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Précis de Philosophy of Emotion: A Contemporary Introduction

Christine Tappolet
What are emotions? What are their advantages and their dangers? Can one regulate one’s emotions? These are the main questions the book Philosophy of Emotion: A Contemporary Introduction tries to answers. This present text consists in a brief summary of the claims and arguments proposed in that book. The overall structure of the book is made explicit and the main elements of each chapter are spelled out.

Should We Bother With “Theories of the Emotions”?

Alexander Carty
Christine Tappolet’s Philosophy of Emotion: A Contemporary Introduction is a comprehensive inventory of recent developments in the philosophy of emotion. Part 2 of the book examines various theories that answer the first question from chapter 1: What is the essence of emotions? My commentary compares these theories with Amélie Oksenberg Rorty’s argument for a skeptical answer to this question.

No Reason to Focus on Emotional Episodes

Rodrigo Díaz
Christine Tappolet’s book Philosophy of Emotion: A Contemporary Introduction, like many other works in emotion theory, focuses primarily on emotional episodes at the expense of so-called “emotional dispositions.” I argue that there is no reason for theories of emotion to focus on emotional episodes or to reserve the term “emotion” for them.

What’s Love Got to Do With It?

Luc Faucher
In this paper, I focus on the case of romantic love to show that constructionist and biological approaches to emotions offer relatively similar views on the plasticity of this emotion. I suggest that the debates around these conceptions may have obscured a more interesting concept, that of emotional intelligence.

Comments on the Receptive Theory of Emotion

Miriam McCormick
These comments focus on chapter 6 of Christine Tappolet’s Philosophy of Emotion: A Contemporary Introduction, asking some questions about her preferred theory, what she calls the “receptive theory of emotions,” and pointing to some areas that could benefit from further clarification.

Being Ambitious About Emotions in Value Epistemology

Michael Milona
This commentary investigates chapter 7’s central thesis that emotions can be a source of immediate justification for evaluative beliefs. I focus on two key challenges to this thesis, one rooted in the purported unreliability of emotions and another in their own susceptibility to justification. My aim is to buttress the chapter’s responses to these challenges, charting promising avenues forward.

Emotions and Strength of Will

Catherine Rioux
Emotions often lead to akrasia and practical irrationality but can also help us respond to our practical reasons for action. If we think there exists an important distinction between akrasia and weakness of will, how should we then rethink emotions’ contribution and threats to practical rationality? By drawing on recent work on willpower, I invite Tappolet to consider this question.

Emotions and (Allegedly) Arational Actions

Jules Salomone-Sehr
I discuss Christine Tappolet's treatment of so-called arational actions (chapter 8). Brought to philosophical attention by Rosalind Hursthouse, arational actions are actions done simply because we are in the grip of an emotion (as when we leap up to reach for leaves out of joy). I argue that certainly many instances of so-called arational actions are in fact rational.

Emotion, Value, and the Normativity of Fittingness

Max Lewis
I sketch evidence for a normative view of fittingness that poses a challenge to the nonnormative view of fittingness that Christine Tappolet defends in Philosophy of Emotion (2023). This challenge is important given that fittingness is crucial to her view of evaluative features and thus to her view of emotions as representations of evaluative features.

Are Emotional Dispositions Central to Virtue?

Mauro Rossi
In this article, I offer some comments on chapter 10 of Christine Tappolet’s book Philosophy of Emotion: A Contemporary Introduction, the chapter entitled “Ethics and the Emotions”. After presenting the main theses that Tappolet defends in this chapter, I consider some possible replies that her opponents might offer.

Regulation, Fiction, and Flow

Ronnie de Sousa
Chapter 11 contains two primary topics, the regulation of emotions and questions arising from the power of music to arouse, express, or represent emotions. After some brief remarks about emotion regulation and a speculative thought about emotions in response to fiction, I raise some doubts about the discussion of “flow” in connection with listening to as opposed to performing music.

“Chapter 13”: The Political Value of Emotions

Laura Silva
Christine Tappolet had plans to include a thirteenth chapter, on the political value of emotions. As the chapter did not come to fruition, at least not in the current edition, I will here outline what I take to be the main political upshots of Tappolet’s philosophy of emotion.

Replies

Christine Tappolet
This text consists in replies to the commentaries on my book, Philosophy of Emotion: A Contemporary Introduction.