Chapter 7 - How Should We Feel about Recalcitrant Emotions?

Summary

In everyday moral experience, we judge ourselves for our emotional responses. Often the emotions that we criticize are recalcitrant: they are emotions that we do not endorse or that conflict with our considered judgments. Most of the philosophical literature on recalcitrant emotions focuses on (a) whether and how they are possible or (b) whether and how they are irrational. In this paper, my interest is in the ways we blame ourselves for recalcitrant emotions. I aim to show that it is harder than it looks to explain self-blame for recalcitrant emotions. I will argue recalcitrance alone does not give us a reason to feel any particular way about our emotions and it is not sufficient grounds for self-blame.