Tag Archives: emotions

Jon Elster

Une seule et même émotion peut avoir deux effects distincts. D’une part, elle suggère à l’acteur des préférences qu’il aurait désavouées avant d’être assailli par l’émotion en question et qu’il va récuser quand elle se calme. D’autre part, par son impact sur la formation des croyances, l’émotion fait entrave à la réalisation rationnelle de ces préférences temporaires. On ne veut pas ce qu’on devrait vouloir; mais, comme on ne peut pas faire efficacement ce que l’on veut, le danger est écarté ou réduit. Cette idée optimiste de deux négations qui s’annulent l’une l’autre ne correspond pourtant pas à une tendance universelle, car elles peuvent également s’ajouter l’une à l’autre. Prenons le cas de la vengeance. Alors que le sang lui bout dans les veines à la suite d’un affront, un agent décide de se venger sur-le-champ, ce qui l’expose à plus de risques que s’il prenait son temps pour chercher le lieu et l’heure qui conviennent. Le risque est minimal s’il ne se venge pas (je fais abstraction des sanctions que d’autres pourraient lui imposer pour le punir de sa ourdisse). Il est plus grand quand il se venge, mais prend son temps pour concocter les détails de cette vengeance. Il est maximal quand il cherche à se venger sans délai. Ainsi l’émotion augmente doublement le risque.

Jon Elster, Agir contre soi: la faiblesse de volonté, Paris, 2007, pp. 58-59

Derek Parfit

I sometimes want to kick my car[.] Since I have this anger at material objects, which is manifestly irrational, it’s easier to me to think, when I get angry with people, that this is also irrational.

Derek Parfit, ‘An Interview with Derek Parfit’, Cogito, Vol. 9, No. 2 (August, 1995), p. 118

Nick Cooney

Working on issues that affect us, that our friends work on, or that captivate our attention form good starting points for realizing the importance of working to create social change. It is to effective activism what recycling is to an environmentally sustainable lifestyle: it’s the place that pretty much everyone starts out at. But it shouldn’t be an end- point. Once we’ve developed the spirit of social concern, once we’ve seen the value in working to create a better world, we need to move forward in becoming more thoughtful about how we spend the limited amount of time and energy we have. We need to begin choosing our activist work from a utilitarian perspective: How can I do the most good? How can I reduce the most suffering and destruction of life? Slogans like “practice random acts of kindness” feel good and are easy to put into practice. But if we don’t take our activism more seriously than that, our motive is probably a desire to feel good about ourselves, to help ourselves or those close to us, or to act out our self-identity. The endpoint of authentic compassion is a desire to do the most good that one can, to be as effective as possible in creating a world with less suffering and destruction and more joy. Figuring out how we can do the most good takes careful thought over a long period of time, and it means moving into new and possibly uncomfortable areas of advocacy. But the importance of taking our activism seriously and approaching it from this utilitarian perspective cannot be overstated. It will mean a difference between life and death, between happiness and suffering, for thousands of people, for thousands of acres of the ecosystem, and for tens of thousands of animals.

Nick Cooney, Change of Heart: What Psychology Can Teach Us about Creating Social Change, New York, 2011, pp. 22.23

John Stuart Mill

Capacity for the nobler feelings is in most natures a very tender plant, easily killed, not only by hostile influences, but by the mere want of sustenance; and in the majority of young persons it speedily dies away if the occupations to which their position in life has devoted them, and the society into which it has thrown them, are not favourable to keeping that higher capacity in existence.

John Stuart Mill, Utilitarianism, in The Collected Works of John Stuart Mill, Toronto, 1988, vol. 10, pp. 212-213

Jon Elster

Delay strategies might seem to hold out the best promise for dealing with emotion-based irrationality. Since emotions tend to have a short half-life, any obstacle to the immediate execution of an action tendency could be an effective remedy. As I note later, public authorities do indeed count on this feature of emotion when they require people to wait before making certain important decisions. It is rare, however, to observe people imposing delays on themselves for the purpose of counteracting passion. The requisite technologies may simply be lacking.

Jon Elster, Explaining Social Behavior: More Nuts and Bolts for the Social Sciences, Cambridge, 2007, p. 242