Introduction: Moral Emotions

• DOI: 10.1007/s11245-015-9345-0
• Publication Date: 2015-09-01T02:54:57Z
• Authors: Florian Cova; Julien Deonna; David Sander
• Keywords: Internalism and externalism

The claim that the psychological study of morality underwent a revolution at the beginning of the twenty-first century and that this revolution was an affective one is now commonplace: emotions, rather than reflection and reasoning from explicit moral principles, were suddenly supposed to play the prominent role in moral thought and behaviour (Haidt 2001, 2007). Though supporters of this revolution might crudely underestimate the importance other fields—such as philosophy—had already allocated to emotions in moral thinking and behaviour, there is no denying that this change of attitudes within psychology has had such an impact that it has affected other disciplines such as philosophy, neuroscience and sociology and has led researchers throughout these fields to pay more attention to the role emotions play in everyday morality. One consequence of this renewed interest in the interplay between emotions and morality was a sudden increase in the use of the expression ‘‘moral emotions’’ (see for example: De Sousa 2001; Haidt 2003; Tangney et al. 2007; Mulligan 2008). Though this expression is now widespread—and this surely reflects the general realization that emotions matter for morality—, it is still debated what counts as a ‘‘moral emotion’’ and what emotions should be considered ‘‘moral’’. Haidt (2003) tentatively defined moral emotions as ‘‘those emotions that are linked to the interests or welfare either of society as a whole or at least of persons other than the judge or agent.’’(p. 853) However, such a definition leaves unexplained the crucial problem of the exact ‘‘link’’ between emotions and morality and arbitrarily restricts the field of morality (excluding, for example, possible moral duties towards oneself). So, what kinds of ‘‘link’’ are there between emotions and morality, and which ones are relevant for a satisfactory characterisation of moral emotions? It is now widely accepted that emotions present their object (their ‘‘intentional object’’) in a certain evaluative way (e.g. De Sousa 1987 and Deonna and Teroni 2012 for a thorough overview of what this claim may mean). Thus, fear presents a certain object as dangerous. The value that an emotion presents its object as instantiating is this emotion’s ‘‘formal object’’. Thus, some emotions might be said to be moral in virtue of their ‘‘formal object’’, that is: because they present their object as instantiating a certain moral value (e.g. Mulligan 2008). For example, some consider that guilt presents the person who feels it as responsible for a transgression or wrongdoing, and others consider indignation as a particular brand of anger that presents a certain act as being unjust. In this first sense, an & Florian Cova [e-mail]