How to Do Things with Emotions : : The Morality of Anger and Shame across Cultures / / Owen Flanagan.

• Superior document: Title is part of eBook package: De Gruyter Princeton University Press Complete eBook-Package 2021
• VerfasserIn: Flanagan, Owen,
• Place / Publishing House: Princeton, NJ : : Princeton University Press, , [2021]; ©2021
• Year of Publication: 2021
• Language: English
• Physical Description: 1 online resource (328 p.) :; 2 b/w illus.

An expansive look at how culture shapes our emotions—and how we can benefit, as individuals and a society, from less anger and more shameThe world today is full of anger. Everywhere we look, we see values clashing and tempers rising, in ways that seem frenzied, aimless, and cruel. At the same time, we witness political leaders and others who lack any sense of shame, even as they display carelessness with the truth and the common good. In How to Do Things with Emotions, Owen Flanagan explains that emotions are things we do, and he reminds us that those like anger and shame involve cultural norms and scripts. How we do these emotions is not guaranteed to support emotionally and ethically balanced lives. But we can control and change how they are done if necessary. Flanagan makes a passionate case for tuning down anger and tuning up shame, and he observes how cultures around the world can show us how to cultivate these emotions better.Through comparative insights from anthropology, psychology, and crosscultural philosophy, Flanagan reveals an incredible range in the expression of anger and shame across societies. He establishes that certain types of anger—such as those that lead to revenge or passing hurt on to others—are more destructive than we imagine. Certain forms of shame, on the other hand, can protect positive values, including courage, kindness, and honesty. Flanagan proposes that we should embrace shame as a uniquely socializing emotion, one that can promote moral progress where undisciplined anger cannot.How to Do Things with Emotions celebrates the plasticity of our emotional responses—and our freedom to recalibrate them in the pursuit of more fulfilling lives.

Table of Contents

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Preface: Varieties of Emotional Possibility -- Part I Anger -- Chapter One Anger and Morals -- Chapter Two Anger across Cultures -- Chapter Three Anger and Flourishing -- Part II Shame -- Chapter Four Generic Shame -- Chapter Five The Science of Shame -- Chapter Six Shame across Cultures -- Chapter Seven The Mature Sense of Shame -- Part III Conclusion -- Chapter Eight Emotions for Multicultures -- Acknowledgments -- Notes -- References -- Index