Emotions in the Moral Life
Full Title: Emotions in the Moral Life
Author / Editor: Robert C. Roberts
Publisher: Cambridge University Press, 2015
Review © Metapsychology Vol. 20, No. 45
Reviewer: Robert Zaborowski
The book is intended to be an introduction to the analysis of relation between human virtues and emotions. R. C. Roberts already published another book on emotions in 2003[[1]] so the book under review looks as a middle step especially since there is no conclusion and, more, we are told that a more comprehensive study is in progress and will be published “in the not too distant future” (211).
The first chapter is mainly a discussion with Rosalind Hursthouse’s and Michael Slote’s approaches to virtue ethics. The criticism Roberts makes is meant to help settle his own description, that is to present the concepts of emotions and virtues in their interconnections. Roberts makes it clear to the reader that his “own framework is Christianity” (24), though, I must say, it is not particularly referred to in Roberts’ argument till chapter 8.
In chapter 2 Roberts overviews the kinds of virtues (epistemic, practical, consequential, eudaimonistic, aretaic, intrinsic) in their relation to the roles played by emotions. He underlines that “emotions play a variety of roles in the moral life, for better and for worse” (26) because they enhance and block (or degrade) moral knowledge. He writes: “emotions of almost all types […] have positive moral status – also [in] some instances of almost all types […] negative moral status” (32) I find this point remarkable because by making it Roberts surpasses the one-sidedness so often offered in the philosophical debate (emotions are considered as either only good or only bad). Historically, an approach similar to Roberts’ was supported by Plato[[2]], Aristotle and Descartes.
In chapter 3 the reader learns that the interconnections of virtues and emotions are to be regarded not from the point of moral theory but from the point of “basic emotional psychology of the virtues” (38). This includes epistemic dimensions of emotions. Roberts draws a parallel between perceptions and emotions, both being construals of sorts with the difference that perceptions involve concepts (a famous case of duck/rabbit), while emotions are construals based on concern: only what one cares about can become the object of a specific emotion for him. Different kinds of concerns bring about different emotions in apparently similar situations: whether you are afraid of a snake or rejoiced at seeing it depends on whether you are or are not a herpetologist. Accordingly emotions are concern-plus-situation (or context) construals.
In chapter 4 Roberts discusses eight objections against considering emotions as perceptions or something similar to them. One of them is that whereas perceptions pertain to present objects, emotions can be related to absent ones. Roberts’ answer to this is that construals, both perceptions and emotions, cannot be reduced to having sensory content only: they possess a non-sensory content as well. Here, I think, Roberts could also say that in stating that emotions are perceptions of values the term perceptions is taken in a different sense than sense-perception. After all, the distinction lies in the presentedness of objects: physical presentedness in the case of perceptions differs from mental presentedness in the case of emotions (see e.g. Alexius Meinong). Drawing on Roberts’ view it could be said that a value perceived in emotion is given as present even if the object carrying the value is physically absent.
Chapter 5 is about true and false emotions, that is about emotions representing situations correctly or incorrectly. Since emotions are about representing they depend on subject’s skills or competence and dispositions. A right emotion is an emotion conforming “to standards that are not themselves emotions […] the standard of an ideally developed person” (93). I take it to be an attractive postulate, since as long as we don’t know (how is) such a person we are unable to get knowledge about these standards. Even if any of us experiences the right emotions how can it be known? Roberts points to Aristotle’s solution of the question. He assumes that emotional truth lies is the middle. But, again, how to know the middle? To say that it is a matter of calculation and that the middle “is equidistant from each of the extremes” (96) is either too general or too schematic. To know the middle one should know the two extremes in several respects (object, reason, intensity, duration, way, time of an emotion). Given they are not linear or spatial parameters, they are hard, if at all possible, to grasp. This is what Roberts is well aware of when he says: “[a]nger doesn’t come in amounts […] [i]t also varies along dimensions of non-quantitative appropriateness” (97). If so, how to know the canon of “your anger about what the boss said to you this afternoon”? (97) Roberts’ solution is to translate emotional truth into theological emotional truth and to appeal to “the sovereign personal government of the universe” (112).
In chapter 6 Roberts investigates the relation between emotions and actions. More precisely he argues that emotions’ moral value is revealed by motivating moral acts. By the way in which emotions motivate actions we consider them more or less rational. Roberts remarks that although we meet emotions “not attended by the desire to do anything in particular” (116), a majority of emotions bring out actions which are to be understood “by way of satisfying the emotion’s consequent concern” (118). Yet one might wonder if emotions as such lead to actions or if they do so via desires they trigger. To take the typical example of fear: does a frightened person behave in such and such a way, e.g. runs away, as a direct consequence of her being frightened or is she doing so because fear produces a desire to make her disappear? For Roberts, “[f]or motivation, desire is needed.” (120). Because Roberts’ understanding of emotions as “concern-based construals […] conceptually particularized ways of caring about states of affairs […]” (134) applies to “the majority of cases”, we should maybe be cautious with generalizing this description which, I am afraid, leads to a kind of panmoralism. If, in fact, not all emotions are morally relevant (e.g. the joy of listening to music or the desire to learn more about geometry), a connection with value is not an intrinsic feature of them. In this case Roberts’ claim is a weak one and should be better spelled out as relating to just one subclass of emotions (moral emotions?).
Chapter 7 is about emotions in personal relationship. For Roberts emotions are what personal relationships are formed by in large part. He makes several useful distinctions, among them a distinction between being relationally good and fitting a situational object and another one concerning moral value and relational value. In claiming that an emotional response in a relationship depends on moral character he may be, however, too hasty as this presupposes that in every relationship persons are autonomous. Obviously this does not happen when psychological dependence is at stake: there can be apparent harmony, even a merging of two persons, yet no moral character of the depending person is in play. This is especially valid for the feeling of guilt (which Roberts discusses) which can be felt either because of a harm actually committed or because it has been inculcated by a dominating person, in which case it is inaccurate. In what concerns friendship Roberts understands it in a complex way: it is composed not only of dispositions but includes also various actions, thoughts, emotions, feelings and awareness.
The last two chapters have surprisingly less to do with emotions. In chapter 8 Roberts limits his analysis to the nature of happiness (which includes objective and subjective happiness). To be sure, he understands it as “more than feeling good” (158). Ideal happiness is made up of metaphysical attunement (character) and circumstancial attunement (satisfaction). Roberts discusses passages from literature and also includes the words spoken by Wittgenstein to Mrs. Bevan two days before his death; and sometimes we find truisms (e.g. “Emotions that are based on shallow concerns are shallow […]”, (167)). This chapter is about the meaning of life, with a focus on Christian view rather than on the relation between virtues and emotions.
Chapter 9 is meant to be a “prolegomena” to Roberts’ next book. He mentions how virtues differ from and depend on each other. Both points are reminiscent of Socrates’ discussion in Plato’s early dialogues. For Roberts – like for Aristotle – the virtue sometimes “gets its name from the emotion” (198). This is the case of courage and friendship. In Roberts’ view emotions are connected with virtues in two ways: either by expressing them or by being “managed, dispelled or missed out” by them (202). Roberts suggests, though in a sketchy way, the aretaic functions of emotions. It is visible, e.g. when an action is performed not because of a sense of duty but out of concern for justice and truth.
Roberts’ book is finely structured and, therefore, easy and pleasant to read: almost every single chapter has an introduction and a conclusion.[[3]] Yet, I am still uncertain how to understand the somewhat paradoxical expression “unfelt emotions” (49). Roberts left it unexplained. Because of what is said later, I was inclined to think that he means unaware emotions (75: “I felt my bodily reaction before I felt the emotion, and came to feel the emotion only upon interpreting my bodily reaction. […] construal doesn’t require awareness of construal”) or unconscious emotions (86: “felt emotions […] unconscious emotions”), but I must have misunderstood him since, in another chapter, he claims that “you cannot be unaware of what you feel” (116).
The book contains redundancies. For instance Aristotle’s EN 1125b is quoted or referred to at least five times (31, 84, 92, 99, 200). This is because Roberts sides with Aristotle by claiming that a virtuous person’s emotions are reliable while a wicked one’s are not. This is a crucial and hence recurrent theme of the book. Now, the problem with this approach is that it leads to a circular argument: emotions of a virtuous person are reliable whereas a virtuous person is the one whose emotions are reliable. To say that a virtuous person’s emotions are true perceptions of values helps little. Is this claim normative or descriptive? Roberts remarks that Aristotle doesn’t set the rule. But Roberts doesn’t set it either, I am afraid. He suggests to proceed by approximation (“with reference to what “we” think and praise and blame” (100)). We will agree that typically we follow Socrates rather than Alcibiades. But Roberts notices that emotional truth is culture- and tradition-dependent, “never absolute and final” (102). This may give rise to a more general objection to his account. Given that emotions play an epistemic role and their epistemic role has to do with values, the rightness of emotions has to be central. But at this point an aporia appears and the analogy with perceptions is of no avail. Seeing objects and feeling them is not much the same insofar as we can find, or so we do believe, a check for the rightness of perceptions, say he who is expert in music and recognizes intervals or pitches in a trustworthy manner which, in turn, can be checked by a gauge, while we can’t do this for particular values represented by emotions of this or that person. Physicists may tell us about, say, the frequency of waves corresponding to colors perceived (though not of course about what it is like to see a body emitting waves of particular frequency), whereas we lack experts and instruments to analyses the real nature of values. Objects of feelings are not of the kind as to produce specific feelings. Or I am wrong and Roberts’ example of brutality is a good example of a property existing independently. By analogy to colors, we may expect what feeling it provokes (or should provoke, if we prefer to stay on normative rather than descriptive grounds) and if another or different, let alone opposite, feelings emerge, we may say that the subject is mistaken quite like someone who sees red looking at the body emitting waves of frequency of ca 550 THz (which is green). But if this is Roberts’ position I would be interested in knowing how far it does depart from Max Scheler’s emotional intuitionism, called also non-formal apriorism.
All in all this an inspiring book. In his analysis Roberts is attentive to the intricacies of emotions (e.g. “Emotions often [sic!] have important consequences […]” (121), “Actions can and typically do derive from more than one emotion.” (125), and other passages referred to above), but on a more general level such nuances, it seems to me, are left out of the picture which weakens Roberts’ conclusions.
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[[1]] See R. C. Roberts, Emotions: An Essay in Aid of Moral Psychology, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge 2013.
[[2]] Plato – which is rare – is mentioned in this context (see 35). This is important insofar as Plato is most often taken to be representative or paradigmatic of the negative approach to emotions.
[3]] I was surprised to find misprints in what is a CUP paperback of a previous book (e.g. “qewriva” (17)).
