Jealousy (London: Routledge, 2002)Google Scholar, Ch. 2.2.

31 See Kristjánsson, K., ‘An Aristotelian Critique of Situationism’, Philosophy 83 (2008), 55–76CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

32 For a more detailed account, see Kristjánsson, K., Aristotle, Emotions, and Eduation (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007)Google Scholar.

33 This is the point of Aristotle's observation that we blame or praise persons not for their emotions qua occurrent episodes – say, for simply being angry – but qua settled character states (hexeis) that constitute virtues or vices, see Nicomachean Ethics, trans. T. Irwin (Indianapolis: Hackett Publishing, 1985), 41 [1105b20–1106a7].

34 This assumption seems to follow from Aristotle's definition of emotion – about which I say more later.

35 That is: when an emotion hits the golden mean of being felt at the right time, about the right thing, toward the right person(s), for the right end and in the right way: Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 44 [1106b17–35].

36 This seems to follow from Aristotle's distinction between virtue and continence, see Section 4 below.

37 Again, this seems to follow from Aristotle's distinction between virtue and continence, see Section 4 below.

38 McDowell, J., ‘Deliberation and Moral Development in Aristotle's Ethics’, Aristotle, Kant, and the Stoics: Rethinking Happiness and Duty, Engstrom, S. and Whiting, J. (eds.) (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 19–35Google Scholar. Cf. McDowell, J., ‘The Role of Eudaimonia in Aristotle's Ethics’, Essays on Aristotle's Ethics, Rorty, A. O. (ed.) (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980), 359–376Google Scholar.

39 See Stark, op. cit. note 2, for further analysis and critique.

40 For further analysis and critique, see Strandberg, C. A. J., ‘Aristotle's Internalism in the Nicomachean Ethics’, Journal of Value Inquiry 34 (2000), 71–87CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

41 See further in Kristjánsson, Aristotle, Emotions, and Education, Chs. 3 and 11.

42 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 150 [1139a30–35].

43 Railton, Peter is the classic example of a Humean moral externalist, see e.g. his Facts, Values, and Norms: Essays toward a Morality of Consequences (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

44 See e.g. Strandberg, op. cit. note 40.

45 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 6 [1095b4–5].

46 For a similar line of thought, see Greenspan, ‘A Case of Mixed Feelings’, 240.

47 See Stark, op. cit. note 2.

48 See Carr, ‘Virtue, Mixed Emotions and Moral Ambivalence’. I return to Carr's positive proposal in Section 5.

49 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 173–196 [1145a34–1151b33].

50 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 32, 52, 115, 175, 196 [1102b26–34, 1109a31–5, 1128b33–5, 1146a10–13, 1151b35–1152a4].

51 Cf. Greenspan's observation, albeit in a different context, that we ‘cannot simply decide to treat emotions, like judgements, as merely prima facie’, ‘A Case of Mixed Feelings’, 233.

52 See e.g. Nussbaum, M. C., Upheavals of Thought: The Intelligence of Emotions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

53 Aristotle, On Rhetoric, 121 [1378a20–22; my italics]. Cf. Kristjánsson, Aristotle, Emotions, and Education, 19.

54 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 171 [1145a1–3].

55 Wolf, S., ‘Moral Psychology and the Unity of the Virtues’, Ratio 20 (2007), 145–167CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

56 See e.g. Nussbaum, M. C., The Fragility of Goodness: Luck and Ethics in Greek Tragedy and Philosophy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986)Google Scholar – although Nussbaum goes much further than Aristotle in fetishising the tragic as an ineliminable part of the beauty of human life.

57 The mild person ‘seems to err more in the direction of deficiency [of anger], since the mild person is ready to pardon’: Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 105 [1125b35–1126a3]. Cf. Curzer, H. J., ‘How Good People Do Bad Things: Aristotle on the Misdeeds of the Virtuous’, Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy 28 (2005), 233–256Google Scholar.

58 For a further discussion and references to the empirical literature, see Kristjánsson, K., The Self and Its Emotions (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, Ch. 8. Cf., e.g., Hong, Y.-y., Wan, C., No, S. and Chiu, C.-y., ‘Multicultural Identities’, Handbook of Cultural Psychology, Kitayama, S. and Cohen, D. (eds.) (New York: Guilford, 2007), 323–345Google Scholar.

59 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 153, 154, 159, 164, 171 [1140a26–29, 1140b4–6, 1141b30–31, 1143a8–9, 1144b30–32].

60 Interestingly, Aristotle also divides the moral virtues into first-order and second-order ones. Megalopsychia (magnanimity or great-mindesness) is thus a second-order virtue which incorporates and makes the other virtues greater (and includes an emotional component: pridefulness): Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, esp. 99 [1123b28–1124a4]. Cf. Kristjánsson, Justifying Emotions, Chs. 3–4.

61 On the mediating role of phronesis in general, and its motivational component in particular, cf. (in a different context) Zagzebski, L. T., Virtues of the Mind: An Inquiry into the Nature of Virtue and the Ethical Foundations of Knowledge (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

62 Jäger and Bartsch, op. cit. note 14, 186.

63 Carr, ‘Feelings in Moral Conflict’, 18–20; Carr, ‘Virtue, Mixed Emotions and Moral Ambivalence’, 37, 43. Cf. Kristjánsson, Aristotle, Emotions, and Education, 92–93.

64 Aristotle, Nicomachean Ethics, 190, 197 [1150a15, 1152a25–6].

65 Cf. Greenspan's comment on how emotional ambivalence may ‘improve the agent's overall situation’, Emotions and Reasons, 127.

66 Carr comes close to such fetishism at times. Cf. also footnote 56 above.