I found both of these chapters from Evans fascinating. But I like to think that I was already an avid supporter of emotion so his arguments for emotion today and explanations for their usefulness weren’t what struck me the most. Yes, Aristotle’s “golden mean” makes a lot of sense when examining the role of emotion and virtue in our lives. I also believe, being someone with a positive view of emotion, that it certainly is better to be an emotional human than a Vulcan. And I must disagree with C.S. Lewis and his claim that love is a man-made product.

What really stood out to me, however, were “higher cognitive emotions”. First of all, I had never seen emotion broken down into categories based on the innateness of the emotion. It was new and it made a whole lot of sense. And with higher cognitive emotions (love, guilt, shame, pride, envy, jealousy, and embarrassment) I realized just how social some emotion really is. Like Evans says, “love and guilt require other people for their existence.”  This got me thinking about how what I take pride in, what I envy, what I am embarrassed by usually has to do with the values and interests of my peer group. I am proud of a new pair of Jordan because my friends will admire them. I am jealous of my ex’s new man. I envy the neighbor’s new S-class Benz. The realization that most of our emotion, or at least what triggers it, is dictated by our social environment means that we don’t even have full control over our own emotions, whether we would like to or not.

 

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *