4 PERO EL PROBLEMA SIGUE SIENDO LA CULTURA

Introduction

In the previous chapters, I identified a legacy of problematic views of emotion. These views are problematic because they characterize emotions too crudely and construe the value of emotion too narrowly. I have identified remnants of this legacy in contemporary theory and practice, and argued that as a result of this problematic legacy, the threshold of emotional intensity perceived as acceptable is lower than it ought to be. I have argued that there is an anti- emotion bias consistent with this legacy that commonly results in mistaken judgments of emotional responses (especially emotional responses to oppression). In light of these

observations and arguments, I concur with D’Arms and Jacobson that “the philosophical study of the emotions must be far more delicate than it has been.”251 That is, there is a need for increased care and nuance in theorizing and evaluating emotion.

In this chapter, I offer the beginnings of a solution. Some changes are in order that will help to facilitate recognition of the complexity and expansive value of emotion. First, we ought to pay more attention to the variety of evaluative standards by which we assess emotion in our theories and everyday judgment. Paying attention to the many ways emotion can be good or bad will result in greater appreciation of the complexity of emotion, and is likely to expand our

251 _{D’Arms and Jacobson, op. cit., 88}

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conception of the range of emotion that is valuable and appropriate. Beyond simply acknowledging the variety of standards, we ought to take seriously the gravity of conflict between standards. Finally, we ought to accord emotional responses some (defeasible)

“presumption of warrant.” That is: absent countervailing evidence, we are justified in assuming our emotional responses are warranted. Approaching emotion in these ways will help to avoid theoretical errors and mistaken judgments, provide a more complete understanding of the emotions, and suggest new ways of thinking about emotional life.

In what follows, I briefly review the types of evaluative standards and the ways the can come into conflict. Then, I say a bit about the justification for my three proposals and show how they might help to improve theoretical and practical evaluations of emotion. Finally, I consider what this means for the work of dismantling oppression. Given that evaluations of emotional responses to oppression are especially vulnerable to error, my proposals not only improve our philosophical theories of emotion, but are an important part of the project of dismantling racist and sexist oppression.

The variety of evaluative standards

Let’s review the various standards that might be used to evaluate emotion. Evaluating an emotion by moral standards might include considering whether an emotion leads to moral or immoral behavior; whether it opens up the possibility for forgiveness; or whether it enables sympathy. Criticisms of student outrage, for example, included the claim that outrage motivated them to bully and malign innocent people. We might also consider whether the emotion itself is somehow moral or immoral. Hatred and envy are sometimes regarded as morally bad to feel, for example. An emotion might be admirable or criticizeable if it constitutes a kind of moral

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of moral achievement insofar as it requires conceiving of oneself as an equally worthy moral agent, builds self-respect, and flows from the accurate perception of certain kinds of moral facts (e.g. that one has been wronged).252

Judgments of whether an emotion is good or bad for one’s well-being could include determining how it contributes to an individual’s ability to cope, or how the emotion affects one’s ability to flourish or find meaning in life. For example, in Viktor Frankl’s account of how it was possible to create a fulfilling and meaningful life even after surviving the horrors of a concentration camp, he observes that survivors who remained bitter were not able to find meaning.253 So, we might think that bitterness is bad for well-being. Haidt (plausibly) implies that “constant outrage” makes it difficult or impossible to flourish. It also seems plausible that experiencing some measure of joy or gratitude is part of what it is to have well-being.

We can also judge whether an emotion is strategically useful or counterproductive to specific ends that do not necessarily fit within the scope of morality or well-being. Anger, for example, could be counterproductive if it alienates a person with whom one hoped to be friends. We can evaluate the impact of anger on the aim of developing a particular friendship separately from moral implications or the effect on well-being. Or, we might imagine that an artist creates their best work in the midst of despair—the despair is conducive to creating great art even if it has a negative impact on the artist’s well-being.

252 _{See, for example: LordeA. (2007). The Uses of Anger: Women Responding to Racism. In: Sister Outsider:}

Essays & Speeches by Audre Lorde, Berkeley: Crossing Press; Srinivasan, A. (2018), The Aptness of Anger. Journal of Political Philosophy. 26 (2): 123-144; Frye, Marilyn (1983). “A note on anger” in The Politics of Reality: Essays in Feminist Theory. The Crossing Press; Bell, M. (2009). Anger, Virtue, and Oppression. In Lisa Tessman

(ed.), Feminist Ethics and Social and Political Philosophy: Theorizing the Non-Ideal. Springer. pp. 165-183 253 _{Frankl, V. E. (1984). Man's search for meaning: An introduction to logotherapy. New York: Simon & Schuster.}

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Finally, an emotion can be evaluated by standards of fit. An emotion is fitting (or apt) when it “fits” the situation. Outrage is fitting, for example, when a person is victim to egregious wrongdoing. If an individual is outraged but there has been no actual wrongdoing, then their outrage is inapt (or ill-fitting). An emotional response might also be judged inapt (or ill-fitting) if its “size” is judged to be disproportionate to the situation. Loss of a favorite pair of earrings could make some sadness appropriate; death of a loved one constitutes a much greater loss and makes much more intense sadness appropriate.

It is important to note that these standards can come into conflict. For example, it might be inapt but also strategically useful to express outrage in a given moment. A child’s outrage at their parent who refuses to buy them candy is not apt, nevertheless, it would be strategic for the child to express outrage loudly and persistently in the checkout line if it results in the parent giving in to their demand for candy. Or consider Frankl’s discussion of the bitter Holocaust survivor. The bitterness is perfectly apt, but it undermines well-being.

Justifying the three proposals

Once the variety of standards has been identified, I should think it relatively obvious and uncontroversial that we ought to attend to it in our evaluations of emotion. Paying attention to the variety of standards means that if an emotion is evaluated exclusively along a single dimension, it ought to be acknowledged that this is an incomplete evaluation. “All-things- considered” judgments ought to evaluate each of these dimensions, and provide arguments for how to prioritize or weigh each dimension in the case of conflict.

Taking seriously the gravity of conflict means that the multiple standards should not just be acknowledged, but considered. Recall the examples Srinivasan provides—those who claim that people ought not to feel counterproductive anger. The aptness of counterproductive anger

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may be superficially acknowledged but it is then brushed aside without argument (e.g. “Your anger is apt but what good will it do you?”). Serious consideration demands recognition of the normative conflict that is present when standards diverge. Even if there is a good argument for prioritizing the demands of one standard over another, recognizing the weight of the normative conflict means actually providing that argument. If one is urged to let go of counterproductive anger in service of some political goal, she ought to be given reasons why that political goal should be prioritized over feeling apt emotion. It may also involve recognizing the damage of conflict. That is, suppressing anger in order to achieve a political goal is a sacrifice and should be perceived as such.

My third suggestion is the most controversial: that we ought to accord our emotional responses a “default presumption of warrant.” I borrow this idea from Justin D’Arms. D’Arms’ claim is based on the fact that emotional reactions are “typically experienced as sensitivities to evaluative features of the world,” and “amenable to forms of rational assessment.”254 _{Feeling sad}

is a reason to believe that something is sad, feeling shame a reason to believe that something is shameful. Of course, these feelings are not proof that an event is sad or an action shameful. One might be mistaken about the facts or subject to distorted notions of what is shameful or sad about something other than what seems sad in the moment. Still, because those emotions are sensitive to certain features of the world, (absent other considerations) it is justified to grant some

authority to emotional responses in evaluations of whether something is sad or shameful. Put another way: it is reasonable to assume as a default position that emotional responses are fitting. To reiterate: this is defeasible. I am not claiming that most emotional responses are

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warranted, that inapt responses are rare, or that it is especially difficult to make the case that an emotion is inapt. I am not claiming that reflection upon emotional responses is unnecessary, or only called for if we are confronted with some glaring inconsistency. Rather, the claim is simply that given the ways in which emotions are sensitive to certain features of the world, we should approach them, initially, as if they are fitting.

It might seem unclear why this presumption is justified, given that emotional responses do not infallibly track reality. It also might seem as if we would come to more or less the same result with either the opposite approach (a defeasible presumption that emotions are

inappropriate unless and until we can articulate why they are fitting) or with complete

agnosticism about whether they are fitting. If these are defeasible presumptions, it might seem as if (at least in the ideal world) one would come to the same conclusions no matter the starting place. There are three reasons why I think we nevertheless ought to start with a presumption of warrant.

First, we are not in the ideal world. In this world (at least: in the dominant culture of this part of the world) there is a legacy of ideas which are hostile to emotion. Anti-emotion bias is common. The presumption of warrant may serve as a gentle corrective to prevailing attitudes and norms that tend to put emotion on the defensive from the start. Perhaps more importantly,

starting with the presumption that emotions are inapt suggests that the appropriate default

emotional state is dispassion. This is not true of a human life. It is difficult to imagine describing a single day in the life of a human that does not make it fitting to feel a variety of emotions. If one’s starting place is the presumption that emotions are inapt, it disconnects emotions from the features of the world to which they respond. It is a bit like the way one might regard a broken clock stuck at 2:30. That the clock reads 2:30 is never a reason to believe it is actually 2:30,

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although twice a day it happens to show the correct time. The difference is that emotions don’t just happen to be appropriate responses once in a while. They are sensitive to features of the world such that when emotions arise there is reason to think those features are the cause, however cautious we might want to be given the possibility of “false positives.”

How the proposals improve evaluations of emotion

We can see how implementing these proposals would preclude the kinds of mistakes D’Arms and Srinivasan identify, and which I identify in Chapter 2. Conflating standards—for example: claiming that intense emotions are inapt because they are counterproductive to some aim—can be avoided by paying attention to the different evaluative standards. Taking seriously the gravity of conflicts between them can prevent any one disadvantageous aspect of an emotion from being treated as a dispositive reason not to feel it unless further argument is given.

A more complete picture: Haidt and the conflict between standards

Implementing these solutions also reveals a more robust understanding of emotion. Consider Haidt’s view. He claims his argument is a practical one, giving a cursory

acknowledgement of the possible fittingness of certain responses but concluding they are nevertheless counterproductive and bad for well-being and thus ought to be avoided. Let us stipulate that Haidt is right regarding the case of Yale student outrage: the students would better achieve their goals of change and also improve their own well-being if they avoided such outrage. Consider how this situation appears on Haidt’s view and how it would appear if one adopted the solutions I am suggesting. On Haidt’s view, we never assume unpleasant emotions are warranted. Upon feeling outrage, the students ought to try “talking [themselves] down from

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the idea that [the]…emotional response represents something true or important.”255 _What

happens if the students determine that their outrage does represent something true or important? Haidt sidesteps this question, insisting that they will be better off either way if they calm down. On my view, when the students feel outrage, they do not automatically assume it is unwarranted. Reflecting on their rage, they identify features of the situation that make their response

appropriate, articulated in their open letter. Nevertheless, we can imagine a student deciding they would be more effective in bringing about change if they suppress the outrage. Or, we can imagine a student refusing to allow outrage to bubble up at all, avoiding involvement in the incident in order to protect her well-being,

The starting point for Haidt’s view is suspicion of emotion: he assumes that it will be inapt or cause harm. As discussed in the previous section, this approach skips past and obscures the point that emotions are sensitive responses to the world. We see the result of approaching emotions with suspicion in Haidt’s failure to distinguish apt from inapt emotion. At first he seems to justify suspicion by pointing out that emotions are not always fitting, but then brushes past the significance of apt emotion, insisting his argument is based on well-being and practical efficacy. Presumptive warrant, proper attention to the variety of standards, and serious

consideration of conflict between standards enable us to account for the aptness of emotion even if we ultimately come to the same conclusion (that we ought to avoid or decrease outrage. My solutions are conducive to a more complete picture of the value of emotion than Haidt’s. Though both might ultimately conclude that it is better not to feel the outrage, on my view we do not lose the sense of how emotions are connected to the world, or of the cost incurred when standards

255 _{Haidt., J and Lukianoff, G (2015). “The Coddling of the American Mind” The Atlantic. Retrieved from}

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conflict. There is space for important theoretical concepts such as affective injustice which are likely to be passed over on Haidt’s view.

Increased nuance: Nussbaum and objects of emotion

These solutions can also open up space for a more nuanced understanding of both the objects of emotion and the emotions themselves. Consider Nussbaum’s view on anger. Although Nussbaum does not explicitly begin from a place of pure suspicion, she seems to veer closer to suspicion than a presumption of warrant. She highlights the fallibility of emotional response, beginning her characterization of anger with Aristotle’s definition, pointing out that “By twice repeating 'imagined' (phainomenês), Aristotle emphasizes that what is relevant to the emotion is the way the situation is seen from the angry person's viewpoint, not the way it really is, which could, of course, be different.” 256 _{Her book on anger begins with the story of the Furies I}

discussed in Chapter 1, a depiction of anger that is neither subtle nor flattering (to put it mildly). More than anything, it is difficult to imagine how she would arrive at such a narrow conception of anger without starting off already suspicious of its value.

It will help to elaborate on Nussbaum’s conception of anger. On her view, a wish for payback is a conceptual part of anger. There are two kinds of standard anger: anger that is a response to significant harm, and anger that is a response to “status-injury.” Anger in the first case in inapt, because it rests on the mistaken belief that getting revenge (i.e. making the offender suffer) will somehow right the original wrong. Anger in the second case may be apt: revenge that damages the offender’s status might indeed improve one’s own relative status. But in this case the anger is morally problematic. One ought not to be so concerned with one’s own

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standing, according to Nussbaum. So, she concludes that one ought virtually never to feel anger, and that responses which do not contain the notion of revenge are not really anger at all:

“I am hereby renouncing a range of things I said in earlier work about the constructive role of anger, and I am now saying something very radical: that in a sane and not

excessively anxious and status-focused person, anger's idea of retribution or payback is a brief dream or cloud, soon dispelled by saner thoughts of personal and social welfare. So anger (if we understand it to involve, internally, a wish for retributive suffering) quickly puts itself out of business, in that even the residual focus on punishing the offender is soon seen as part of a set of projects for improving both offenders and society--and the emotion that has this goal is not so easy to see as anger. It looks more like compassionate