Category: Emotions
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Pet Love as Idolatry? Problems of Attachment and Grief
I buried my little female cat Caissa at sunrise this morning in a beautiful spot in the Superstition Mountains in the same place where I buried my male cat Zeno in October of 2002. When I buried Zeno, just before leaving the burial site, I prayed, "May we love the perishable as perishable and…
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The Pointlessness of Worry
The dreaded event will either occur or it will not. If it occurs, then the worrier suffers twice, once from the event, and once from the worry. If it does not occur, then the person suffers from neither. Therefore, worry is irrational. Make provision for the future, be aware of the possibilities of mishap, take…
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God, Gratitude, and Gladness
Jim Ryan of Philosoblog posts infrequently, but always interestingly. Ryan is both a conservative and an atheist. Being a conservative, he appreciates the importance of gratitude. Being an atheist, he sees no reason to take gratitude and its importance as supportive of theistic belief. Herewith, some commentary on his post A New Error Theory for Theism. 1.…
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The Color of Envy
There was a time when I thought that the expression, 'He/She turned green with envy,' was just an expression with no fundamentum in re. But one day in graduate school, at a dissertation defense, I observed a particularly vain professor's face acquire a decidedly greenish tinge as he watched a somewhat pompous but very bright…
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Envy, Jealousy, Schadenfreude
The older I get, the more two things impress me. One is the suggestibility of human beings, their tendency to imbibe and repeat ideas and attitudes from their social environment with nary an attempt at critical examination. The other is the major role envy plays in human affairs. Suggestibility is best left for another occasion…
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Schadenfreude with a Twist
To feel envy is to feel diminished by another's success or well-being. Schadenfreude is in a certain sense the opposite: it is to take pleasure or satisfaction in another's misfortune. An interesting case of Schadenfreude is pleasure in having incited envy in another. Envy is a vice of propinquity. Envy erupts only among people who…
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Spinoza on Commiseratio. Pity as a Wastebasket Emotion
To commiserate, to feel compassion, to pity — these come to the same. Might compassion be a mistake? Suppose an evil befalls you. If I am in a position to help, then perhaps I ought to. But it is unnecessary that I 'feel your pain' to use a Clintonian expression. Indeed, my allowing myself to…
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Admiration and Contempt
Often it is like this. He is not admirable; it is your unadmirable propensity to admire that confers upon him a quality he does not possess. She is not contemptible; it is your contemptible tendency to contemn that makes of her what she is not. One ideal is to so apportion admiration and contempt that…