PHILOS 2YY3 Lecture Notes - Lecture 19: Virtue Ethics, Stoicism
2 Apr 2018
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It is impossible to think about moral life without moral emotions: they are rational things, how we feel is a dispositional state. Emotions = transitions from a state to a lesser or greater activity. The moral life: involves cultivating virtue, feeling moral sensibility / sensitivity, etc, not solely about pure rational judgment but being invested as emotional persons in circumstances. Emotions have intrinsic moral value -> they are not instrumental or superfluous. With virtuous actions, the right emotional response is coincident with having the right rational judgment: e. g. feeling indignation over witnessing injustice, sorrow over suffering, shame over intemperance, etc. For kant, emotions belong to inclination, are completely irrational and are only morally relevant insofar as reason must subdue their desires according to its law. For the stoics, emotions are part and parcel with rational nature insofar as they are involved in evaluative judgments. Avoid these two extremes: emotions are neither fully rational nor fully irrational.
