The Moral Psychology of Anger

The Moral Psychology of Anger
Author: Myisha Cherry
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 213
Release: 2017-12-21
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1786600773

The Moral Psychology of Anger is the first comprehensive study of the moral psychology of anger from a philosophical perspective. In light of the recent revival of interest in emotions in philosophy and the current social and political interest in anger, this collection provides an inclusive view of anger from a variety of philosophical perspectives. The authors explore the nature of anger, explain its resilience in our emotional lives and normative frameworks, and examine what inhibits and encourages thoughts, feelings, and expressions of anger. The volume also examines rage, anger’s cousin, and examines in what ways rage is a moral emotion, what black rage is and how it is policed in our society; how berserker rage is limited and problematic for the contemporary military; and how defenders of anger respond to classical and contemporary arguments that expressing anger is always destructive and immoral. This volume provides arguments for and against the value of anger in our ethical lives and in politics through a combination of empirical psychological and philosophical methods. This authors approach these questions and aims from a historical, phenomenological, empirical, feminist, political, and critical-theoretic perspective.

The Ethics of Anger

The Ethics of Anger
Author: Court D. Lewis
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 283
Release: 2020-12-03
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1793615187

The Ethics of Anger provides the resources needed to understand the prevalence of anger in relation to ethics, religion, social and political behavior, and peace studies. Providing theoretical and practical arguments, both for and against the necessity of anger, The Ethics of Anger assembles a variety of diverse perspectives in order to increase knowledge and bolster further research. Part one examines topics such as the nature and ethics of vengeful anger and the psychology of anger. Part two includes chapters on the necessity of anger as central to our moral lives, an examination of Joseph Butler’s sermons on resentment, and three chapters that explore anger within Confucianism, Buddhism, and other Eastern religions. Part three examines the practical responses to anger, offering several intriguing chapters on topics such as mind viruses, social justice, the virtues of anger, feminism, punishment, and popular culture. This book, edited by Court D. Lewis and Gregory L. Bock, challenges and provides a framework for how moral persons approach, incorporate, and/or exclude anger in their lives.

The Moral Psychology of Sadness

The Moral Psychology of Sadness
Author: Anna Gotlib
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 227
Release: 2017-11-30
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 178348862X

What does it mean to be sad? What difference does it make whether, how, and why we experience our own, and other people’s, sadness? Is sadness always appropriate and can it be a way of seeing more clearly into ourselves and others? In this volume, a multi-disciplinary team of scholars - from fields including philosophy, women’s and gender studies, bioethics and public health, and neuroscience - addresses these and other questions related to this nearly-universal emotion that all of us experience, and that some of us dread. Somewhat surprisingly, sadness has been largely ignored by philosophers and others within the humanities, or else under-theorized as a subject worthy of serious and careful attention. This volume reverses this trend, presenting sadness as not merely a feeling or affect, but an emotion of great moral significance that in important ways underwrites how we understand ourselves and each other.

Hard Feelings

Hard Feelings
Author: Macalester Bell
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 307
Release: 2013-03-18
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0199794251

At a time when respect is widely touted as an attitude of central moral importance, contempt is often derided as a thoroughly nasty emotion inimical to the respect we owe all persons. But while contempt is regularly dismissed as completely disvaluable, ethicists have had very little to say about what contempt is or whether it deserves its ugly reputation. Macalester Bell argues that we must reconsider contempt's role in our moral lives. While contempt can be experienced in inapt and disvaluable ways, it may also be a perfectly appropriate response that provides the best way of answering a range of neglected faults. Using a wide variety of examples, Bell provides an account of the nature of contempt and its virtues and vices. While some insist that contempt is always unfitting because of its globalism, Bell argues that this objection mischaracterizes the person assessments at the heart of contempt. Contempt is, in some cases, the best way of responding to arrogance, hypocrisy, and other vices of superiority. Contempt does have a dark side, and inapt forms of contempt structure a host of social ills. Racism is best characterized as an especially pernicious form of inapt contempt, and Bell's account of contempt helps us better understand the moral badness of racism. It is argued that the best way of responding to race-based contempt is to mobilize a robust counter-contempt for racists. The book concludes with a discussion of overcoming contempt through forgiveness. This account of forgiveness sheds light upon the broader issue of social reconciliation and what role reparations and memorials may play in giving persons reasons to overcome their contempt for institutions.

The Moral Psychology of Forgiveness

The Moral Psychology of Forgiveness
Author: Kathryn J. Norlock
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
Total Pages: 211
Release: 2017-05-24
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 1786601397

The feeling that one can’t get over a moral wrong is challenging even in the best of circumstances. This volume considers challenges to forgiveness in the most difficult circumstances. It explores forgiveness in criminal justice contexts, under oppression, after genocide, when the victim is dead or when bystanders disagree, when many different negative reactions abound, and when anger and resentment seem preferable and important. The book gathers together a diverse assembly of authors with publication and expertise in forgiveness, while centering the work of new voices in the field and pursuing new lines of inquiry grounded in empirical literature. Some scholars consider how forgiveness influences and is influenced by our other mental states and emotions, while other authors explore the moral value of the emotions attendant upon forgiveness in particularly challenging contexts. Some authors critically assess and advance applications of the standard view of forgiveness predominant in Anglophone philosophy of forgiveness as the overcoming of resentment, while others offer rejections of basic aspects of the standard view, such as what sorts of feelings are compatible with forgiving. The book offers new directions for inquiry into forgiveness, and shows that the moral psychology of forgiveness continues to enjoy challenges to its theoretical structure and its practical possibilities.

The Moral Psychology of Disgust

The Moral Psychology of Disgust
Author: Nina Strohminger
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers
Total Pages: 242
Release: 2020-01-14
Genre: Aversion
ISBN: 9781786602992

This book provides an introduction to the major findings, challenges and debates regarding disgust as a moral emotion, and brings together scholarship from multiple disciplines such as philosophy, psychology, anthropology and law.

The Case for Rage

The Case for Rage
Author: Myisha Cherry
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 225
Release: 2021-10-04
Genre: HISTORY
ISBN: 0197557341

"Anger has a bad reputation. Many people think that it is counterproductive, distracting, and destructive. It is a negative emotion, many believe, because it can lead so quickly to violence or an overwhelming fury. And coming from people of color, it takes on connotations that are even more sinister, stirring up stereotypes, making white people fear what an angry other might be capable of doing, when angry, and leading them to turn to hatred or violence in turn, to squelch an anger that might upset the racial status quo"--

How to Do Things with Emotions

How to Do Things with Emotions
Author: Owen Flanagan
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 328
Release: 2021-11-02
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0691220972

"The world today seems full of anger. In the West, particularly in the US and UK, this anger can oftentimes feel aimless, a possible product of social media. Still, anger is normally considered a useful motivational source for positive social change. Channeling that anger into movements for civil rights, alleviation of socio-economic inequality, and the end of endless wars, has long been understood as a valuable tactic. Moreover, anger is believed to be handy in everyday life in order to protect, and stick up for, oneself. On the flip side, the world today celebrates diminishing amounts of shame. Political leaders and pundits shamelessly abandon commitments to integrity, truth and decency, and in general, shame is considered to be a primitive, ugly emotion, which causes eating disorders, PTSD, teenage pregnancy, suicide, and other highly undesirable circumstances. Having shame is, thus, regularly understood as both psychologically bad and morally bad. In How to Do Things with Emotions, philosopher Owen Flanagan argues this thinking is backwards, and that we need to tune down anger and tune up shame. By examining cross-cultural resources, Flanagan demonstrates how certain kinds of anger are destructive, while a 'mature' sense of shame can be used -as it is in many cultures- as a socializing emotion, that does not need to be attached to the self, but can be called upon to protect good values (kindness, truth) rather than bad ones (racism, sexism). Drawing from Stoic, Buddhist, and other cultural traditions, Flanagan explains that payback anger (i.e., revenge) and pain-passing anger (i.e., passing hurt one is feeling to someone else) are incorrigible, and also, how the Western view of shame rooted in traditions of psychoanalysis is entirely unwarranted. Continuing his method of doing ethics by bringing in cross-cultural philosophy, research from psychology, and in this case widening that to include cultural psychology and anthropology, Flanagan shows exactly how our culture shapes our emotions-through norms and traditions-and how proper cultivation of our emotions can yield important progress in our morality"--

Atlas of Moral Psychology

Atlas of Moral Psychology
Author: Kurt Gray
Publisher: Guilford Publications
Total Pages: 607
Release: 2018-01-23
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 1462532586

This comprehensive and cutting-edge volume maps out the terrain of moral psychology, a dynamic and evolving area of research. In 57 concise chapters, leading authorities and up-and-coming scholars explore fundamental issues and current controversies. The volume systematically reviews the empirical evidence base and presents influential theories of moral judgment and behavior. It is organized around the key questions that must be addressed for a complete understanding of the moral mind.

Emotions

Emotions
Author: Robert C. Roberts
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Total Pages: 372
Release: 2003-03-13
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9780521525848

Life, on a day to day basis, is a sequence of emotional states: hope, disappointment, irritation, anger, affection, envy, pride, embarrassment, joy, sadness and many more. We know intuitively that these states express deep things about our character and our view of the world. But what are emotions and why are they so important to us? In one of the most extensive investigations of the emotions ever published, Robert Roberts develops a novel conception of what emotions are and then applies it to a large range of types of emotion and related phenomena. In so doing he lays the foundations for a deeper understanding of our evaluative judgments, our actions, our personal relationships and our fundamental well-being. Aimed principally at philosophers and psychologists, this book will certainly be accessible to readers in other disciplines such as religion and anthropology.