Semester:
Offered:
Susanna Rinard (Department of Philosophy)
First-Year Seminar 73G 4 credits
Emotions are central to our lives as human beings. Strong emotions (both our own, and other people’s) are often involved in both the best and the worst times of our lives. In this seminar we will ask questions like the following: Where do emotions come from? How do they arise, and to what extent is it possible for us to exercise agency over the existence and expression of our emotions? Are emotion categories like anger universal, or culturally relative? Is there something that all instances of anger (for example) have in common, or does “anger” encompass a diverse range of states and experiences? Is there a single basis for anger in the brain? Is it possible that we can create an emotion in ourselves by ascribing that emotion to ourselves?
For help answering these and other related questions, we will turn to three sources, considered in rotation, to help us construct a dialogue between these authors as they develop their ideas. Brene Brown, in “Atlas of the Heart,” surveys the incredible complexity of human emotion and offers advice on managing these emotions. Lisa Feldman Barrett, in “How Emotions Are Made,” describes surprising results from neuroscience that contradict folk common sense about the nature of emotions and how they come about. Jean Briggs, in “Never in Anger,” describes a way of life in which the categorization and expression of emotion is very different from certain other cultures.