Passion in Action

With respect to our emotions, we are both active and passive; they belong to us but we have no direct control over them. Reconceiving the theory of emotion, Passion in Action resolves this dichotomy by treating emotions as motivational states, responses to reason but at the same time felt as forces on how we think about what to do.



Developing a sophisticated and original approach to the nature of emotion, this volume demonstrates that the way we feel about things is simultaneously a product of our reason and a force on it-an aspect both of our agency and of our passivity. As a force on the way we think about things, emotions are passions and felt as such. As a product of the way we think about things, having emotions means we find values in our world. Starting from a conception of what it is to be sensitive to reason, Stout develops an account of emotional dispositions as manifested in forming and maintaining goals. When these dispositions are active we feel like behaving in certain ways, and this feeling characterizes the phenomenological aspect of emotional states. Each type of emotion corresponds to a characteristic behavioural pattern. Since emotional states are rational responses to features of our environment, having an emotion means that we are treating our environment as meriting that emotional state - i.e. as having value. It follows that every emotion corresponds to a rational perspective - a way of thinking about things. The familiar problem of emotional recalcitrance - where you know your emotional state is not rational but cannot stop feeling that way - is resolved by showing how we may have rational perspectives on our rational perspectives.