On the Temporality of Emotions

An Essay on Grief, Anger, and Love

Bibliographic Data

ID8077839
AuthorsBerislav Marušić (0000-0002-4165-4313, Senior Lecturer in Philosophy, University of Edinburgh, corresponding author), Berislav Marusi&#263
Year2022
Publication date2022-08-25
Open AccessNo
TypeBOOK
VenueOn the Temporality of Emotions (SOURCE_BOOK)
PublisherOxford University PressOxford (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.1093/oso/9780198851165.001.0001
OpenAlexW4297892700
Open LibraryOL37990183M
ISBN9780198851165
LanguageEN
Citations received16
References cited37

Many emotions attenuate more rapidly than the significance of the considerations that gives rise to them as we accommodate ourselves to what happens. Grief often diminishes quickly, even though the dead continue to matter to us; anger often evaporates, even though the injustice to which it responds remains undiminished. Nonetheless, such accommodation seems somehow all right: It would be a mistake to be persistently grieving or to be relentlessly angry. But how could it be all right, if the reasons for grief and anger remain significant? However, matters are different with love. Unlike grief and anger, whose diminution is puzzling, what seems puzzling in the case of love is its continuation. In its self-consciousness, love is endless: In loving someone, we foresee no end to our love. Yet we know that love can end: Hearts are broken, lovers betrayed, and people grow apart. Does the self-consciousness of love involve a mistake? Or can we reasonably think of our love as lasting? On the Temporality of Emotions argues that whereas grief and anger reasonably diminish, love can rationally be conceived as endless. The book draws on contemporary theories of the emotions, especially grief and love, as well as on recent accounts of reasons. It puts forward an account of emotional self-consciousness as, at once, embodied and rational. Nonetheless, it maintains that accommodation reveals an irreconcilable moment in our emotional life, a moment that philosophical reflection ought not seek to resolve, lest our emotions are conceived as too neat and philosophy as too comforting

Aesthetics · Anger · Consciousness · Dilemma · Embodied cognition · Epistemology · Grief · Mistake · Psychoanalysis · Psychotherapist · Temporality · Emotions and Moral Behavior · Epistemology, Ethics, and Metaphysics · Philosophical Ethics and Theory · Psychology · Law · Philosophy · Social Psychology