Rational Sentimentalism

Rational Sentimentalism develops a novel theory of the sentimental values. These values, which include the funny, the disgusting, and the shameful, are profoundly important because they set standards for emotional responses that are part of our shared human nature. Yet moral philosophers have neglected them relative to their prominent role in human mental life. The theory is sentimentalist because it holds that these values are emotion-dependent-contrary to some prominent accounts of the funny and the disgusting. Its rational aspect arises from its insistence that the shameful (for example) is not whatever elicits shame but what makes shame fitting. Shameful traits provide reasons to be ashamed that do not depend on whether one is disposed to be ashamed of them. Furthermore, these reasons to be ashamed transmit to reasons to act as shame dictates: to conceal. Sentimentalism requires a compatible theory of emotion and emotional fittingness. This book explicates a motivational theory of emotion that explains the peculiarities of emotional motivation as other theories cannot. It argues that a class of emotions are psychological kinds with a similar goal across cultures despite differences in their elicitors. It then develops an account of fittingness that helps to differentiate reasons of fit, which bear on the sentimental values, from other considerations for or against having an emotion. Significant and controversial conclusions emerge from this theory of rational sentimentalism. Sentimental values conflict with one another, and with morality, but nevertheless provide practical reasons that apply to humans-if not to all rational agents.

1 - Sentimental Values
2 - Sentimentalism
3 - Sentimentalism and Scientism
4 - Reasons for Emotions
5 - Sentimentalism Versus Cognitivism
6 - The Motivational Theory of Emotion
7 - Emotional Fittingness for Sentimentalists
8 - Pluralism and Moralism
9 - The Importance of Sentimental Values

Justin D'Arms is Professor of Philosophy at the Ohio State University, where he has taught since receiving his PhD in Philosophy at the University of Michigan in 1995. He has served as a Visiting Lecturer at Seoul National University and at the Swiss Center for the Affective Sciences, and has held a Laurence Rockefeller Fellowship at the University Center for Human Values at Princeton. Daniel Jacobson is Bruce D. Benson Professor of Philosophy at the University of Colorado Boulder, and Director of the Benson Center for the Study of Western Civilization. He has published on topics in ethics, aesthetics, moral psychology, freedom of speech, and the moral and political philosophy of John Stuart Mill. He has held grants and fellowships from the NEH, ACLS, Princeton University Center for Human Values, and the John Templeton Foundation