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True to Our Feelings: What Our Emotions Are Really Telling Us
We live our lives through our emotions, writes Robert Solomon, and it is our emotions that give our lives meaning. What interests or fascinates us, who we love, what angers us, what moves us, what bores us--all of this defines us, gives us character, constitutes who we are.
In True to Our Feelings , Solomon illuminates the rich life of the emotions--why we don't really understand them, what they really are, and how they make us human and give meaning to life. Emotions have recently become a highly fashionable area of research in the sciences, with brain imaging
uncovering valuable clues as to how we experience our feelings. But while Solomon provides a guide to this cutting-edge research, as well as to what others--philosophers and psychologists--have said on the subject, he also emphasizes the personal and ethical character of our emotions. He shows that
emotions are not something that happen to us, nor are they irrational in the literal sense--rather, they are judgements we make about the world, and they are strategies for living in it. Fear, anger, love, guilt, jealousy, compassion--they are all essential to our values, to living happily,
healthily, and well. Solomon highlights some of the dramatic ways that emotions fit into our ethics and our sense of the good life, how we can make our emotional lives more coherent with our values and be more "true to our feelings" and cultivate emotional integrity.
The story of our lives is the story of our passions. We fall in love, we are gripped by scientific curiosity and religious fervor, we fear death and grieve for others, we humble ourselves in envy, jealousy, and resentment. In this remarkable book, Robert Solomon shares his fascination with the
emotions and illuminates our passions in an exciting new way.
In True to Our Feelings , Solomon illuminates the rich life of the emotions--why we don't really understand them, what they really are, and how they make us human and give meaning to life. Emotions have recently become a highly fashionable area of research in the sciences, with brain imaging
uncovering valuable clues as to how we experience our feelings. But while Solomon provides a guide to this cutting-edge research, as well as to what others--philosophers and psychologists--have said on the subject, he also emphasizes the personal and ethical character of our emotions. He shows that
emotions are not something that happen to us, nor are they irrational in the literal sense--rather, they are judgements we make about the world, and they are strategies for living in it. Fear, anger, love, guilt, jealousy, compassion--they are all essential to our values, to living happily,
healthily, and well. Solomon highlights some of the dramatic ways that emotions fit into our ethics and our sense of the good life, how we can make our emotional lives more coherent with our values and be more "true to our feelings" and cultivate emotional integrity.
The story of our lives is the story of our passions. We fall in love, we are gripped by scientific curiosity and religious fervor, we fear death and grieve for others, we humble ourselves in envy, jealousy, and resentment. In this remarkable book, Robert Solomon shares his fascination with the
emotions and illuminates our passions in an exciting new way.
286 pages, Hardcover
First published February 1, 2007
36 people are currently reading
248 people want to read
About the author
Robert C. Solomon
124 books172 followersRobert C. Solomon (September 14, 1942 – January 2, 2007) was a professor of continental philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin.
Early life
Solomon was born in Detroit, Michigan. His father was a lawyer, and his mother an artist. After earning a B.A. (1963) at the University of Pennsylvania, he moved to the University of Michigan to study medicine, switching to philosophy for an M.A. (1965) and Ph.D. (1967).
He held several teaching positions at such schools as Princeton University, the University of California, Los Angeles, and the University of Pittsburgh. From 1972 until his death, except for two years at the University of California at Riverside in the mid-1980s, he taught at University of Texas at Austin, serving as Quincy Lee Centennial Professor of Philosophy and Business. He was a member of the University of Texas Academy of Distinguished Teachers. Solomon was also a member of the inaugural class of Academic Advisors at the Business Roundtable Institute for Corporate Ethics.
His interests were in 19th-century German philosophy--especially Hegel and Nietzsche--and 20th-century Continental philosophy--especially Sartre and phenomenology, as well as ethics and the philosophy of emotions. Solomon published more than 40 books on philosophy, and was also a published songwriter. He made a cameo appearance in Richard Linklater's film Waking Life (2001), where he discussed the continuing relevance of existentialism in a postmodern world. He developed a cognitivist theory of the emotions, according to which emotions, like beliefs, were susceptible to rational appraisal and revision. Solomon was particularly interested in the idea of "love," arguing against the notion that romantic love is an inherent state of being, and maintaining, instead, that it is instead a construct of Western culture, popularized and propagated in such a way that it has achieved the status of a universal in the eyes of many. Love for Solomon is not a universal, static quality, but an emotion, subject to the same vicissitudes as other emotions like anger or sadness.
Solomon received numerous teaching awards at the University of Texas at Austin, and was a frequent lecturer in the highly regarded Plan II Honors Program. Solomon was known for his lectures on Nietzsche and other Existentialist philosophers. Solomon described in one lecture a very personal experience he had while a medical student at the University of Michigan. He recounted how he stumbled as if by chance into a crowded lecture hall. He was rather unhappy in his medical studies at the time, and was perhaps seeking something different that day. He got precisely that. The professor, Frithjof Bergmann, was lecturing that day on something that Solomon had not yet been acquainted with. The professor spoke of how Nietzsche's idea asks the fundamental question: "If given the opportunity to live your life over and over again ad infinitum, forced to go through all of the pain and the grief of existence, would you be overcome with despair? Or would you fall to your knees in gratitude?"
Solomon died on January 2, 2007 at Zurich airport. His wife, philosopher Kathleen Higgins, with whom he co-authored several of his books, is Professor of Philosophy at University of Texas at Austin.
Early life
Solomon was born in Detroit, Michigan. His father was a lawyer, and his mother an artist. After earning a B.A. (1963) at the University of Pennsylvania, he moved to the University of Michigan to study medicine, switching to philosophy for an M.A. (1965) and Ph.D. (1967).
He held several teaching positions at such schools as Princeton University, the University of California, Los Angeles, and the University of Pittsburgh. From 1972 until his death, except for two years at the University of California at Riverside in the mid-1980s, he taught at University of Texas at Austin, serving as Quincy Lee Centennial Professor of Philosophy and Business. He was a member of the University of Texas Academy of Distinguished Teachers. Solomon was also a member of the inaugural class of Academic Advisors at the Business Roundtable Institute for Corporate Ethics.
His interests were in 19th-century German philosophy--especially Hegel and Nietzsche--and 20th-century Continental philosophy--especially Sartre and phenomenology, as well as ethics and the philosophy of emotions. Solomon published more than 40 books on philosophy, and was also a published songwriter. He made a cameo appearance in Richard Linklater's film Waking Life (2001), where he discussed the continuing relevance of existentialism in a postmodern world. He developed a cognitivist theory of the emotions, according to which emotions, like beliefs, were susceptible to rational appraisal and revision. Solomon was particularly interested in the idea of "love," arguing against the notion that romantic love is an inherent state of being, and maintaining, instead, that it is instead a construct of Western culture, popularized and propagated in such a way that it has achieved the status of a universal in the eyes of many. Love for Solomon is not a universal, static quality, but an emotion, subject to the same vicissitudes as other emotions like anger or sadness.
Solomon received numerous teaching awards at the University of Texas at Austin, and was a frequent lecturer in the highly regarded Plan II Honors Program. Solomon was known for his lectures on Nietzsche and other Existentialist philosophers. Solomon described in one lecture a very personal experience he had while a medical student at the University of Michigan. He recounted how he stumbled as if by chance into a crowded lecture hall. He was rather unhappy in his medical studies at the time, and was perhaps seeking something different that day. He got precisely that. The professor, Frithjof Bergmann, was lecturing that day on something that Solomon had not yet been acquainted with. The professor spoke of how Nietzsche's idea asks the fundamental question: "If given the opportunity to live your life over and over again ad infinitum, forced to go through all of the pain and the grief of existence, would you be overcome with despair? Or would you fall to your knees in gratitude?"
Solomon died on January 2, 2007 at Zurich airport. His wife, philosopher Kathleen Higgins, with whom he co-authored several of his books, is Professor of Philosophy at University of Texas at Austin.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
November 3, 2011
Here a contemporary philosopher provides his highly-readable thoughts on how emotions form the turning center-point of our cognitions. His basic idea is that emotions are a way of knowing the world, his central thesis is that developing emotional integrity is the purpose of a higher life. Very rewarding to read, with applications for daily life as well as philosophical appreciation.
July 13, 2023
This book was a disappointing read, but I can imagine that it could be delightful for readers whose interests differ from mine. Let me start off with the positive. Solomon is highly readable, and one need not be familiar with philosophy to get into this. The text is full of stories and vivid descriptions of emotions. It could provide fodder for one to reflect on one's life. Solomon, moreover, has a sincere ethical bent, and encourages us to take responsibility over our lives and to live more wisely. This can be a enjoyable read, if a reader is interested in thinking about specific emotions (e.g., grief, anger, love), and introspecting upon their own life.
But I found virtually none of this book helpful, because I have other interests. Now, I'm going to just ramble about what I've been thinking about, of late, in relation to emotion (this will include links to other works on emotion, which maybe can be useful for certain readers who find themselves here.) I'm trying to figure out the best way to conceptualize emotion, where one approach is "better" than another if it gives us insight into the workings of other parts of the mind (e.g., speech, reasoning, imagination, memory, etc.), and helps us formulate powerful questions, which may guide research in the cognitive sciences, and provide everyday tools for explaining our experiences, etc. Some works on emotion are powerful in this way (e.g., Walton on make-believe emotion; Green on expression of emotion; Scherer and Frijda's appraisal theory of emotions; Ekman on basic affect programs)
Solomon doesn't provide a way for conceptualizing emotion. He only tells us that emotion should not be identified with either feeling or judgment alone, but ought to be identified with many different elements: on top of those, there's also ways of seeing and acting in the world, narratives we form about our experiences, and various other local and long-term consequences often associated with emotion. He names a long list of features associated with emotion and simply says that the collection of this is emotion.
This is unhelpful. Ideally, a philosopher would point out the essentials, and show how the various diverse empirical phenomena we see as related to emotion spring out from these essentials. In other words, an actual theory or approach to emotion would give us tools for explaining, not mere listing out, features of emotion. It was frustrating to skim through these chapters in Solomon's book, where he just lists many, many details of different sorts of emotion experiences, without explanation.
A good point Solomon makes is that emotion shouldn't be identified with either feeling or judgment alone (but the alternative he provides is lacking). He doesn't provide a deeper explanation, however, for why emotion can't be identified as such. I'd like to think this through. What about the nature of the experiences that we refer to by "emotion" is recalcitrant to reduction to types of mental state, out of those listed in our folk psychological vocabulary? I've mentioned Scherer and Frijda in other "book reviews" I've jotted out on this website. On their approach, emotion can be understood more like an overall force that sweeps across all levels and sorts of mental activity; if in an emotional experience, we move forward with having conscious feelings and thoughts, for example, those feelings and thoughts will be systematically shaped by the emotion. If instead, we don't have feelings or thoughts, but only find ourselves inclined to undertake certain actions, those motivations will be shaped by the emotion.
We can combine with this approach to conceptualizing emotion the insights of Ekman. There are certain basic evolved sorts of goods or threats that we are sensitive to, and correspondingly, certain evolved response patterns we'll undertake, in light of that which we sense. Language and culture opens for a proliferation of sorts of things that we find in our world, which we can value in more nuanced ways than just good or ill, and thereby also the responses we're prone to undertake are also more nuanced. Moreover, we may add the insights of another philosopher, Mitch Green. Emotion is essentially expressive; it shows on our face, gestures, tone of voice, etc. It is evolved to be communicative, and so serves social purposes. In having an emotion, we sense that something significant has happened; and now others may know of it. Or, there is something wrong, and there is some change we think ought to be brought about, and having an emotion can be crucial part of compelling others to adhere to this. There are other social functions of emotion, and other ways of describing the phenomena I've listed here, but I won't go through all of that here.
I'm not sure if I agree with all the elements of these approaches, and they don't obviously fit together. I'd like to think more about how they might cohere. But at least these approaches (e.g., focusing on the evolved functions of emotion; defining emotion functionally with respect to other mental functions) are better than either trying to identify emotion with some particular kind of mental state, or just saying that it's undefinable and listing out all the features that tend to be associated with it.
But I found virtually none of this book helpful, because I have other interests. Now, I'm going to just ramble about what I've been thinking about, of late, in relation to emotion (this will include links to other works on emotion, which maybe can be useful for certain readers who find themselves here.) I'm trying to figure out the best way to conceptualize emotion, where one approach is "better" than another if it gives us insight into the workings of other parts of the mind (e.g., speech, reasoning, imagination, memory, etc.), and helps us formulate powerful questions, which may guide research in the cognitive sciences, and provide everyday tools for explaining our experiences, etc. Some works on emotion are powerful in this way (e.g., Walton on make-believe emotion; Green on expression of emotion; Scherer and Frijda's appraisal theory of emotions; Ekman on basic affect programs)
Solomon doesn't provide a way for conceptualizing emotion. He only tells us that emotion should not be identified with either feeling or judgment alone, but ought to be identified with many different elements: on top of those, there's also ways of seeing and acting in the world, narratives we form about our experiences, and various other local and long-term consequences often associated with emotion. He names a long list of features associated with emotion and simply says that the collection of this is emotion.
This is unhelpful. Ideally, a philosopher would point out the essentials, and show how the various diverse empirical phenomena we see as related to emotion spring out from these essentials. In other words, an actual theory or approach to emotion would give us tools for explaining, not mere listing out, features of emotion. It was frustrating to skim through these chapters in Solomon's book, where he just lists many, many details of different sorts of emotion experiences, without explanation.
A good point Solomon makes is that emotion shouldn't be identified with either feeling or judgment alone (but the alternative he provides is lacking). He doesn't provide a deeper explanation, however, for why emotion can't be identified as such. I'd like to think this through. What about the nature of the experiences that we refer to by "emotion" is recalcitrant to reduction to types of mental state, out of those listed in our folk psychological vocabulary? I've mentioned Scherer and Frijda in other "book reviews" I've jotted out on this website. On their approach, emotion can be understood more like an overall force that sweeps across all levels and sorts of mental activity; if in an emotional experience, we move forward with having conscious feelings and thoughts, for example, those feelings and thoughts will be systematically shaped by the emotion. If instead, we don't have feelings or thoughts, but only find ourselves inclined to undertake certain actions, those motivations will be shaped by the emotion.
We can combine with this approach to conceptualizing emotion the insights of Ekman. There are certain basic evolved sorts of goods or threats that we are sensitive to, and correspondingly, certain evolved response patterns we'll undertake, in light of that which we sense. Language and culture opens for a proliferation of sorts of things that we find in our world, which we can value in more nuanced ways than just good or ill, and thereby also the responses we're prone to undertake are also more nuanced. Moreover, we may add the insights of another philosopher, Mitch Green. Emotion is essentially expressive; it shows on our face, gestures, tone of voice, etc. It is evolved to be communicative, and so serves social purposes. In having an emotion, we sense that something significant has happened; and now others may know of it. Or, there is something wrong, and there is some change we think ought to be brought about, and having an emotion can be crucial part of compelling others to adhere to this. There are other social functions of emotion, and other ways of describing the phenomena I've listed here, but I won't go through all of that here.
I'm not sure if I agree with all the elements of these approaches, and they don't obviously fit together. I'd like to think more about how they might cohere. But at least these approaches (e.g., focusing on the evolved functions of emotion; defining emotion functionally with respect to other mental functions) are better than either trying to identify emotion with some particular kind of mental state, or just saying that it's undefinable and listing out all the features that tend to be associated with it.
September 8, 2012
Finally someone to speak eloquently of the importance of the emotions for a meaningful life
August 15, 2020
Tout sur les émotions mais mal organisé parfois contradictoire par exemple: l'auteur consacre un chapitre à l'amour comme émotion. A la fin du livre, il dit que contrairement à ce qu'il a affirmé l'amour n'est pas une émotion de base. Tout de meme, une réflexion intéressante sur les émotions.
March 26, 2024
This is very well-researched information and still so approachable and relatable. I love that Robert C. Solomon goes through so many different sources, from Antique times as the Greeks and Romans, all the way through the Renaissance, Enlightment, and our modern times, giving his own appraisal and conclusions. His work is unvaluable.
December 19, 2016
This book occupies the unholy middle ground between an academic text and a popular one. It is all over the place, and some of the places it goes seem apt while others seem deeply mistaken. And, for the pedants at home, he misquotes Hobbes! Alas.
February 6, 2017
Despite my interest in cognition, I could not get into this book at all. It took me three years to get through it, and that only by, in the end, skimming the last two chapters. Didn't seem to have a coherent thesis or presentation.
October 25, 2015
A really good book. A rare thing in the otherwise dispirited world of academic writing.
Note to self: still have a few chapters to go as I have to return the book to the library.
Note to self: still have a few chapters to go as I have to return the book to the library.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews