|
April 16-17, 2004
|
|
|
April 16-17, 2004
|
The Politics of Emotion Robert C. Solomon
University of Texas
Click images to enlarge.
ROBERT C. SOLOMON (Ph.D. 1967, Michigan) is Quincy Lee Centennial Professor of Philosophy and Business and a member of the Academy of Distinguished Teachers at the University of Texas. A specialist in post-Kantian continental philosophy, he has also published extensively on ethics, business ethics, the emotions, and the history of philosophy. Professor Solomon has written more than thirty books, including The Passions (Doubleday, 1976), In the Spirit of Hegel (Oxford, 1983), From Hegel to Existentialism (Oxford, 1987), Continental Philosophy Since 1750 (Oxford, 1988), Ethics and Excellence (Oxford, 1992), The Joy of Philosophy (Oxford, 1999), About Love (Madison, 2001), and Living with Nietzsche (Oxford, 2003). He co-authored (with Kathleen Higgins) What Nietzsche Really Said (Random House/Schocken, 2000) along with two widely used collections on Nietzsche. His more than 100 articles have appeared in many of the leading philosophy journals and in numerous books.
Before coming to Texas, Professor Solomon taught at Princeton, UCLA, and the University of Pittsburgh. He is a yearly visitor at the University of Auckland.
-- Abstract -- What is an emotion? William James asked that question over one hundred years ago, but the debate about emotions has gone on a very long time, since before Plato and Aristotle in the writings of ancient India and China (although the language of what we call emotion, changes considerably, both from culture to culture and from epoch to epoch). What I want to argue about emotion is that emotions are not exciting appearances on some mysterious Cartesian "inner" stage but rather "in the world," as performances and "expressions" in interpersonal and social space. Thus I want to talk about the politics of emotion, emotions as strategies.The "politics" of emotion might be distinguished in four different realms. There is first of all, a general thesis about the ontology-- or better, the conceptual geography-- of emotions, what they are, "where" they are to be located and the terms in which they should be discussed. Second, there is the most obvious sense in which emotions are political, that is, they are about interpersonal power, persuasion, manipulation, and intimidation. Anger is the most familiar example here, but love, jealousy, shame, resentment, envy, sadness and even despair deserve recognition as well. Third, there is what we might call the internal politics of emotion, the ways in which we position and (one might even say) manipulate ourselves in relation to the world, quite apart from the effects of our emotions or expressions on other people. Again, getting angry is a paradigm example. One gets angry to "save face," not only in other people's eyes (the overtly public politics of anger) but in one's own eyes. Finally, the politics of emotion extend to the "meta-"realm of emotion theory, from the seemingly routine "labeling" of emotion to full blown emotion description and theorizing. Here, multicultural considerations become especially intriguing.
Website constructed and maintained by Douglas Shrader / Department Chair Philosc@Oneonta.edu December 9, 2003
