Emotion Concepts for Virtue Theory: From Aesthetic to Epistemic and Moral

In “Emotion Concepts for Virtue Theory: From Epistemic and Moral to Aesthetic,” Lisa Widdison addresses a meta-philosophical issue in virtue theory, the historically problematic role of emotions in moral judgement, and in motivating virtue. Contemporary virtue epistemologists look to character traits that are relevant to inquiry, such as intellectual courage, carefulness and open-mindedness as marks of intellectual virtue. Both virtue ethicists and virtue epistemologists may also construe emotions as embodied judgements which express moral and epistemic value. However, the cognitive language of emotions as ‘self-interested judgments of value’ leaves a gap aesthetic judgment may fill. In contrast with egotistical or deterministic emotions, a path to empathy, harmony and compassion is affectively regulated by judgments of taste. By following Bharatamuni (Nāṭyaśāstra, 200 CE) and Abhinavagupta (950 CE) through a paradigmatic model of fully graded aesthetic emotion-type distinctions, the discourse around bhavas and rasas (ordinary and universalized emotion, respectively) provides a basis to link the aesthetic stance to free will, agentive responsibility and an infusion of pathos required to motivate a character trait of harmony. Lisa maintains that in processing aesthetic judgments, emotions become reflective, or operate without a settled objective, and so can harmonize actions with moral interests. It is possible to make a fine-tuned analysis of cognitive, occurrent states of personal emotion, and open-ended, universalized emotions, which constitute aesthetic experiences. The finely graded distinctions of affect in Śaiva non-dualism reveal an emotional agency which presupposes the unity of cognition with affect.