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The Subtlety of Emotions
An informal yet rigorous exploration of human emotions in all their complexity and subtlety. Why do we cry at the movies? What is the best way to manage destructive feelings such as jealousy? Although emotions pervade our lives, their nature, causes, and effects have only recently been studied by social scientists and philosophers. Despite growing scientific interest in the subject, empirical findings have not yet caught up with our intuitive knowledge. In this book Aaron Ben-Ze'ev carries out what he calls "a careful search for general patterns in the primeval jungle of emotions." In an engaging, informal style he draws on a variety of theoretical approaches and popular sources to produce a coherent account of emotions in all their subtlety. All of the ideas are illustrated with examples drawn from everyday life. The book is organized into two parts. The first presents an overall conceptual framework for understanding emotions. It looks at the typical characteristics and components of emotions, distinguishes emotions from other affective phenomena, classifies the emotions, and covers such related issues as emotional intelligence, regulating emotions, and emotions and morality. The second part discusses individual emotions, including envy, jealousy, pleasure-in-others'-misfortune, pity, compassion, anger, hate, disgust, love, sexual desire, happiness, sadness, pride, regret, and shame. The text is laced with insightful and often amusing quotations from sources ranging from Mae West to Montesquieu.
640 pages, Paperback
First published February 25, 2000
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
November 21, 2016
The human “affective realm,” the author states, has four components. Sentiments are like emotions, but they are of longer duration. Moods, milder than emotions, provide a general background for interacting with the world. Affective traits are “lifetime” tendencies. Emotions are intense expressions, of brief duration, focused on specific tasks.
The author casts aside as “basic” those emotional expressions that deal with self-preservation, reproduction and some of our social nature. These are not the real emotions, as he defines the term. The “complex” emotions are his focus and these belong almost exclusively to the human realm.* These emotions, he states, have four components: cognition, evaluation, motivation, and feeling but, of these, he emphasizes cognition. Cognition applies context to immediate situations and give events a past and future dimension. Cognition enlarges our emotional life, making it qualitatively different than animal-like “basic” emotions. After cognition, the other components fall into place. We evaluate stimuli as good or bad (pleasure/good; plain/bad), which then releases the motive force (respond favorably or negatively), and we experience the feeling that is created as a result. In effect, the author says that the mind creates emotion through a rational, intellectual process.**
The author doesn’t deal in any satisfactory way about why we respond positively or negatively to the environment.*** A contrasting view is that emotions are about what we need and don’t need. Need is Schopenhauer’s pain in all of our general and specific ways. Need is the value part of an emotion and the motive force. Basic emotions link behavior, need/don’t need and relevant objects. When there’s success, there’s pleasure; when there's no success, there's pain. The author’s complex emotions add the overt cognitive elements (perception of facts and their evaluation), but these seem to be variations and refinements of the basic emotions and the specific needs they address. For example, apprehension is fear extended; hope is need (desire) extended. In other words, consciousness adds to, not replaces, the basic emotions.
The book’s length is overwhelming. Here and there the author slips in new qualifications as to what is and what is not an emotion, further complicating a reader’s ability to understand.**** In the second half of the book, the author discusses a list of the common emotions. This has helpful elements, but much of this struck me as an arbitrary mixing and matching, void of a theoretical foundation that makes sense. The author ends his book with a statement that “Emotions are, and should be, central to human life.” If “emotions are” I don’t know how we have a choice that they “should be.” Again, this reflects a central question about this book: are emotions fixed or are they created by mind?
* In reaction to an argument that “emotions are present in all living things,” the author says that this cannot be “in light of the great complexity of emotions which requires various mental capacities not found in lower living organisms.” Rather than emotion proper, the author states that “emotional capacities are present in different degrees of development in different living creatures.” This view is predictable as his definition of emotion excludes animal emotions because they lack intellectual capacity.
**Mind dictates “which emotions we have, when we have them, and how we experience and express these emotions.”
***He writes that “…most people would like the world to be just. Most people believe, explicitly or implicitly, that the world is a benevolent and meaningful place and that the self is a worthwhile person.” This statement is loaded with a philosophical worldview, a counter to which would be that this does not apply to a good part of humanity or to how history has worked.
**** The author writes of “emotional attributes” and “emotional dispositions” and “emotional capacities,” to go along with his “affective realm” and “basic versus complex” division and his emotional “component” and emotional “characteristics.” Early in his book, he comments on the need to categorize to make the topic of emotions easier to understand, but it still strikes me that he’s more of a splitter than a lumper.
The author casts aside as “basic” those emotional expressions that deal with self-preservation, reproduction and some of our social nature. These are not the real emotions, as he defines the term. The “complex” emotions are his focus and these belong almost exclusively to the human realm.* These emotions, he states, have four components: cognition, evaluation, motivation, and feeling but, of these, he emphasizes cognition. Cognition applies context to immediate situations and give events a past and future dimension. Cognition enlarges our emotional life, making it qualitatively different than animal-like “basic” emotions. After cognition, the other components fall into place. We evaluate stimuli as good or bad (pleasure/good; plain/bad), which then releases the motive force (respond favorably or negatively), and we experience the feeling that is created as a result. In effect, the author says that the mind creates emotion through a rational, intellectual process.**
The author doesn’t deal in any satisfactory way about why we respond positively or negatively to the environment.*** A contrasting view is that emotions are about what we need and don’t need. Need is Schopenhauer’s pain in all of our general and specific ways. Need is the value part of an emotion and the motive force. Basic emotions link behavior, need/don’t need and relevant objects. When there’s success, there’s pleasure; when there's no success, there's pain. The author’s complex emotions add the overt cognitive elements (perception of facts and their evaluation), but these seem to be variations and refinements of the basic emotions and the specific needs they address. For example, apprehension is fear extended; hope is need (desire) extended. In other words, consciousness adds to, not replaces, the basic emotions.
The book’s length is overwhelming. Here and there the author slips in new qualifications as to what is and what is not an emotion, further complicating a reader’s ability to understand.**** In the second half of the book, the author discusses a list of the common emotions. This has helpful elements, but much of this struck me as an arbitrary mixing and matching, void of a theoretical foundation that makes sense. The author ends his book with a statement that “Emotions are, and should be, central to human life.” If “emotions are” I don’t know how we have a choice that they “should be.” Again, this reflects a central question about this book: are emotions fixed or are they created by mind?
* In reaction to an argument that “emotions are present in all living things,” the author says that this cannot be “in light of the great complexity of emotions which requires various mental capacities not found in lower living organisms.” Rather than emotion proper, the author states that “emotional capacities are present in different degrees of development in different living creatures.” This view is predictable as his definition of emotion excludes animal emotions because they lack intellectual capacity.
**Mind dictates “which emotions we have, when we have them, and how we experience and express these emotions.”
***He writes that “…most people would like the world to be just. Most people believe, explicitly or implicitly, that the world is a benevolent and meaningful place and that the self is a worthwhile person.” This statement is loaded with a philosophical worldview, a counter to which would be that this does not apply to a good part of humanity or to how history has worked.
**** The author writes of “emotional attributes” and “emotional dispositions” and “emotional capacities,” to go along with his “affective realm” and “basic versus complex” division and his emotional “component” and emotional “characteristics.” Early in his book, he comments on the need to categorize to make the topic of emotions easier to understand, but it still strikes me that he’s more of a splitter than a lumper.
September 20, 2022
The book is written for a general audience and provides some helpful definitions to help orient the reader in thinking about emotions, particularly in its opening chapters. Unfortunately, the author's social conservatism makes the text hard to read. I feel like shouting "Ok, boomer!" on every other page. The text is peppered with hundreds of largely irrelevant and largely cringe-inducing witty quotations to head off each section - a typical quote suggests "If you haven’t seen your wife smile at a traffic cop, you haven’t seen her smile her prettiest". More troubling is the author's use of ableist language, warnings about the sins of masturbation, and lament at how pornography is luring people away from heterosexual monogamy. Since the book avoids technical detail and rarely critically engages with prior work, the 600 hundred pages often read like a rant from an uncle.
August 15, 2011
A wonderfully in-depth and wide-ranging look at emotions. Ben-Ze'ev expounds on his ideas of what makes an emotion, the components of an emotion, the determinants of emotional intensity, the classification of emotions, and much more. A must read for anyone who's curious about the subject.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews