How to do Things with Emotions

 

 

I’ll sketch my view that emotions are things we do rather than things that happen to us.  Because emotions are doings, actions, and practices they are governed by cultural norms and scripts.  I offer some examples from cross-cultural work, and discuss the way cross-cultural philosophy, cultural psychology, and anthropology can provide examples of better ways for us to do our emotions.

 

Professor Owen Flanagan’s work is in the Philosophy of Mind, Philosophy of Psychology, Ethics, Moral Psychology, and Cross-Cultural Philosophy. He is the author of more than two dozen of monographs, including How to Do Things with Emotions: Anger and Shame Across Cultures (Princeton University Press 2021), The Geography of Morals (Oxford University Press, 2016), The Bodhisattva's Brain: Buddhism Naturalized (MIT Press 2011), The Problem of the Soul: Two Visions of Mind and How to Reconcile Them (Basic 2002). He also wrote many articles on moral psychology, the philosophy of mind, philosophy and addiction, and Chinese and Comparative Philosophy.