Hostname: page-component-8448b6f56d-qsmjn Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-04-24T11:31:24.477Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Virtue, Mixed Emotions and Moral Ambivalence

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  23 January 2009

David Carr
David Carr
Affiliation:
University of Edinburgh
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

Aristotelian virtue ethics invests emotions and feelings with much moral significance. However, the moral and other conflicts that inevitably beset human life often give rise to states of emotional division and ambivalence with problematic implications for any understanding of virtue as complete psychic unity of character and conduct. For one thing, any admission that the virtuous are prey to conflicting passions and desires may seem to threaten the crucial virtue ethical distinction between the virtuous and the continent. One recent attempt to sustain this distinction – considered in this paper – maintains that the contrary-to-virtue emotions and desires of the virtuous (by contrast with those of the continent) must relinquish their motive power as reasons for action. Following some attention to the psychological status of feelings and emotions – in particular their complex relations with cognition and reason – this paper rejects this solution in favour of a more constructive view of emotional conflict.

Type
Research Article
Information
Philosophy , Volume 84 , Issue 1 , January 2009 , pp. 31 - 46
Copyright
Copyright © The Royal Institute of Philosophy 2009

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Lessing, Doris, The Golden Notebook (London: Harper Perennial, 2007), 413Google Scholar.

2 Reeve, C. D. C., Love's Confusions (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2005), 34CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

3 See, however, Stark, Susan, ‘Virtue and emotion’, Nous, 35, 3 (2001), 440–455CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Carr, D., ‘Feelings in moral conflict and the hazards of emotional intelligence’, Ethical Theory and Moral Practice, 5 (2002) 3–21CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Goldie, Peter, ‘Emotion, reason and virtue’, in Cruse, P. and Evans, D. (eds) Emotion, Evolution and Rationality, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004)Google Scholar.

4 Bedford, E., ‘Emotions’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 57 (1956/57) 283–304Google Scholar.

5 Peters, R.S., and Mace, C.A., ‘Emotions and the category of passivity’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 62 (1961/62) 117–42CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

6 Kenny, Anthony, Action, Emotion and Will (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1963)Google Scholar.

7 See, for example: Solomon, Robert, The Passions: The Myth and Nature of Human Emotion (Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press, 1983)Google Scholar; Solomon, Robert, ‘On emotions as judgements’, American Philosophical Quarterly, 25 (1988) 183–191Google Scholar; de Sousa, Ronald, The Rationality of Emotion (Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press, 1987)Google Scholar; Nussbaum, Martha C., ‘Emotions as judgements of value and importance’, in Bilimoria, P. and Mohanty, J.N. (eds) Relativism, Suffering and Beyond: Essays in Memory of Bimal K. Matilal (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1997), 231–251Google Scholar.

8 Aristotle, , The Nicomachean Ethics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1925) 63Google Scholar; see also Pears, David, ‘Courage as a mean’, in Rorty, Amelie (ed.) Essays on Aristotle's Ethics (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980) 171–188Google Scholar.

9 See, for example, Jones, C. Armon, Varieties of Affect (Harvester Wheatsheaf, 1991)Google Scholar; Pugmire, David, Rediscovering Emotion (Edinburgh University Press, 1998)Google Scholar; Goldie, Peter, The Emotions: A Philosophical Exploration (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2000)Google Scholar.

10 Op. cit., note 6.

11 Geach, P.T., ‘Two kinds of intentionality’, The Monist, 59 (1976) 306–320CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Geach, P.T., ‘Intentionality of thought versus intentionality of desire’, Grazer Philosophische Studien, 5 (1978) 131–138Google Scholar; Geach, P.T., Truth, Love and Immortality: An Introduction to McTaggart's Philosophy (London: Hutchinson University library, 1979)Google Scholar; see also Carr, D., ‘The logic of intentional verbs’, Philosophical Investigations, 7 (1984) 141–157CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

12 See Brentano, F., Psychology from and Empirical Standpoint (London: Routledge and Kegan Paul, 1973)Google Scholar.

13 Best, David, The Rationality of Feeling (London: Falmer, 1992)Google Scholar.

14 Op. cit. note 3.

15 See McDowell, J., ‘Are moral requirements hypothetical imperatives?’ Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 52, Supplement (1978) 13–29CrossRefGoogle Scholar; McDowell, J., ‘Virtue and reason’, The Monist, 62, (1979) 331–350CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

16 Woods, M., ‘Reasons for actions and desires’, Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, 46, Supplement (1972) 189–201CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

17 Smith, M., The Moral Problem (Oxford: Blackwell, 1995)Google Scholar.

18 See Carr, D., ‘Chastity and adultery’, American Philosophical Quarterly, 23, 4 (1986) 363–371Google Scholar; also Carr, D., ‘On the prospects of chastity as a contemporary virtue’, in Halwani, Raja (ed.) Sex and Ethics: Essays on Sexuality, Virtue and the Good Life (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007)Google Scholar.

19 See Carr, D., ‘Character and moral choice in the cultivation of virtue’, Philosophy, 78, 304 (2003) 19–232CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

20 See, for example, Curzer, H.J., ‘How good people do bad things: Aristotle on the misdeeds of the virtuous’, Oxford Studies in Ancient Philosophy, 28, 1 (2005) 233–256Google Scholar.

21 Op. cit. note 18.

22 King Lear, Act IV, Scene 6.

23 See, for example, Wolf, Susan, ‘Moral psychology and the unity of the virtues’, Ratio, 20, 2 (2007) 145–167CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

24 Aristotle, , Poetics, in McKeon, R. (ed.) The Basic Works of Aristotle (New York: Random House, 1941), 1464Google Scholar.