Philosophy has always had a rather vexed view of the emotions commonly regarding them as a disturbing and possibly dangerous influence that tend to counteract reason's authority over human nature. In modern times, from Descartes and Hume onwards, emotions have thus, more often than not, been regarded as a purely affective phenomenon having little or no cognitive content and meaning, and have therefore not been considered to be of interest for philosophy.

Within the last 10-15 years, however, philosophical interest in the emotions has exploded. Countless monographs, anthologies and papers are published on the topic every year; an ever increasing number of conferences focus on emotions and philosophers working within philosophy of mind, ethics, epistemology and political philosophy has begun to acknowledge that emotions appears to play an important and irreducible role within their chosen sub-discipline.

One of the main causes for this rather remarkable development is rise of the so called "cognitive approach" to the emotions. In opposition to Cartesian dualism and Humean non-cognitivism philosophers such as Robert Solomon, Ronald de Sousa, Peter Goldie, Martha Nussbaum and others have argued that emotions are not merely blind, invasive promptings from beyond the bounds of reason, but should rather be regarded as intimately related to cognition and rationality. The exact nature of this relationship is of course heavily debated. Are emotions identical with cognitive judgments? Do they presuppose such judgements or do they perhaps constitute a necessary condition for the very possibility of cognition? How and to what degree do feelings contribute to the phenomenology of emotions? But the basic idea, that emotions are not "beyond the pale" but are somehow connected with or dependent on human cognition, has been widely accepted and hugely influential.

Philosophy & The Emotions: A Reader provides a useful and informative map of the development of the cognitive approach and in the process introduces the background for and content of some of the main problems and discussions of the contemporary debate. Beginning with William James' seminal paper "What is an Emotion" the anthology collects a number of influential modern contributions to the philosophical discussion of the emotions, focusing in particular on the cognitive approach. Both proponents and critics of this approach are represented, often with papers that directly confront and counters other papers included in the collection. The anthology thus vividly portrays the dialectical push and pull of philosophical debate, showing us how arguments and counterarguments subtly change and transform the positions of the people involved in the debate.

In my opinion Philosophy & The Emotions thus provides exactly what it promises, namely a "…record [of the] important stages in the contemporary emergence and development of the cognitive or judgmental analysis of the emotions." ("Introduction2, p. 9). I will therefore not comment on any of the papers in the anthology or on the particular topics discussed. Let me instead mention one minor problem, which may influence the usefulness of the anthology as a textbook for introductory seminars on the contemporary philosophical discussion of emotions, which quite obviously is the primary intended purpose of the book.

In his introduction Stephen Leighton presents and briefly discusses each of the papers included in the anthology. In my opinion a broader outline of the development of the cognitive approach, supplemented with brief introductions to the papers would have been more useful. Brief abstracts do convey much more than the bare outline of the arguments contained in the different papers and, as we all know, in philosophical discussions the devil is in the details. Besides; to really understand and appreciate Leighton's "Introduction" you first have to actually read the papers he refers to, which makes the term "Introduction" something of a misnomer. Furthermore, Leighton simply assumes that his readers are familiar with the distinction between feelings and emotions. That may well be true for most philosophers working on emotions, but it surely cannot, and should not, be assumed to be true for every graduate student taking an introductory course on the philosophy of the emotions. This is something which should be kept in mind by those planning to use this otherwise excellent anthology as part of their curriculum.

© 2009 Carsten Fogh Nielsen

Carsten Fogh Nielsen, MA, post graduate student, University of Aarhus. Main interests: Kant, moral philosophy and the philosophy of popular culture

Keywords: emotions, philosophy