Passions: Philosophy and the Intelligence of Emotions

Course Overview

A distinguished philosopher and author takes you on a tour of his more than three-decade-long intellectual struggle to reach an understanding of emotions: “the key to the meaning of life.” Far from being routine, emotions are “the key to the meaning of life,” says distinguished philosopher and author Robert C. Solomon, who in these 24 lectures takes you on a tour of his more than three-decade-long intellectual struggle to reach an understanding of these complex phenomena.

His conclusions can be surprising and very much against the current of common sense. Conventional wisdom suggests there is a sharp distinction between emotion and reason. Emotions are seen as inferior, disruptive, primitive, and even bestial forces. These remarkable lectures suggest otherwise—that emotions have intelligence and provide personal strategies that are vitally important to our everyday lives of perceiving, evaluating, appraising, understanding, and acting in the world.

Take a tour of Professor Solomon’s more than three-decade-long intellectual struggle to reach an understanding of emotions, which he argues are “the key to the meaning of life.” A distinguished philosopher himself, Professor Solomon’s lectures unfold as a rich dialogue with other philosophers, including Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Adam Smith, Nietzsche, William James, Freud, Heidegger, and Sartre.

In your exploration, you’ll address such questions as:

• How do we distinguish emotions from feelings, such as heartache?

• What is the meaning of our emotions, and how do they serve to enrich and guide our lives?

• Are there a determinable number of basic emotions that serve as building blocks for the range of emotions we experience?

• Is an emotion such as jealousy a genetic trait shared by all humans—or is it something learned?

As you listen to these lectures, prepare to think: Think about your own emotions; think about what you observe in others; think about the enormous body of research and conjecture on this fascinating topic as Professor Solomon takes you on a challenging and stimulating journey. The more we puzzle over the nature of emotions, the deeper the mystery becomes. It is a mystery that is by no means solved, but one that repays in careful, philosophical analysis.

Course Lectures

01: Emotions as Engagements with the World

Professor Robert C. Solomon begins by reviewing the rich history of thinking about emotions. He introduces the major themes of the course, including Jean-Paul Sartre’s idea that emotions are “magical transformations of the world.”

Duration: 32 min

02: The Wrath of Achilles

Starting a sequence of eight lectures on basic emotions, this lecture treats anger, typified by the wrath of Achilles in Homer’s Iliad. Anger is reputedly the most dangerous emotion, but it has a positive aspect as well, and Professor Solomon argues that anger is sometimes right and even obligatory.

Duration: 31 min

03: It’s Good to Be Afraid

Fear is arguably the most important emotion, for without it we would be vulnerable to many dangers. Although often regarded negatively, people sometimes go out of their way to experience fear. This raises a paradox that has intrigued philosophers since Aristotle.

Duration: 33 min

04: Lessons of Love-Plato’s Symposium

This lecture addresses the endlessly fascinating emotion of love, focusing on Plato’s classic dialogue Symposium with its odd story told by Aristophanes, which illustrates how love reconfigures personal identities and relationships.

Duration: 34 min

05: We Are Not Alone-Compassion and Empathy

Philosophers including David Hume, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and the economist Adam Smith defended what they called sympathy as a natural moral sentiment. Sympathy is similar to what we call compassion and provides the basis of ethics.

Duration: 34 min

06: Noble? or Deadly Sin? Pride and Shame

Pride, like its opposite, shame, is an emotion of social self-evaluation. Its place in society shifts with morals, religion, and politics. This lecture is about a family of such emotions, including guilt, embarrassment, remorse, regret, and self-loathing.

Duration: 30 min

07: Nasty-Iago’s Envy, Othello’s Jealousy

Envy and jealousy are double-edged, self-destructive emotions, even as they aim at bringing down other people. Both are vividly demonstrated in Shakespeare’s Othello. Envy is a bad emotional strategy, since it turns into resentment and deludes itself into jealousy.

Duration: 31 min

08: Nastier-Resentment and Vengeance

Resentment is a particularly nasty emotion. Friedrich Nietzsche diagnosed it as inexpressible vengeance. Accordingly, vengeance can be seen as the natural extension of resentment. Vengeance is also an offshoot of anger, as its most cold-blooded and protracted expression.

Duration: 31 min

09: A Death in the Family-The Logic of Grief

Grief is misunderstood as both the most private and most negative of negative emotions. But in truth, it is a continuation of love. The withdrawal that is so familiar in grief should not be mistaken for a breakdown of rational behavior, but as a period of reflection and reconstitution of the self.

Duration: 31 min

10: James and the Bear-Emotions and Feelings

Starting a sequence of eight lectures on how we misinterpret and consequently fail to take responsibility for our emotions, this lecture argues against a widely accepted idea that gained contemporary respect through the writings of William James: emotions are feelings.

Duration: 31 min

11: Freud’s Catharsis-the Hydraulic Model

Professor Solomon challenges the hydraulic model as a metaphor for emotions. Freud used this model extensively. The problem is that it is mechanical, and the emotions are not mechanisms. They are engagements with the world.

Duration: 29 min

12: Are Emotions “in” the Mind?

The concept of the mind as the private domain of emotions is an outgrowth of the philosophy of René Descartes. An alternative view, phenomenology, advocated by Martin Heidegger and other philosophers, holds that the mind is an activity and the objects of our emotions are essentially objects in the world.

Duration: 31 min

13: How Emotions Are Intelligent

Professor Solomon argues that emotions are engaged in our efforts to get along with people and to cope with an often difficult world. They give us insight and provide intelligence about the world.

Duration: 31 min

14: Emotions as Judgments

Understanding emotions involves understanding the judgments that structure them. This lecture goes through several of the emotions already discussed—notably anger, shame, embarrassment, hatred, envy, and resentment—to show how this is the case.

Duration: 31 min

15: Beyond Boohoo and Hooray

This lecture questions the distinctions between positive and negative emotions. We should be much more attentive to the richness of intelligence within emotions and not reduce the subtlety of emotions to a simple “hooray!” or “boo-hoo!”

Duration: 31 min

16: Emotions Are Rational

To say that an emotion is irrational is to say that it has somehow missed its target, but that is also to say that an emotion can get its target right and thus be rational. The ultimate aim of our emotions is to enhance our lives, to help us get what we want and need.

Duration: 31 min

17: Emotions and Responsibility

To say that emotions are strategies is to say that they are to some extent our doing. With some passions, we may find ourselves “out of control,” but even then we tend to choose and cultivate those passions.

Duration: 32 min

18: Emotions in Ethics

Beginning the final section of the course, which takes a positive look at the richness and value of emotions, this lecture surveys the history of ethics, from Aristotle and the Stoics in antiquity through what was called emotivism in the 20th century.

Duration: 33 min

19: Emotions and the Self

All emotions are self-involved; that is what makes them different from intellectual judgments. As strategies, they are concerned with the well-being of the self.

Duration: 31 min

20: What Is Emotional Experience?

Emotions are feelings, but they are not just the physiological symptoms of emotional excitement. This lecture analyzes the many components of emotional experience, from autonomic nervous system responses and sensations to much more subtle and sophisticated experiences.

Duration: 32 min

21: Emotions across Cultures-Universals

Emotions differ from society to society—in their causes, expression, language, and, consequently, in their experiences. But what are the underlying similarities across cultures?

Duration: 31 min

22: Emotions across Cultures-Differences

Continuing the theme of emotions across cultures, Professor Solomon focuses on significant differences between cultures, including some emotions that are unknown to Westerners.

Duration: 30 min

23: Laughter and Music

Two universal expressions of emotion are laughter and music. Laughter most often conveys joy, amusement, and humor, but it can also communicate nervousness and embarrassment.

Duration: 28 min

24: Happiness and Spirituality

In this final lecture, Professor Solomon returns to a central issue: the way emotions and rationality form an inseparable team, not two opposing forces.

Duration: 32 min