Becoming Who We Are through Affective Engagement with Others: Mindshaping, Agency, and the Epistemic Role of the Emotions

What role do emotions play for the development of one’s self? This essay will discuss the importance of affect-laden interactions with others for the development of our ability for autonomous agency in childhood and beyond. I will explore, first, how affective encounters with others enable reasons-responsive agency by introducing us into the space of reasons and by providing us with interpretive frameworks of perceiving the world relative to our aims, concerns, and values. However, the very same mindshaping processes that enable agency in the sense of reasons-responsiveness also make us susceptible to agency-undermining social practices. Yet the proper response to these threats to our agency should not be seen in a turn towards introspection and a retreat from sociality or the emotions. Rather, as I will argue in the second part of the chapter, we need to harness and foster our social and emotional abilities in the service of cultivating our skills of autonomy competence.