(Routledge Studies in Contemporary Philosophy) Alba Montes Sánchez, Alessandro Salice - Emotional Self-Knowledge-Routledge (2023)

Routledge Studies in Contemporary Philosophy
EMOTIONAL
SELF-KNOWLEDGE
Edited by Alba Montes Sánchez
and Alessandro Salice
“Emotional self-knowledge is a new subject area at the intersection of
the so far largely separate fields of philosophy of self-knowledge and
philosophy of emotions. This book brings together leading experts from
both fields to address questions about the role and reliability of emo-
tions as sources of self-understanding. The scholarship in this innovative
book is first-rate, and the editors and contributors are established schol-
ars representing both analytical and phenomenological approaches to
philosophy.”
Mikko Salmela, University of Copenhagen, Denmark
“This outstanding volume introduces a wide array of interesting and

original perspectives on the neglected role of emotion for self-knowledge
and self-understanding. It fills a crucial gap in the extant literature on
the epistemic significance of affectivity.”
Jean Moritz Müller, University of Bonn, Germany
Emotional Self-Knowledge
This volume sheds light on the affective dimensions of self-knowledge

and the roles that emotions and other affective states play in promoting
or obstructing our knowledge of ourselves. It is the first book specifically
devoted to the issue of affective self-knowledge.
The relation between self-knowledge and human emotions is an often
emphasized, but poorly articulated one. While philosophers of emotion tend
to give affectivity a central role in making us who we are, the philosophical
literature on self-knowledge focuses overwhelmingly on cognitive states and
does not give a special place to the emotions. Currently there is little dia-
logue between both fields or with other philosophical traditions that have
important contributions to make to this topic, such as phenomenology and
Asian philosophy. This volume brings together philosophers from the rele-
vant fields to explore two related sets of questions: First, do philosophers of
emotion exaggerate the importance of our affective lives in making us who
we are? Or is it philosophers of self-knowledge who misunderstand emo-
tions? Second, what is the role of emotions in self-knowledge? What sort of
self-knowledge can be secured by paying attention to our emotions?
Emotional Self-Knowledge is an essential resource for researchers and
advanced students working on philosophy of emotion, philosophy of mind,
epistemology, philosophical psychology, and phenomenology.
Alba Montes Sánchez is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Center for Sub-

jectivity Research in Copenhagen, Denmark. She has published widely on
the phenomenology and moral psychology of self-conscious emotions like
shame, pride, and envy, in journals like European Journal of Philosophy or
Frontiers in Psychology and collective volumes in Routledge or Cambridge
University Press.
Alessandro Salice is a Lecturer at the Department of Philosophy of University

College Cork, Ireland, and a Research Associate at the Center for Subjectivity
Research in Copenhagen, Denmark. He has extensively published on a
variety of topics mainly related to phenomenology, philosophical psychol-
ogy, philosophy of action, social ontology, and moral psychology. His current
work develops along two general directions: he continues to address various
systematic issues concerning human sociality by also exploring the philo-
sophical potential of phenomenology.
Routledge Studies in Contemporary Philosophy
Updating the Interpretive Turn

New Arguments in Hermeneutics
Edited by Michiel Meijer
Conservatism and Grace

The Conservative Case for Religion by Establishment
Sebastian Morello
The Ethics of Interpretation

From Charity as a Principle to Love as a Hermeneutic Imperative
Pol Vandevelde
The Nature and Practice of Trust

Marc A. Cohen
A Plea for Plausibility

Toward a Comparative Decision Theory
John R. Welch
Living with the Dead

On Death, the Dead, and Immortality
J. Jeremy Wisnewski
Free Will’s Value

Criminal Justice, Pride, and Love
John Lemos
Edited by Alba Montes Sánchez and Alessandro Salice
For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.

routledge.com / Routledge-Studies-in- Contemporary-Philosophy/
book-series/SE0720
Edited by
Alba Montes Sánchez
and Alessandro Salice
First published 2023
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DOI: 10.4324/9781003310945
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Contents
Notes on Contributorsix
Acknowledgmentsxi
Introduction: Self-Knowledge and Emotion 1

ALBA MONTES SÁNCHEZ AND ALESSANDRO SALICE
PART I
Affectivity and Self-Knowledge 15
1 Affective Forecasting and Substantial Self-Knowledge 17

UKU TOOMING AND KENGO MIYAZONO
2 Alienated Emotions and Self-Knowledge 39

KRISTA K. THOMASON
3 Acquiring Self-Knowledge from Others 56

EDWARD HARCOURT
4 Emotions and the Contestation of Social Identities 73

BENNETT W. HELM
5 Emotion, Self-Knowledge, and Liberation

in Indian Philosophy 103
MATT MACKENZIE
viii Contents
PART II
The Emotions, Self-Knowledge, and Self-Ignorance 123
6 Good Enough to Be Myself? The Fraught Relationship

between Self-Esteem and Self-Knowledge 125
ANNA BORTOLAN
7 Three Stages of Love, Narrative, and Self-Understanding 145

PILAR LOPEZ-CANTERO
8 Transitional Boredom: On Boredom and Self-Knowledge 168

ANTONIO GÓMEZ RAMOS
9 Envy, Racial Hatred, and Self-Deception 188

ALESSANDRO SALICE AND ALBA MONTES SÁNCHEZ
10 Hostile Affective States and Their Self-Deceptive Styles:

Envy and Hate 209
ÍNGRID VENDRELL FERRAN
Index 228
Notes on Contributors
Anna Bortolan is a Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at Swansea University,

UK. Her research interests are in phenomenology, philosophy of
emotion, and philosophy of psychiatry. Anna has authored several
journal articles and book chapters, as well as having co-edited the
volume Empathy, Intersubjectivity, and the Social World (2022).
Antonio Gómez Ramos is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at Carlos
III University of Madrid, Spain. He has translated Hegel and Gadamer
into Spanish and has authored articles and books on subjectivity,
political philosophy, and memory studies. He is the co-editor of Atlas
político de emociones (Madrid, Trotta, forthcoming).
Edward Harcourt is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of
Oxford, UK, and a fellow of Keble College. He has published widely
on topics including Neo-Aristotelianism and child development,
the ethical dimensions of psychoanalysis, love and the virtues, the
philosophy of mental health and mental illness, and Wittgenstein.
Bennett W. Helm is the Elijah Kresge Professor of Philosophy at Franklin
Marshall College, USA. He is the author of Emotional Reason:
Deliberation, Motivation, and the Nature of Value (2001), Love,
Friendship, and the Self: Intimacy, Identification, and the Social
Nature of Persons (2010), and Communities of Respect: Grounding
Responsibility, Authority, and Dignity (2017).
Pilar Lopez-Cantero is an Assistant Professor of Philosophy at Tilburg
University, the Netherlands, and the author of several works on the
nature and ethics of love published in Ethical Theory and Moral
Practice, Southern Journal of Philosophy, International Journal of
Philosophical Studies, and others.
Matt MacKenzie is a Professor of Philosophy and Department Chair
at Colorado State University, USA and the author of Buddhist
Philosophy and the Embodied Mind (Rowman & Littlefield, 2022).
x Notes on Contributors
Kengo Miyazono is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at Hokkaido
University, Japan. His main research areas are philosophy of mind,
philosophy of psychology, and philosophy of psychiatry. His recent
publications include Philosophy of Psychology: An Introduction
(Polity, 2021, with Lisa Bortolotti), and Delusions and Beliefs: A
Philosophical Inquiry (Routledge, 2018).
Alba Montes Sánchez is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Center for
Subjectivity Research in Copenhagen, Denmark. She has published
widely on the phenomenology and moral psychology of self-conscious
emotions like shame, pride, and envy, in journals like European
Journal of Philosophy or Frontiers in Psychology and collective
volumes in Routledge or Cambridge University Press.
Alessandro Salice is a Lecturer at the Department of Philosophy of
University College Cork, Ireland, and a Research Associate at the
Center for Subjectivity Research in Copenhagen, Denmark. He
has extensively published on a variety of topics mainly related to
phenomenology, philosophical psychology, philosophy of action,
social ontology, and moral psychology. His current work develops
along two general directions: he continues to address various
systematic issues concerning human sociality by also exploring the
philosophical potential of phenomenology.
Krista K. Thomason is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at
Swarthmore College, USA. In 2021–2022, she was the Philip L.
Quinn Fellow at the National Humanities Center. She is an expert in
philosophy of emotion, moral philosophy, and history of philosophy.
Some of her publications appear in Philosophy and Phenomenological
Research, European Journal of Philosophy, and The Monist. She is
the author of the book Naked: The Dark Side of Shame and Moral
Life (2018).
Uku Tooming is a research fellow at the University of Tartu, Estonia.
He works primarily on philosophy of mind and aesthetics and has
published papers on imagination, desire, self-knowledge, and aesthetic
appreciation in journals like Australasian Journal of Philosophy,
Pacific Philosophical Quarterly, Synthese, European Journal of
Philosophy, Journal of the American Philosophical Association, etc.
Íngrid Vendrell Ferran is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of
Marburg, Germany. She is the author of two books: Die Emotionen.
Gefühle in der realistischen Phänomenologie (2008) and Die Vielfalt
der Erkenntnis (2018). Her research is in the areas of philosophy of
mind, phenomenology, epistemology, and esthetics.
Acknowledgments
This book is one of the main outputs of Alba Montes Sánchez’s

Postdoctoral Fellowship on the project “The Others in Me: The Impact
of Others on Self-Conscious Emotions and Self-Understanding”, car-
ried out at University College Cork (Ireland), mentored by Alessandro
Salice, and generously funded by the European Union’s Horizon 2020
research and innovation program under the Marie Skłodowska-Curie
grant agreement No 890316. Although emotional self-understand-
ing was always an important element of the project from the proposal
stages, the need for a dedicated volume on this topic only became appar-
ent to us after the project had started. In particular, in the late months
of 2020 and early months of 2021, we convened from UCC an online
reading group on emotions and self-knowledge. The more we read and
discussed with the other participants, the clearer it became to us that we
had to edit a volume on this topic. We therefore wish to thank everyone
who participated in this reading group for the hours of inspiring con-
versation. We also thank Dan Zahavi and two enthusiastic anonymous
reviewers who examined our book proposal for their support at differ-
ent stages of the process. The chapters that feature in this volume were
all presented and discussed at an international workshop on “Emotional
Self-Knowledge”, held at UCC in Cork on 4–6 May 2022 in a hybrid
format. All contributors took part in it, either on-site or online, and we
thank them all, as well as all other participants in this workshop, for
their engagement and for three days of extremely enriching discussions
that have immensely improved this book. We thank Colette Connolly
and Michael Brendan Nee for their support in organizing this event.
And last but not least, thank you to Andrew Weckenmann at Routledge
for believing in our idea and making this volume possible.
Introduction
Self-Knowledge and Emotion
Alba Montes Sánchez and Alessandro Salice
The relation between self-knowledge and human emotions is an often

emphasized, but poorly articulated one. On the one hand, many philoso-
phers of emotion take affective states to be fundamentally connected to,
if not constitutive of, who we are. This is because they believe that our
cares and concerns, our values, what motivates us to act, are all affec-
tive in nature (Scheler 1973; Goldie 2000; Helm 2001, 2010; Roberts
2003; Roeser and Todd 2014). Thus, insight into our emotions should
provide us with crucial self-knowledge. Indeed, some philosophers from
other traditions, psychoanalysts, and empirical researchers of the mind
converge on the idea that genuine self-knowledge, self-knowledge of a
transformative kind that allows the person to evolve, cannot be of a
merely cognitive nature but requires “emotional insight” (see, e.g., Bell
and Leite 2016; Gipps and Lacewing 2019).
By contrast, the philosophical literature on self-knowledge doesn’t assign
a special place to the emotions. A large part of this literature is narrowly
concerned with the epistemic privilege of the first-person and focuses on
our rational capacities, devoting little attention to our affective lives (see
Gertler 2017 for an overview). But even those philosophers who explicitly
focus on “substantial” (Cassam 2014) or “Socratic” (Renz 2017a, 2017b)
self-knowledge, i.e., knowledge of the effortful kind that can be considered
an epistemic or an existential achievement, often treat emotions as one of
the various facts we can get to know about ourselves, on a par with other
mental states (such as beliefs, desires, or preferences).
Various questions arise in view of this discrepancy: Do philosophers of
emotion exaggerate the importance of our affective lives in making us who
we are? Or is it philosophers of self-knowledge who do not appreciate the
role of emotions for self-knowledge? But then, what exactly is the role of
emotions in self-knowledge? What sort of self-knowledge can be secured
by paying attention to our emotions? This volume gathers contributions
from different relevant fields, with the aim of offering an adequate, com-
prehensive, and detailed picture of the contribution that understanding
our emotions makes to our self-understanding. The volume is divided in
two parts. The first one is concerned with fundamental issues: it clarifies
DOI: 10.4324/9781003310945-1
2 Alba Montes Sánchez and Alessandro Salice
in which sense affectivity in its evaluative dimension determines who we
are, it elaborates on the kind of knowledge of ourselves that affective
phenomena can provide (knowledge of our values, character traits, or
social identities, for instance), and it also points to some possible routes
to affective self-knowledge (e.g., interactions with others or affective
forecasting). The second part of the volume gets into the specifics of
several affective phenomena, namely: self-esteem, love, boredom, envy,
hatred, and hostile emotions in general. Overall, the book reveals how
complex and rich the interactions between emotions and self-knowledge
are, and how many promising research questions remain to be explored
at the intersection of both fields.
But before delving into more details about the structure and contents
of the book, let us set the stage by clarifying the sense of “self-knowl-
edge” at stake here, introducing the different classes of affective states
that are addressed in the chapters (for not all authors address “emo-
tions” in the narrow sense of episodic attitudes), and offer some of the
reasons why we believe that paying attention to the emotional aspects of
self-knowledge is so important.
To begin with self-knowledge, it should be stated from the outset that
none of the chapters contained in this volume has much to say on the
main debates that have traditionally dominated the philosophy of self-
knowledge. With the exception of Edward Harcourt, who in Chapter 3
explores the different ways in which others can be sources of knowledge
of oneself, the focus of this volume is not mainly on the epistemic
privilege of the first-person perspective, or on arguing for or against the
existence of a form of self-knowledge that is immediate or transparent.
All chapters start from the idea that some of the bits of self-knowledge
that we care most about are far from immediate, they are hard to
get, and obtaining them can constitute a genuine achievement. Thus,
the self-knowledge that this volume focuses on for the most part falls
under the category of what Quassim Cassam (2014, Chapter 3) labels
“substantial”, as opposed to “trivial”, self-knowledge. Uku Tooming and
Kengo Miyazono have more to say about this distinction in Chapter 1,
but let us quickly introduce it here. The distinction between these two
varieties of self-knowledge is more intuitive than technical, and it is not
supposed to be of a categorical nature either. In fact, Cassam claims
that the difference between the two poles is a matter of degree: self-
knowledge can be more or less substantial. So what is the difference?
Trivial self-knowledge—for example, knowing that I am wearing socks
right now—is very easy to get, some would even say immediate (meaning
that one wouldn’t need to perform any inferences to obtain it—although
Cassam disagrees), and has little personal value. By contrast, substantial
self-knowledge—for example, knowing whether I’m courageous—is
difficult to obtain, we can easily get it wrong, and it has much higher
personal value.
Introduction 3
Turning now to the value of self-knowledge, what do we mean when
we say that substantial self-knowledge is personally more valuable
than trivial self-knowledge? Simply that knowing whether I am coura-
geous can have an impact on things like my long-term decision-making,
the ways in which I handle conflicts with others, or my self-concept,
for example, while knowing that I’m wearing socks doesn’t have that
impact. Thus, in keeping with this idea, a fairly generalized assumption
made throughout this volume is that self-knowledge has value for its
subject. Most chapters just take this for granted and don’t spell out why
and how substantial self-knowledge is valuable. But there are exceptions.
For instance, Chapters 2 and 7, by Krista Thomason and Pilar Lopez-
Cantero, respectively, point at ways in which substantial self-knowledge
bears upon our narrative self-understanding, thus helping us to find some
meaningfulness in our lives. Therefore, according to them, one of the
reasons why substantial self-knowledge has value is that it can contrib-
ute to a temporally extended self-concept that confers sense to our lives.
Yet, the place where the underlying issue of the value of self-knowledge
is brought to the fore most explicitly is Chapter 5, by Matt MacKenzie.
This chapter offers a survey of several schools of Indian philosophy and
explains that, in this tradition, the pursuit of self-knowledge, or knowl-
edge of the nature of consciousness in general, usually had a central
soteriological aim: it was taken to be a means of achieving spiritual lib-
eration. Thus, in one way of another, most chapters in the book take for
granted that self-knowledge is good to have. Antonio Gómez Ramos,
however, warns us in Chapter 8 that the pursuit of self-knowledge can
also adopt vicious forms that risk dissolving meaning and purpose, so
the value of self-knowledge per se is thrown into question. The conclu-
sion is not that knowing ourselves is bad, simply that we should examine
more carefully the kinds of value that it brings into our lives, the cost
of the methods we employ to achieve it, and the individualistic and even
egoistic overtones that its pursuit can acquire.
But how does affectivity feature in the quest for self-knowledge?
To address this question, let us start with some quick definitions. While
all chapters in this volume deal with affective phenomena in one way or
another, not all of them focus on what we would technically refer to as
“emotions”. Different authors carve out the affective territory in slightly
different ways, but there are roughly three classes of phenomena that
receive attention in this book: emotions, moods, and sentiments. All of
them are ways of being moved, of caring, of responding to the world; they
all color our perceptions of the world, but they all are different in specific
ways. Emotions are generally taken to be the central category, and in some
sense the simpler of the three, since emotions have a clear intentional
object and involve a relatively unified and characteristic way of respond-
ing to it. First, emotions are about something, they have an intentional
object, which can be a thing, a person, a situation, etc. For example,
we get angry at the driver who cut us in traffic or feel proud of the book
that we just published. Furthermore, there is a very widespread consen-
sus that emotions are evaluative states; they put their objects under a
specific assessment or appraisal (thereby displaying sensitivity toward
these objects’ “values” Scheler 1973; or “formal objects” Kenny 2003),
e.g., my anger evaluates the other driver’s behavior as offensive, my pride
evaluates the book’s publication as an excellent achievement of mine,
and so on. Emotions clearly also have a phenomenology, there is some-
thing it is like to undergo them. Often they are felt in the body, in more
or less subtle ways, and they have indeed been characterized as “embod-
ied appraisals” (Prinz 2004). But even the emotions that do not involve
bodily feelings in such a conspicuous way—think about admiration or
gratitude—have a phenomenal feel to them, and as such they have been
defined as “intentional feelings of import” (Helm 2001). Finally, most
emotions are deemed to involve specific action tendencies, they prepare
us to act in certain ways. Thus, according to some theories of anger,
this emotion typically motivates aggression (or at least some decided
action to recriminate the offender), while pride typically motivates
display behavior, where we tend to communicate to others our virtues or
achievements. There is much more to say about emotions, and this short
summary doesn’t even scratch the surface of all the complex and fasci-
nating debates going on in the philosophy of emotion (see Scarantino
and de Sousa 2021 for an overview), but it will do as an introductory
characterization. Emotions feature as a general class in most chapters in
this book, and fear and envy get special treatments by Thomason (fear in
Chapter 2), Íngrid Vendrell Ferran (envy in Chapter 10), and Alessandro
Salice and Alba Montes Sánchez (again envy in Chapter 9).
Now, what distinguishes emotions from the other two abovemen-
tioned classes of affective phenomena, namely moods and sentiments?
Starting with moods, one of the most widespread ways of distinguish-
ing them from emotions is to point out that moods have no intentional
object, no clear aboutness. We often feel cheerful or melancholy for no
particular reason, without being able to say what we are happy or sad
about. When this is the case, we are experiencing a mood, not an emo-
tion. Some authors, however, are unconvinced by the idea that moods
lack intentionality, and they argue instead that moods have very broad
objects or a diffuse aboutness: they would be about the world as a whole,
for example (Heidegger 2008; Elpidorou and Freeman 2015). Building
on this Heideggerian idea, Ratcliffe has recently developed the notion of
“existential feelings”, which are “ways of finding oneself in the world”
(Ratcliffe 2005, 2008). Anna Bortolan (Chapter 6) and Lopez-Cantero
(Chapter 7) make extensive use of this notion in their respective chapters
on self-esteem and love, while Gómez Ramos (Chapter 8) treats bore-
dom predominantly as a mood.
Introduction 5
Finally, a third class of affective state that gets addressed in this book
is sentiments. Although none of the authors use this traditional term,
love and hatred, which both make prominent appearances in this book
(in Chapters 7, 9, and 10), have often been characterized in such a way.
What distinguishes sentiments from emotions is that sentiments are typ-
ically more complex and longer lasting attitudes that do not consist in a
single response but involve characteristic patterns of thought, judgment,
motivation, different emotional responses, and so on. In other words,
loving someone is not a matter of responding to them in a single way, or
of living through feelings of only one kind, but it involves many different
and characteristic ways of acting, emoting, and judging. Furthermore,
sentiments persist even when one is not experiencing any related feelings:
parents who love their children typically go about their days engrossed
in whichever tasks they need to do, without constantly having emotional
episodes of something one could call love (although they will feel surges
of affection in the appropriate circumstances). Despite the absence of
emotional experience at a given point in time, these parents still count as
loving their children at all times. Moreover, feeling proud of one’s chil-
dren, worrying about their well-being and judging them to be valuable
people typically count as ways of loving them. Similar points can be made
about hatred, although hatred of course involves very different evalu-
ations, emotions, and motivations. In any case, both phenomena seem
necessarily more long-lasting than episodic emotions of fear or pride for
example, and they involve more complex patterns of response than emo-
tional dispositions to feel episodic emotions in specific circumstances—
for example, if one is generally afraid of dogs, one will be disposed to feel
fear upon encountering them, or caution about preventing such encoun-
ters, but the range of responses one is predisposed to experience will be
limited to fear and its close cousins. By contrast, love and hatred seem to
dispose one to a wider range of responses, and this is why some authors
have called these phenomena “syndromes” (Sousa 2015) or “multi-track
emotional dispositions” (Deonna and Teroni 2012, chap. 1).
Having offered these quick characterizations of different sorts of
affective states, we come to the central issue in this volume: What is
the relation between such states and self-knowledge? A first possibility
and, as we stated at the outset, the one that features most prominently
in the existing philosophy of self-knowledge, is that affective states are
one among the various possible facts self-knowledge might be concerned
with, one among the various facts we can get to know about ourselves.
Approaching one’s inquiry in this way means asking how do we know
what we feel, what are the challenges to knowing what we feel and
similar questions (see, e.g., Cassam 2014). This is a valuable approach
that can teach us a lot about emotion and self-knowledge, and several
chapters in this book ask this sort of question (especially Chapters 1–3,
9, and 10). But the importance of affective states for self-knowledge goes
beyond this in at least two directions. Let us address them in turn.
On the one hand, given their evaluative nature, affective states contain
the potential to give us access to other pieces of substantial knowledge:
as Tooming and Miyazono argue in Chapter 1, they might be central in
our endeavors to find out about our character traits or even some of our
abilities. As Bennett Helm (Chapter 4) and Thomason (Chapter 2) express
most clearly, they play crucial roles in getting to know what we value.
And as all authors in Part II of the volume show, they often impact and
shape our self-understanding in significant ways. Thus, paying attention
to our affective states can give us important clues on at least two central
aspects of ourselves and our personal identities: the things that we care
about and value (a key element of what some authors call the “moral
self”, see Prinz and Nichols 2016), and the ways in which we articulate
our temporally extended self-concept (especially through narratives, see,
e.g., Goldie 2012).
On the other hand, recent research into epistemic emotions and their
roles in obtaining knowledge points to the crucial functions that phe-
nomena like curiosity or certainty fulfill in fueling or halting inquiry,
and to the power that emotions have to make things salient and to direct
our attention (Brady 2013; Candiotto 2019). These roles are also rele-
vant for self-knowledge and, as MacKenzie highlights in the last section
of Chapter 5, some Indian schools of thought devised ways in which
to harness these emotional capacities to direct attention and motivate
action to acquire knowledge of the true nature of consciousness and
progress toward spiritual liberation. While no chapter in this book
directly addresses epistemic emotions—an issue that must remain the
subject of future investigation—several chapters do analyze in detail the
role that certain affective states play in redirecting attention away from
themselves and from the facts about the subject that they reveal, fueling
self-deception (especially Chapters 6 and 8–10).
The above are just some of the reasons why we believe that emotions
and affective phenomena in general should have a more prominent place
in the philosophy of self-knowledge than has hitherto been assigned to
them. Other specific reasons will become obvious throughout the vol-
ume. It is therefore time to offer a more detailed summary of all chapters.
Part I of the book, “Affectivity and Self-Knowledge”, deals with the
importance of the affective domain as a whole for self-knowledge, offer-
ing a sample of the kinds of spaces that affectivity opens up (or some-
times might close down) for self-knowledge. In Chapter 1, Tooming
and Miyazono set out to explain Cassam’s (2014) notion of substan-
tial self-knowledge by appealing to the involvement of emotions in this
kind of knowledge and, in particular, to the difficulties that we humans
tend to have to predict how we will feel in the future. According to the
authors, one of the main factors that make certain bits of self-knowledge
Introduction 7
more substantial, and thus harder to get, than others is that acquiring
the former requires affective forecasting. In other words, to get to know
what one values or which character traits one has, for instance, one
typically has to be able to accurately predict how one will feel, how
intensely and for how long. Empirical studies show that people tend to
be bad at making those predictions, and therefore self-knowledge of
those aspects of ourselves that involve emotional dispositions is more
difficult to obtain and more substantial than self-knowledge of other
features. This chapter thus offers an account of emotional dispositions
as important sources of self-knowledge, which are nonetheless prone to
frequent errors and thus make self-knowledge difficult to secure.
In Chapter 2, Thomason tackles the question of what emotions can
tell us about ourselves by focusing on what she calls “alienated emo-
tions”—i.e., those emotions that conflict with and unsettle our self-im-
age—through an example of alienated fear. When an affective response
clashes with what we think we know about ourselves, what should we
do about this? Thomason argues that, since emotions are tied to what we
care about and what we value, we should resist the temptation to dismiss
such feelings as odd, irrelevant, or irrational. In fact, they might be more
revealing than we think. Sticking too stubbornly to our existing self-
image or trying too hard to maintain a coherent self-narrative might then
lead us to self-deception: ignoring parts of ourselves that don’t fit into
that picture. In our quest for a self-knowledge that might help us make
better decisions and, perhaps, live more meaningful lives, Thomason
advocates for honesty as one of the guiding principles and for reckon-
ing with alienated emotions as one potential source of a more nuanced
understanding of who we are.
Thus, the first two chapters emphasize the importance of emotions
for self-knowledge, while drawing attention to the difficulties we face in
achieving emotional self-insight as individuals. The following two chap-
ters, by contrast, expand the focus to include other people in our search
for self-knowledge. Harcourt does so in Chapter 3 by defending the claim
that others can know me and express my mental states as spontaneously
as I do, and they can thus offer me access to a knowledge of myself
that is direct. In other words, others can be sources of the same kind of
self-knowledge that has often been considered to be reserved to me alone.
When a parent says to a child “poor you, that hurts”, or an adult friend
says to an adult friend “I think you’re tired”, or a therapist gives a client
an interpretation of the client’s feelings or behaviors, they are not—at
least not typically—giving them mere labels for their experiences, or the-
ories they need to work through to incorporate into their self-knowledge.
Most of the time, the transaction happens immediately and effortlessly
and this is so, according to Harcourt, because no transformation is nec-
essary: others have access to spontaneous self-knowledge of me and can
thus offer it to me. Furthermore, this capacity does not depend on others
loving me or feeling compassion toward me: I can obtain self-knowledge
in this spontaneous way from an enemy or a competitor. This is possible
thanks to what Harcourt calls our “ordinary aliveness to one another”,
a form of affective-cognitive attunement to each other that points to “a
kind of ‘psychological commons’, that I and others indifferently can both
spontaneously contribute to and draw upon” (p. 67).
In Chapter 4, Helm continues widening the focus to the role of others
for self-knowledge, by addressing social identities. Here, Helm defends
two seemingly contradictory claims: social identities are a matter of
social construction, and we can be wrong about the very facts that we
socially construct. How can these two claims be made compatible?
Firstly, Helm argues that the point of social identities is for commu-
nities to articulate the ways in which we, by each fulfilling the social
roles assigned to us by our social identities, can best flourish together.
This idea of flourishing is the touchstone on which the contestation
of social identity constructions can rest. Secondly and crucially, Helm
rejects the ontological priority of facts over constructions or vice versa
and proposes a holistic account of the phenomena that rests on a the-
ory of import and value that centrally involves our emotions. According
to Helm, emotions are essential building blocks not only of what we
personally value as individuals (and thus are vital for constituting and
knowing our personal identities), but also, when they take the form of
reactive attitudes (Strawson 1974), of what we collectively value as com-
munity members. Since the point of our social identities is to enable us to
flourish, and one of the most important sources of evidence about one’s
flourishing is provided by one’s experiences, our emotions can provide
us with reasons to criticize social identities from the point of view of
personal values. But more widely and powerfully, when these emotions
become reactive attitudes that are rationally linked with the responses of
others in a resistant sub-community within the wider community, they
provide us with reasons to contest the ways in which social identities
are constructed in the wider community and to argue that those con-
structions get things wrong. Thus, emotions are both (fallible) sources
of knowledge about our social identities and simultaneously part of that
which constructs those very identities.
Finally, the first part of the volume closes with an attempt to broaden
our horizons beyond the confines of Western academic philosophy. In
Chapter 5, MacKenzie takes us on a journey through classical Indian
philosophy, offering an overview of the main ideas on self-knowledge
and the role that affective states play in it found in several important
schools of Indian thought, including Buddhism, Yoga, Nyāya, and
Advaita Vedānta. Classical Indian thinkers developed extremely sophis-
ticated and detailed accounts of the human mind, including the emo-
tions and other affective states, many of which resemble and prefigure
our contemporary accounts of these phenomena in Western philosophy
Introduction 9
and psychology. The aims of these thinkers were twofold. Firstly, they
had the mainly epistemological aims to accurately describe and account
for the nature of the mind and its workings. But secondly, and cru-
cially, these theories had the soteriological aim of serving as aids to
liberation from the suffering of existence. In other words, one of the
main motivations to pursue an adequate knowledge of the mind and
its emotions was its contribution to achieving spiritual enlightenment
and, ultimately, transcendence. MacKenzie’s chapter thus addresses
head-on an issue that is in the background of many other chapters of
this volume: the issue of the value of self-knowledge. Why should we
pursue it? Thomason (Chapter 2) and Lopez-Cantero (Chapter 7) are the
authors who most clearly formulate different versions of an answer that
many would endorse in contemporary Western philosophy: the pursuit
of self-knowledge contributes to finding meaningfulness and purpose
in our lives. This, however, is significantly different from the answers
we find in Indian philosophy. Both the schools of thought that consider
the individual self to be an illusion and those that affirm its existence
as a real entity share the idea that achieving spiritual liberation implies
transcending the desires and purposes of individual selves here and
now. To that end, one will have to understand the true nature of mind
and consciousness, and one might strategically cultivate some emotions
and desires, directing them in the right way. Thus, for Indian thinkers,
the ultimate aim and value of this sort of knowledge is soteriological:
achieving spiritual liberation.
After this cross-cultural interlude, Part II of the volume, “The Emotions,
Self-Knowledge and Self-Ignorance”, returns to Western philosophy and
explores the contributions that specific emotions and affective phenomena
can make to self-knowledge or self-ignorance. It begins with an investi-
gation into self-esteem by Bortolan in Chapter 6. Here, Bortolan argues
that self-esteem is an “existential feeling”, a background affective orien-
tation that shapes the range of things a person can get to know about
themselves. In other words, the relationship between self-knowledge and
the feeling of our own self-worth is not a one-way street, with self-esteem
being simply the product of how we evaluate the things we know about
ourselves. Rather, how we feel about ourselves determines which pieces
of self-knowledge we are able to obtain and incorporate into our self-con-
cept. Someone with an appropriate degree of self-esteem will be able to
integrate all kinds of information about themselves, both positive and
negative, into their self-concept, and allow this information to feed into
their general level of self-esteem. By contrast, people at the extremes, with
either too high (grandiose narcissism) or too low degrees of self-esteem
(impostor syndrome), will find it very difficult or impossible to integrate
into their self-concept information that contradicts how they feel about
themselves. In that way, this affective orientation can either enable or hin-
der self-knowledge and, in any case, shape it.
Moving on from our self-esteem to our feelings for other people, in
Chapter 7, Lopez-Cantero offers us an exploration of how romantic
love, in its different stages, impacts on our self-understanding. Most
accounts of love define it not as a simple emotional state (like joy, anger,
or fear), but as something more complex and long-lasting: a sentiment,
a syndrome, or a disposition. Thus, it is often argued that love has a
narrative structure, a view that Lopez-Cantero endorses. And it is
through this narrative structure, through the ways in which love makes
us think narratively about our past and our future together with our
loved one, that love changes our self-understanding. According to Lopez-
Cantero, falling in love (be it suddenly or gradually) brings about a new-
found existential feeling that “things make sense”, which opens up a
new branch of possibilities about the future and gives momentum to the
love narrative. This momentum is maintained during the middle stage
of love, when lovers co-construct and shape their shared possibilities.
At the end of love, the existential feeling of things making sense gets lost
and the narrative momentum disappears, which ends the love narrative.
Thus, one’s understanding of oneself, one’s future possibilities, and one’s
past is once again altered at the end of love. In this way, love strongly
shapes our self-understanding from beginning to end. Now, as Lopez-
Cantero suggests, both the pleasant and the painful elements of love and
loving relations can push us to construct narratives that are delusional
or self-deceiving, but the risks of self-deception are not exclusive to love,
and in most cases paying attention to this sentiment allows us to get to
know a crucial dimension of who we are.
Chapter 8, by Gómez Ramos, deals with a very different affective phe-
nomenon: boredom. While love connects us to the relations that matter
most and fill our lives, boredom confronts us with emptiness and with
our insignificance in the face of endless time. At least, that is what many
of the authors discussed in this chapter think. Here, Gómez Ramos sur-
veys a large body of literature on boredom, encompassing sociology,
cultural studies, and philosophy, he presents a taxonomy of different
varieties of boredom and focuses a more intense analytic gaze on two
varieties: superficial and profound boredom. While superficial boredom
is a familiar mood that anyone can experience when one lacks inter-
esting stimuli, profound boredom is presented as a deeper state that is
culturally linked to Modernity, and that arises as a mood that connects
to an existence devoid of meaning. This kind of boredom can teach us
something about ourselves, about our smallness; it can make us hum-
bler. But at the same time, inasmuch as profound boredom is socially
produced and it is connected to certain forms of organizing work and
entertainment, it also can tell a lot about how social life may preclude
self-knowledge or contribute to it. Therefore, boredom can not only con-
tribute to self-knowledge, but it also easily pushes us away from it, it can
spur a masking endeavor driven by a wish to flee from its discomfort.
Introduction 11
Thus, we come to the two final chapters of the volume, which address
head-on the threats of self-deception and the ways in which certain emo-
tions, far from fostering self-knowledge, entail strong intrinsic motiva-
tions to turn away from it. Chapter 9, authored by the editors Salice
and Montes Sánchez, is an exploration of the characteristic and system-
atic ways in which envy leads to self-deception in the context of identi-
ty-based discrimination. By amplifying on our previous account of envy
(Salice and Montes Sánchez 2019), we discuss the political relevance
of this emotion, which we understand as a group-based, intrinsically
hostile attitude that feeds on feelings of inferiority and impotence. In
particular, we elaborate on the suggestion, originally presented by Sara
Protasi (2021), that at least certain forms of racial hatred are fueled by
envy. Our account relies on the idea that, to overcome the disturbing
experience of envy, the subject can revise the evaluations that ground
their emotion, thereby indulging in specific forms of self-deception.
Some of these forms are already known in the literature surrounding
so-called emotional mechanisms (Salice and Salmela 2022), which has
shown how envy can transmute into commiseration or moral indigna-
tion toward the rival. We advance this literature by explaining how envy
can also lead to racial or xenophobic hatred. This is especially the case
when the envious subject conceives of their rival as being a member of
a group that enjoys what are perceived to be unwarranted social privi-
leges that enhance their recognition by a reference group. Rather than
acknowledging their envy and, in fact, in order to discard this unpleas-
ant emotion, the envious subject is happy to confabulate about the rival
as an individual instantiating an evil social nature and, in so doing, to
turn them into an object of their hatred.
Continuing and expanding on this line of thought, in Chapter 10,
Vendrell Ferran closes the volume with an investigation into the self-
deceptive styles that characterize different hostile affective states.
Vendrell Ferran contends that certain negative affective states, such as
jealousy, envy, contempt, hatred, or Ressentiment, bear inherent motiva-
tions for subjects to deceive themselves about what they are feeling. This
is because these states, or at least some of their varieties, imply a dimi-
nution in their subject’s feelings of self-worth, which trigger self-decep-
tive maneuvers to escape from them. Thus, a self-deceptive style is the
characteristic way in which each affective state pushes subjects to escape
self-knowledge in order to avoid a distressing impact on their self-es-
teem. Not all hostile affective states are identical in this respect, though.
As Vendrell Ferran shows, self-deception and self-ignorance can come
in degrees, and some strategies to ignore certain emotions can blind the
subject more than others. According to her comparison, what she calls
malicious hatred leaves its subject epistemically worse off than envy.
The volume thus closes on a somewhat pessimistic note, emphasiz-
ing the power of certain affective states to mask self-knowledge. But the
pressures that such states exert are not inescapable, and the picture is bal-
anced by other chapters, which emphasize the potential of affective phe-
nomena to reveal essential aspects of ourselves and of our identities, both
personal and social, and to call our attention to facets of them we would
rather ignore. The chapters also suggest many questions that remain
unanswered: How do we overcome the obstacles to emotional self-knowl-
edge? What role—if any—do epistemic virtues play in this regard? When
is emotional self-knowledge good and when and how does it turn bad? In
which further respects is it valuable? How do affective phenomena inter-
act with our beliefs, judgments, and desires to constitute our self-knowl-
edge? Does emotional self-knowledge have to be conceptualized or do our
emotions “know” things we cannot conceptualize? This is just a sample of
the many pressing questions that have yet to be addressed by a philosophy
of self-knowledge that recognizes the crucial place of affectivity in making
us who we are. In the meantime, we hope that this volume will testify to
the importance of its topic and inspire others to join us in pursuing a rich
research agenda on emotional self-knowledge.
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Part I
Affectivity and
Self-Knowledge
1 Affective Forecasting and
Substantial Self-Knowledge
Uku Tooming and Kengo Miyazono
1.1 Introduction
Self-knowledge comes in different varieties which seem to have little in
common with one another. For instance, knowing that one is generous
and knowing that one’s legs are crossed have objects of different ontolog-
ical categories, which differ in terms of difficulty and one has arguably
much greater practical and moral importance than the other. Because of
these differences, there is a reason to think that self-knowledge cannot
and should not receive a uniform theoretical treatment. However, this
also raises the question: along what lines should we distinguish between
different kinds of self-knowledge?
In his book Self-Knowledge for Humans, Quassim Cassam has drawn
a useful distinction between two kinds of self-knowledge, trivial and
substantial. According to Cassam, while trivial self-knowledge (TSK) is
easy to achieve but usually lacks practical importance for one’s identity,
substantial self-knowledge (SSK) requires cognitive effort and is consid-
erably more important. If we accept this distinction, then knowing that
one’s legs are crossed would fall under TSK and knowing that one is
generous would be a form of SSK.
Cassam has not fully answered the question as to why achieving SSK is
more difficult than achieving TSK, however. Although he provides some
useful gestures in that direction, there is still an explanatory gap. In this
chapter, we are going to tackle that question. We will argue that the
reason why cases of SSK are more difficult is that the evidential demands
on SSK are such that a person can easily fail to have the relevant evidence.
In particular, what is often needed is evidence about one’s affective reac-
tions and this is difficult to come by, given that people are easily mistaken
about those reactions. They are easily mistaken because, as empirical
evidence shows, they are prone to fail at affective forecasting.
The plan is as follows. In Section 1.2, we are going to describe the
distinction between SSK and TSK in more detail. Then, in Section 1.3, we
will argue that the substantiality of a case of self-knowledge correlates with
the evidential demands of the case and that especially substantial cases
DOI: 10.4324/9781003310945-3
18 Uku Tooming and Kengo Miyazono
require evidence that one has the relevant affective reactions. Section 1.4
looks at empirical data on affective forecasting errors that people tend to
make and suggests that the proneness to such errors explains why cases of
SSK that require evidence for the relevant affective responses are especially
difficult for them. Then, in Section 1.5, we will consider some paradig-
matic cases of SSK—knowledge of one’s character, values, and aptitudes—
and show how our explanation of the difficulty of SSK applies to them. We
will examine possible objections to our proposal in Section 1.6.
1.2 Trivial and Substantial Self-Knowledge

On the one hand, examples of TSK can easily be found in mainstream
philosophical discussion of self-knowledge, e.g., knowing that you
believe that it is raining outside, or knowing that you want to have
another cup of chocolate ice cream. On the other hand, examples of SSK
are rarely discussed in mainstream philosophical literature on this topic.
Cassam (2014, 29) provides us with the following examples of SSK:
• Knowing that you are generous (knowledge of one’s character).

• Knowing that you are not a racist (knowledge of one’s values).
• Knowing that you can speak Spanish (knowledge of one’s abilities).
• Knowing that you are a good administrator (knowledge of one’s
aptitudes).
• Knowing why you believe a controlled demolition brought down
the World Trade Center on 9/11 (knowledge of one’s attitudes in the
‘knowing why’ rather than in the ‘knowing what’ sense).
• Knowing that you are in love (knowledge of one’s emotions).
• Knowing that a change of career would make you happy (knowledge
of what makes one happy).
Cassam (2014, 30ff) distinguishes SSK from TSK by several conditions:

the Fallibility Condition (it is always possible to be mistaken in one’s
self-ascription of SSK), the Obstacle Condition (there are obstacles
to arriving at SSK), the Self-Conception Condition (acquiring SSK is
entangled with one’s self-understanding), the Challenge Condition (the
claim to SSK can be challenged in ordinary contexts), the Corrigibility
Condition (other people may be in a better position to know about sub-
stantive issues than the agent herself),1 the Non-Transparency Condition
(SSK can’t be acquired through the transparency method), the Evidence
Condition (SSK is based on evidence), the Cognitive Effort Condition
(acquiring SSK is a matter of reflective work), the Indirectness Condition
(SSK is psychologically and epistemically mediate), and the Value
Condition (SSK has practical and often also moral importance).
Cassam admits that the distinction between TSK and SSK is a matter
of degree, not of kind (Ibid., 29). All forms of self-knowledge are located
Affective Forecasting and Substantial Self-Knowledge 19
somewhere on a continuum between highly trivial cases (e.g., the case of
knowing that you believe it is raining outside) on the one end and highly
substantive cases (e.g., the case of knowing that you are generous) on the
other end. Cassam also admits that the distinction between TSK and SSK
does not neatly match up with the distinction between psychological cat-
egories, e.g., beliefs and desires on the one hand and character traits and
values on the other. There might be somewhat substantive cases of know-
ing one’s own beliefs or desires (see the discussion of the self-knowledge of
desire in Section 1.3). And, possibly, there might be somewhat trivial cases
of knowing one’s own character traits and aptitudes (see the discussion of
the inductive knowledge of one’s character traits in Section 1.6).
Why is acquiring SSK more difficult than acquiring TSK, exactly?
Cassam says that there is no single answer to this question, but his account
focuses on his inferentialist theory of self-knowledge according to which
“the knowledge of own beliefs, desires, hopes, and other ‘intentional’
states is first and foremost a form of inferential knowledge” (Cassam
2014, 137). But why is acquiring SSK more difficult than acquiring TSK
according to inferentialism? Cassam’s inferentialism is supposed to be
an account of self-knowledge that includes both SSK and TSK; it is not
the case that only TSK is inferentially acquired. Appealing to inferen-
tialism itself does not explain the asymmetry between acquiring SSK
and acquiring TSK. What we need to know is what those features of
SSK are, due to which (inferentially) acquiring SSK is more difficult than
(inferentially) acquiring TSK.
Cassam (2014, 194f) discusses several ways in which you can fail to
(inferentially) acquire self-knowledge of attitude A:
a You haven’t performed the necessary inference from the evidence

you have.
b You lack the necessary evidence.
c You have all the evidence you need but draw the wrong conclusion
about whether you have A because (i) you reason poorly, (ii) you
misinterpret the evidence, and (iii) you have a defective theory about
the relationship between your evidence and your attitude.
Accounting for the asymmetry between TSK and SSK, (a) and (c) do not
seem to be particularly informative. About (a), it is not clear why a person
is more likely to fail to perform the necessary inference from the evidence
in the context of acquiring SSK than in the context of acquiring TSK.
For example, it is not clear why she is more likely to fail to perform the
necessary inference from the evidence when she is figuring out whether
she is generous than when she is figuring out whether she believes that it
is raining outside. About (c), it is not clear why, when a person has all the
evidence, she is more likely to draw wrong conclusions in the context of
acquiring SSK than in the context of acquiring TSK. For example, it is not
clear why, when a person has all the evidence, she is more likely to draw
wrong conclusions when she is figuring out whether she is generous than
when she is figuring out whether she believes that it is raining outside.
The common issue with (a) and (c) as explanations of the asymme-
try between SSK and TSK is that they are rather superficial. According
to both (a) and (c), the difficulty of attaining knowledge pertains to
the agent’s deficient exercise of reasoning or inference in a given case.
However, it is not very informative to say that one case is epistemically
more difficult than the other just because agents more easily tend not to
draw the relevant inference. What we want to know is why the agents
tend not to draw the relevant inference.
For this reason, we think that an informative explanation of the asym-
metry between SSK and TSK should be based on (b). Such an explana-
tion should specify the kinds of evidence which are particularly difficult
to gather, compared to the evidence that figures in the cases of TSK. This
is not to say that (a) and (c) cannot contribute to explaining the asym-
metry; (b) just provides a deeper explanation as to why (a) and (c) apply.
1.3 Failures of SSK as Failures of Evidence

In this section, we will flesh out the explanation of the type (b) and
argue that how substantial a case is depends on the kind of evidence
that is needed to arrive at self-knowledge. As a first approximation,
case X is more substantial than case Y when an agent in X needs to
possess the kind of evidence that an agent in Y does not need to make
a knowledgeable self-attribution. In addition, we will argue that it is
evidence about one’s future and counterfactual affective reactions that
makes a difference to the substantiality of a case.
Here it is useful to consider Krista Lawlor’s (2009) conception of the
self-knowledge of desire because Cassam makes extensive use of it in his
analysis of SSK (Cassam 2014, 142). By looking at the Lawlor/Cassam
account, we can clarify what it is about the evidential demands on a
self-ascription that makes it a case of SSK.
According to Lawlor’s model of causal self-interpretation, the typical
way of coming to know what one wants is through causal inference from
sensations, mental images, and natural language sentences. “Internal
prompting” is a covering term for all these mental occurrences. An agent
comes to the self-ascription of desire when, by experiencing internal
promptings and actively rehearsing them, she postulates the desire as
the hypothetical cause of those occurrences. Upon experiencing further
internal promptings, the agent might reject the preliminary hypothesis,
revise it, or confirm it, depending on whether she takes the further
promptings to be good evidence for the hypothesis or not. The process is
fallible and can go on for a long time, but sometimes the agent arrives at
a self-ascription of desire that sticks, after which the agent counts
as knowing that he has the desire in question. According to Lawlor, the
(fallible) markers of having identified one’s desire include a sense that
the self-ascription in question is unavoidable, given the pattern in one’s
internal promptings, and the self-ascription in question bringing about
a change to the quality of one’s internal promptings (Lawlor 2009, 60).
Lawlor’s example of the internal promptings model in action concerns
the case of Katherine who, upon looking at her son in his crib, hears
in her head “Have another”. This spontaneous inner speech utterance
prompts a bout of self-scrutiny regarding other similar internal prompt-
ings that Katherine recently experienced and regarding the cause of
those promptings. The hypothesis that Katherine makes is that the cause
is her desire to have another child. The initial hypothesis need not settle
the question of what she wants, however. She gathers further data by
actively rehearsing and considering new imaginings about having chil-
dren. After a while, she may experience a sense of ease with respect to
the hypothesis and its explanatory strengths upon which she counts as
knowing that she wants another child (2009, 59).
Katherine’s case seems to satisfy sufficiently many conditions to count
as SSK. Her self-knowledge is fallible (the Fallibility Condition), having a
desire for another child bears on her self-conception (the Self-Conception
Condition), the question of whether she wants to have another child is
not transparent to the question of whether having another child is desir-
able (the Non-Transparency Condition), the self-ascription of a desire
to have another child is based on evidence (the Evidence Condition),
Katherine exercises cognitive effort to arrive at the right answer (the
Cognitive Effort Condition), Katherine’s self-knowledge is neither psy-
chologically nor epistemically immediate but is based on inference (the
Indirectness Condition) and knowing that she wants to have another
child matters both practically and morally (the Value Condition).
If the SSK and TSK are distinguished by evidential circumstances, what
is it about Katherine’s evidential circumstances that make her case a case
of SSK? We propose that it is a case of SSK because Katherine faces a
challenge of getting enough good evidence and avoiding misleading evi-
dence when inferring her desire from her internal promptings. Suppose
that she does want to have another child, but when she imaginatively
rehearses possible scenarios involving children, those imagined scenarios
do not constitute unambiguous evidence that she has the desire to have
another child. This situation is not unrealistic, given that one’s imagin-
ings can be elaborated in different directions and can carry redundant
information. In addition, the evidence that imagination provides is not
only evidence about one’s mental states, but also evidence for facts about
the actual world (Kind 2016) and about possibilities (Yablo 1993), and
an agent might mix up different kinds of evidence. Furthermore, the feel-
ings that those imaginings generate can often be ambiguous and indicate
attitudes other than the desire to have another child. The imaginative
rehearsal that Katherine engages in does not guarantee getting access
to sufficient evidence for the belief that she wants to have another child.
As a result, she may fail to arrive at a correct self-ascription of desire. 2
It thus makes sense to think of Katherine’s case as a case of SSK and
it is reasonable to think that it is the challenge of getting enough good
evidence and avoiding misleading evidence for one’s self-ascription that
makes it SSK. This supports the idea that the difficulty of SSK in con-
trast with TSK derives from the evidential situation that the agent is in.
So far so good. What we now want to suggest, though, is that there is a
further kind of evidence bearing on SSK that one needs to consider. Notice
that all the relevant evidence that Lawlor (and Cassam) considers is evi-
dence for the mental causes of one’s present mental occurrences. There are
cases, however, in which such evidence is not sufficient for one to attain self-
knowledge. There are targets of SSK, knowledge of which requires evidence
about one’s affective reactions to possible future events. Consequently,
self-knowledge of these targets is more substantial than self-knowledge that
does not require evidence about one’s affective reactions.
To see what targets we have in mind, consider the following elabora-
tion of Katherine’s case. Suppose that Katherine also asks herself whether
she values having another child and, after careful consideration (say, by
analyzing the possible causes of her internal promptings as in the case of
desire), concludes that she does. Then, at some point in the future, that
prospect finally materializes and Katherine gives birth to a baby girl. To
her unpleasant surprise, however, she discovers that she feels disappointed
and torn about the decision that she made. The new child does not bring
any of the contentment that she expected her to bring. Oftentimes, she
even finds herself mumbling to herself: “That’s not what I wanted”. She
is embarrassed about those feelings, but they are unambiguous in sug-
gesting that having another child was nothing like she imagined it to be,
insofar as her affective responses are concerned.3
In such a situation, we think that it is reasonable to think that when
Katherine turns out to be disappointed in having another child, this indi-
cates that her evaluative attitudes toward that prospect are fickle: before
giving birth, she seemed to value having another child, while Katherine’s
subsequent affective responses indicate that her valuing is at most only
surface-level or that she did not value it in the first place. It makes sense
to say that the disappointment defeats her earlier belief that she valued
having another child. Our precursory explanation of this is that valuing
involves having appropriate affective dispositions that express one’s evalu-
ative outlook.4 If Katherine takes herself to value having another child, her
affective reactions give a reason to think that she is mistaken because they
indicate that she does not have the affective disposition that is required for
valuing. The analysis of the (elaborated) Katherine’s case lets us see that
there are domains of self-knowledge where getting one’s future affective
reactions right is immediately relevant for having self-knowledge.5
It seems, then, that there are cases of SSK, such as knowing one’s
values,6 where knowing one’s affective reactions to future events is nec-
essary.7 Prima facie, since they require more evidence than cases of SSK
for which knowing one’s affective reactions is not necessary, acquisition
of self-knowledge in the former cases faces even more obstacles in the
latter cases and it makes sense to think that they are more substantial.
To flesh out our proposal, we need to give an account of what it is about
the knowledge of one’s affective reactions that makes it so difficult to
achieve. In Section 1.4, we are going to argue that the difficulty of arriv-
ing at self-knowledge in those cases stems from the fact that knowing
one’s affective reactions requires affective forecasting which people tend
to be bad at. Our proposal is that the evidence about how one is dis-
posed to affectively react is difficult to gather, given people’s propensity
to error in affective forecasting. Because of this, affective forecasting is
not a reliable source of evidence.
1.4 Affective Forecasting: General Theory

Affective forecasting involves predicting one’s affective reactions to
future events and is arguably a typical procedure that people resort
to when making decisions. For instance, take Timo, who is deciding
between different holiday destinations. A natural way to make an
informed decision is for him to compare how he would feel with respect
to the different options. Let’s say his options are Paris and Tallinn. In
order to decide where to go, Timo then engages in affective forecasting.
With respect to Paris, he predicts that he would feel very excited by being
in a place that he has wanted to visit for years. With respect to Tallinn,
he predicts that he would feel bored,8 given that he has lived there in the
past and is well familiar with its main attractions. By comparing those
predictions, Timo then decides to go to Paris because it seems to him to
provide more affective payoff than Tallinn would.
Unfortunately, there is now a substantial body of research in psychol-
ogy which shows that people are prone to robust patterns of error in affec-
tive forecasting. While they are generally not mistaken about the valence
of their affective reaction—i.e., whether it would be pleasant or unpleas-
ant—they are less accurate about the intensity and duration of their reac-
tion (Wilson and Gilbert 2005). These mistakes can express themselves
both in overestimation and underestimation. Overestimations are known
as impact bias. For instance, people overestimate how bad they would
feel if they rejected good advice regarding a sports wager (Crawford et al.
2002); academics tend to overestimate how sad they would feel upon not
getting tenure and college students overestimate the affective impact of
the dissolution of a romantic relationship (Gilbert et al. 1998). Examples
of underestimation include underestimating the affective impact of social
pain from ostracism and shame (Nordgren, Banas, and MacDonald 2011),
underestimating emotional pain caused by ambivalent sexism (Bosson,
Pinel, and Vandello 2010), and underestimating emotional reaction to an
outcome of a foregone gamble (Andrade and Van Boven 2010).
The most prominent causes of impact bias are focalism and immune
neglect. Focalism is the tendency not to consider the impact of events
other than the predicted event on one’s affective condition (Schkade and
Kahneman 1998). As a result, one’s forecast exaggerates the affective
impact of the focal event. Immune neglect concerns the tendency to not
consider the effect of emotional coping mechanisms on one’s circum-
stances where initial strength of the affective reaction diminishes over
time (Hoerger et al. 2009). Since the coping mechanisms function mostly
unconsciously (Wilson and Gilbert 2005, 133), it is no wonder that peo-
ple do not consider them when they engage in affective forecasting.
Take Timo again. Given an all-too-human proneness to errors in
affective forecasting, Timo might easily overestimate not only the feel-
ings of excitement with respect to visiting Paris, but also the feelings of
boredom with respect to Tallinn. As a result, the forecasts get skewed
and Timo’s comparison between Paris and Tallinn turns out to be mis-
taken. Had Timo’s forecast been accurate, he might have even decided to
visit Tallinn instead of Paris.
Some data indicate that inaccuracies in predicting the intensity of affect
are not pervasive: people tend to misinterpret the question of how they
would feel as a question of how intensely they would feel about a par-
ticular event, whereas when the event comes about, they are asked to rate
the intensity of their feelings in general (Levine et al. 2012).9 As a result,
the earlier prediction can understandably be mistaken because it answers
a different question than the evaluation at the time when the event has
occurred. On the other hand, people’s predictions are more accurate when
both at the time of the prediction and at the time when the predicted
event has occurred, they answer the question about their feelings about
that particular event (Doré et al. 2016). A more nuanced take on people’s
capacity for affective forecasting was also suggested by a recent study by
Lench et al. (2019) where college students were asked how they would feel
in terms of intensity, frequency and impact on mood if they got a grade
that was higher/lower/the same as they expected. As it turned out, they
were less biased in predicting the intensity of the feeling than predicting its
frequency or its impact on mood. Affective forecasts regarding the results
of the 2016 U.S. presidential election delivered similar results.
For our purposes, however, it suffices to take on board the idea that
people’s affective forecasts are often erroneous, especially with respect
to the duration of the predicted emotion. The arguments in favor of the
view that people tend to accurately predict the intensity of the emo-
tional reaction upon the time of the predicted event have not challenged
the claim that people are easily mistaken about their affective responses
across wider timescales.
The difficulty of affective forecasting might have something to do
with some general features of imagination. In forecasting our affective
response to a future scenario, we tend to imagine some specific aspects
of the scenario, abstracting away some details that can make a differ-
ence. Maibom writes; “we often do not imagine in enough detail. Our
imagination is usually constrained in a variety of ways. If, for instance,
our mother instructs us to imagine how we would feel if someone were
to hit us over the head with a stick and take our toy, this is exactly what
we will imagine: being hit over the head and deprived of our toy. Quite
likely we’ll imagine little else, such as where we were being hit, who the
other child was, why they might have been induced to hit us over the
head, and so on. The event will not be situated the way that events in our
lives are” (Maibom 2016, 192).10
Let’s now return to SSK. Why is self-knowledge that concerns know-
ing one’s affective dispositions especially difficult? This is because in
order to know one’s affective dispositions one has to know what affec-
tive responses one would have across a large variety of possible circum-
stances. One therefore needs to predict those responses, i.e., one needs
to resort to affective forecasting in which, as the data indicate, people
tend to fail. If people easily fail at accurately predicting how they would
feel about a future or counterfactual event and SSK requires knowing
one’s affective reactions across a variety of possible circumstances, then
it follows that people easily fail to arrive at SSK.
It could be objected that affective forecasting research only shows that
we are bad at predicting the specific features of our affective responses
(e.g., duration and intensity) but it does not show that we easily fail at
predicting the kinds of emotions that we are disposed to have. We admit
that it is consistent with the available evidence in that field that errors
in affective forecasting rarely extend to the identification of types of
emotion and that our ability to predict what kinds of emotion we would
feel is quite robust. However, in the present context, it is exactly the
difficulty of predicting the specific features of affective responses that
is at issue. SSK concerns targets that involve dispositions to have affec-
tive responses of appropriate duration and intensity. In what follows, we
will consider such targets more closely and show how the proneness to
affective forecasting errors regarding features of our affective responses
explains their difficulty.
1.5 Applications
Affective forecasting is a key factor in acquiring SSK, but we do not
claim that it explains all cases of SSK. We agree with Cassam that there
is probably no single explanation of the difficulty of acquiring SSK.
There are multiple factors, and they work differently in different cases
of SSK. For instance, perhaps affective forecasting has little to do with
the SSK of the ability to speak Spanish. We predict, however, that SSK
that does not involve much affective forecasting is less substantial than
SSK that does involve affective forecasting. In other words, the differ-
ence between strongly substantial SSK (of character, values, etc.) and
weakly substantial SSK (of linguistic abilities, etc.) can be explained by
the relevance of affective forecasting.
1.5.1 Character
One of the central kinds of SSK that Cassam considers is the knowl-
edge of one’s character.11 Taking that kind of knowledge to constitute
SSK is prima facie very plausible, given that answering questions such
as whether I am lazy or industrious, courageous or cowardly, generous
or stingy doesn’t look like a trivial matter. An agent is not immediately
justified in thinking that she has a particular character trait; instead,
knowing whether she has it seems to require considerable self-reflection.
Why is knowing one’s character difficult? In the case of many charac-
ter traits, the explanation in terms of the difficulty of affective forecast-
ing looks very plausible. This is because one of the central dispositions
that make up a character trait is a disposition to have affective reac-
tions across a variety of circumstances and, due to people’s proneness
to errors in affective forecasting, knowing whether one has the relevant
affective disposition is challenging.
Think about empathy as a character trait.12 Since being empathic is
partly constituted by feeling the right kind of emotions toward peo-
ple in need, it is a crucial part of your figuring out whether you are
empathic or not that you forecast your affective reactions to people in
need. As a matter of fact, however, you are not very good at affective
forecasting; you mistakenly predict that you will feel the right kind of
emotions toward people in need and thus attribute yourself the charac-
ter trait of empathy. This is one way in which you mistakenly conclude
that you have that trait.
Cassam’s own example of knowing one’s character as a form of SSK
concerns fastidiousness, which is a trait that involves caring about tidi-
ness and things being in order. As an example of a person being fas-
tidious, he considers a character called Woody who always keeps his
surroundings clean and tidy (Cassam 2014, 176). How can Woody come
to know that he is fastidious? According to Cassam:
Here is how Woody might come to know that he cares about such
things as tidiness and attention to detail, and that he is bothered by
their absence: when he imagines the state of his teenagers’ bedroom
he is conscious of feeling a mixture of dismay and irritation. The
same mixture of dismay and irritation is prompted by the recollec-
tion that he didn’t have time to tidy his desk when he finished work
yesterday, and he is conscious of a desire to put things right as soon
as possible. When he thinks about what needs to be done tomorrow,
he focuses on what he sees as the need to restore order. He knows
that his work colleagues aren’t nearly as meticulous as he is, and
is conscious of thinking thoughts along the lines of “if you want
something done right, do it yourself”. On the basis of his thoughts,
imaginings, and emotions Woody is in a position to conclude that he
cares about cleanliness and attention to detail.
(Ibid., 177)
To know whether he is fastidious, Woody needs to know to what extent

he cares about tidiness and cleanliness and this in turn requires knowl-
edge about his affective reactions with respect to the relevant situations
where such cares are manifested. Our explanation of the difficulty of
SSK is thus easily applicable to Cassam’s central example of SSK. The
difficulty of knowing whether one is fastidious is due to the difficulty of
knowing one’s affective dispositions.
What about character traits that do not manifest themselves in affec-
tive reactions? We think that their number is probably quite limited,
given that some kind of affective disposition seems to be a necessary
condition for most character traits. That being said, there are some can-
didates. For instance, the traits of diligence and conscientiousness are
plausibly less tied to affective dispositions than many other traits. In a
Korean TV series Stranger a.k.a. Secret Forest, the main character, pros-
ecutor Hwang Si-mok is incapable of feeling emotions but outshines his
colleagues by not letting himself be corrupted by the influence of money
and power. He wholeheartedly commits himself to solving the criminal
cases and it makes sense to take him to be diligent and conscientious.
If the series is psychologically realistic, then it provides us with some
examples of character traits that do not require affective reactions.
The acknowledgement of “affectless” character traits doesn’t falsify
our explanation of SSK, however. It is important to stress here that we
allowed that the difficulty of SSK comes in degrees and that our expla-
nation is meant to apply to more substantive types of self-knowledge. In
the case of character traits, our claim is that what makes a difference to
the difficulty of knowing a type of a character trait is whether knowing
that one has it requires relying on affective forecasting. If diligence, or
at least some kind of diligence, does not involve affect, our prediction is
that self-knowledge of that kind of diligence is less difficult and less sub-
stantive than self-knowledge of those character traits that involve affect.
A subset of knowing one’s character traits that are especially diffi-
cult to know involves self-knowledge of virtue. Think about the virtue
of courage, for example. Since the trait of being courageous is partly
constituted by not being too afraid of risks and dangers, it is a crucial
part of your figuring out whether you are courageous or not that you
forecast your affective reactions to risks and dangers. As a matter of
fact, however, you are not very good at affective forecasting; you mis-
takenly predict that you will not be too afraid of risks and dangers and
thus attribute yourself the virtue of courage. This is one way in which
you mistakenly conclude that you have the virtue of courage.
Our account can provide an explanation, admittedly a very specu-
lative one, as to why self-knowledge of virtue stands out in difficulty
among traits that are not virtues if it is conjoined with the Aristotelian
theory of virtue, according to which being virtuous involves being dis-
posed to act in accordance with the golden mean, by avoiding extremes
that constitute vices (Nicomachean Ethics II.6). For instance, courage
is the intermediate between the vices of cowardice and recklessness.
Achieving the golden mean in one’s conduct requires a properly balanced
affective response to the situation at hand: the response should neither
be too strong nor too weak and it should be of appropriate duration.
Since people are generally bad at forecasting the intensity and duration
of their affective response, they are easily mistaken in their estimations
of whether they would act in accordance with the golden mean. As a
result, they are also easily mistaken in evaluating their virtuousness.13
A similar explanation can also be applied to epistemic virtues. For
instance, being epistemically virtuous arguably requires sufficient moti-
vation for truth (Montmarquet 2019; Zagzebski 2003). For instance,
when a person cares little about whether her beliefs are true or not, her
motivation for truth is too weak for her to count as epistemically vir-
tuous, but there is also another extreme where a person is so obsessed
about getting things right that she checks her beliefs even when there is
no need to check any further.14 If knowing whether one is sufficiently
motivated for truth requires knowing the intensity and duration of
one’s affective reactions in relevant situations, then failures in affec-
tive forecasting can also hinder an agent from knowing whether she is
epistemically virtuous.
There are also more specific epistemic virtues in which case it is plausi-
ble that self-knowledge of them requires knowing that one has a disposi-
tion to have affective responses within appropriate limits. These include:
intellectual perseverance (requires a disposition not to be too easily dis-
couraged by intellectual obstacles), open-mindedness (requires a dispo-
sition not to be too easily offended by different viewpoints), curiosity
(requires a disposition to get properly emotionally invested in inquiry),
and carefulness (requires a disposition not to be carried away by prelimi-
nary evidence in favor of one’s own positions). In all those cases, one has
to exercise moderation in one’s affective responses.
The literature on virtue is expansive and the disagreements over its
nature run deep. Here we do not pretend to have presented a full account
of the self-knowledge of virtue. All we can claim is that our explanation
of the difficulty of knowing one’s virtues as a form of SSK goes smoothly
with one, historically prominent and up to this day popular conception
of virtues, both moral and epistemic.
1.5.2 Values
We already saw above how knowing one’s future affective reactions with
respect to X was relevant for knowing whether one valued X, where
valuing of X was taken to require consistency in affective reactions with
respect to X over time. In this section, we will expand on this idea.
To get a better grip on what we talk about when we talk about values,
Anderson’s definition is helpful here:
To value something is to have a complex of positive attitudes toward

it, governed by distinct standards for perception, emotion, deliber-
ation, desire, and conduct. People who care about something are
emotionally involved in what concerns the object of care. Parents,
who love their children will normally be happy when their children
are successful and alarmed when they are injured. They will be alert
to their needs, take their welfare seriously in their deliberations, and
want to take actions that express their care.
(Anderson 1993, 2)
Also, Scheffler’s:
valuing involves a distinctive fusion of reason and emotion. It com-

prises a complex syndrome of interrelated dispositions and attitudes,
including, at least, certain characteristic types of belief, dispositions
to treat certain kinds of considerations as reasons for action, and
susceptibility to a wide range of emotions.
(Scheffler 2010, 29)
Although valuing cannot be reduced to affective dispositions,15 valu-

ing involves a disposition to experience a variety of emotions (see Helm
2001, this volume). What emotional responses a type of valuing is dis-
posed to manifest depends on the domain of things that are valued.
Valuing one’s children manifests itself in different emotional responses
than valuing basketball, for instance.16
Valuing is also closely related to caring:
Typical components of caring include joy and satisfaction when the

object of one’s care is doing well and advancing and frustration over
its misfortunes or setbacks, anger at agents who heedlessly cause
such misfortunes or setbacks, pride in the successes for the object
and disappointment over its defeats or failures, the desire to help
ensure those successes and to help avoid the setbacks, fear when the
object is in jeopardy and relief when it escapes untouched, and grief
at the loss of the object and the subsequent nostalgia.
(Jaworska 2007, 483)
What valuing also requires is that, depending on a situation, the affec-

tive response must have the appropriate valence, the appropriate level of
arousal that is within the appropriate range and appropriate duration.
For instance, for A to value another person, B, as a friend, A should
manifest sadness upon B’s death (valence condition) that is of appro-
priate intensity (arousal condition) and that does not immediately fade
(duration condition). If A didn’t satisfy one or more of those conditions,
it would put into question whether she actually values B as a friend. Of
course, we can think of possible cases in which one or more of those
conditions are not met but then it is plausible to think that there are
some excuses available for A. For instance, A can be excused from not
grieving B’s death and still count as valuing B as a friend, if she is under
extreme duress and needs to harness all her emotional responses for
dealing with it. As another example, if A values B as a friend, we also
expect her to enjoy B’s company (at least for most of the time), where the
enjoyment is of appropriate intensity and duration. Admittedly, these
conditions on enjoyment are relatively lax, but if A’s enjoyment were
very superficial and fleeting or if A would not enjoy B’s company at all,
she would not count as someone who values B as a friend.
In the case of valuing, then, it seems that valuing something, X,
involves, among other things, a disposition to emotionally respond to
changes that affect X across a variety of circumstances. Putting this in
the context of self-knowledge, knowing what one values seems to require
knowing that one is disposed to emotionally respond in those ways that
are relevant for valuing and, given the issues with affective forecasting,
that kind of knowledge is difficult to come by.
In his book, Cassam also considers how people come to know their
values. His example considers knowing that one is not a racist (Cassam
2014, 178). In particular, one needs to rule out instinctive racism, which
is a matter of feeling moral solidarity with members of one’s own race
at the expense of other races (Taylor 1985, 61). According to Cassam,
internal promptings play a key role here exactly because racism is a mat-
ter of feeling, among other things. What Cassam does not sufficiently
acknowledge, however, is that harboring a value also requires the dispo-
sition to continue having certain feelings that are characteristic to that
value in the future. An agent does not know that he is an instinctive rac-
ist unless he is justified in thinking that the feelings of partiality toward
one’s own race won’t seep into his affective and evaluative outlook over
time. Having a particular value is demanding in the sense of requir-
ing consistency over time, including in the future. Knowledge of values
therefore requires the ability to predict one’s affective reactions.
1.5.3 Aptitudes
On the face of it, you might think, self-knowledge of aptitudes is beyond
the scope of our account, e.g., it is not clear how knowing that you
are a good administrator is related to affective forecasting. To know
whether you are a good administrator, you can just think about whether
you have some non-affective skills and dispositions, such as PC skill or
efficiency. And knowing these relevant skills and dispositions does not
require affective forecasting.
This, however, is not the case. It is a crucial part of being a good admin-
istrator that you exhibit the right kind of affective responses in the right
kind of conditions. And knowing about the former does require knowing
about the latter. In other words, the failure of knowing about the latter
leads to the failure of knowing about the former. To see this, think about
the following case. Anna thinks that she has the aptitude for being a
good administrator, which is why she decides to take up an administra-
tive job after graduation from college. She is efficient, responsive, and
hard working. She has strong leadership and management skills. She was
a star student at high school and college and highly evaluated by teach-
ers, professors, and fellow students. It turns out, however, that she is not
a very good administrator despite her excellent skills and dispositions.
Her problem is an affective and interpersonal one; she is extremely jeal-
ous, which causes serious troubles especially in the context of working
collaboratively with co-workers. When somebody in her office achieves
a remarkable result or is promoted (especially when the person is not as
good as Anna, at least according to Anna’s own standard), Anna gets
extremely frustrated and becomes unable to concentrate on her work,
which has a considerably negative effect on her actual performance.
Anna does understand that she is relatively new in her office, and it would
take some time for others to understand how good and talented she is
and for her to receive the evaluation and reputation she deserves. But her
strong jealousy overwhelms her every time she learns about somebody
else’s achievement and promotion. Anna also has troubles with her boss,
who, according to Anna’s standard, is not as good as she is. Anna does
not respect nor trust the boss, which makes it very difficult for them
to work together as a team. Outside the office, Anna always complains
about the fact that the boss, who is inferior, earns much more than her,
who is superior. After a year of affective and interpersonal struggling, she
eventually quits her job without achieving much.
Anna’s case shows that it is crucial for one to know about one’s aptitude
for being a good administrator that one goes through some affective fore-
casting. Anna’s failure of self-knowledge is due to her failure of forecasting
her own affective reactions to co-workers’ achievements and promotions.
We think that this is not only true about the particular aptitude for
being a good administrator, but also for many other aptitudes. It is crucial
for knowing about one’s aptitude for being a good teacher that one cor-
rectly predicts one’s affective reactions to troubling students or demand-
ing parents; it is crucial for knowing about one’s aptitude for being a good
musician that one correctly predicts one’s affective reactions when one
needs to perform in front of a large audience; it is crucial for knowing
about one’s aptitude for being a good nurse that one correctly predicts
one’s affective and empathic reactions to suffering patients, etc.
Here is a possible objection. One might think that there is a crucial
difference between the case of virtues and the case of aptitudes. It is rela-
tively uncontroversial that having the right kind of emotional reaction to
danger is a constitutive part of the virtue of courageousness. It is not clear,
however, that having the right kind of emotional reaction to somebody
else’s achievements and promotions is a constitutive part of the aptitude
for being a good administrator. The latter is constituted by non-affective
skills and dispositions. If having the right kind of affective reaction is not
constitutive, then one can insist, against our stipulation, that Anna actu-
ally has the aptitude for being a good administrator, and she has the accu-
rate self-knowledge about it. After all, she has the non-affective skills and
dispositions that are constitutive of aptitude for a good administrator. She
fails as an administrator as a matter of fact, but the failure is due to some
unfortunate causal factor. You might think, for instance, that her aptitude
for being a good administrator was causally “masked” in those cases.
We do not dispute whether affective reactions are constitutive of the
aptitude for being a good administrator or they are merely causal for it.
Either way, our proposal can be defended. Suppose that affective reactions
are merely causal for the aptitude for being a good administrator. The apti-
tude for being a good administrator is constituted only by non-affective
skills and dispositions. If we conceive of aptitudes in this way, however, the
SSK of aptitudes is similar to the SSK of ability to speak Spanish, which is
only weakly substantial. It is certainly true that, in this case, Anna did have
an accurate self-knowledge that she has the aptitude for a good administra-
tor despite her failure in the real workplace, but this is simply because the
self-knowledge is not very substantial. Suppose, in contrast, that affective
reactions are not merely causal but rather constitutive of the aptitude for
being a good administrator. The aptitude for being a good administra-
tor is constituted not only by non-affective skills and dispositions but also
affective responses. If we conceive of aptitudes in this way, however, the
SSK of aptitudes is deeply substantive. In this case, Anna had inaccurate
self-knowledge that she has the aptitude for a good administrator, and her
failure is due to the difficulty of affective forecasting.
In short, affective reactions can be causal for or constitutive of apti-
tudes. SSK of aptitudes is deeply substantive in the latter case, and the
substantiveness is due to the relevance of affective forecasting. SSK of
aptitude is less substantive in the former case, and our proposal does not
have much to say about it.
1.6 Objections
1.6.1 Objection 1: Functionalist Objection

Does our account really explain the difference between TSK and SSK?
Perhaps affective forecasting is relevant not only for SSK but also for
TSK, such as TSK of my belief that it is raining outside, or the TSK of
my desire for another cup of chocolate ice cream. Given functionalism or
dispositionalism, believing that it is raining outside is partly constituted
by some affective reactions, such as being surprised when it turns out
that it is sunny outside (see Schwitzgebel’s [2002] phenomenal disposi-
tionalist account of believing).
The functionalist objection clarifies an important issue; strictly speaking,
what makes self-knowledge of X substantive is not the metaphysical fact that
X is (partly) constituted by affective reactions. Even if beliefs and desires are
partly constituted by affective reactions in the way functionalists or dispo-
sitionalists claim, it does not necessarily mean that self-knowledge of beliefs
and desires is always substantial (although, as we already pointed out, that
self-knowledge of beliefs and desires can be substantial in some cases).
Rather, what makes self-knowledge of X substantial is the epistemo-
logical fact that knowing about relevant affective reactions is (at least
typically) indispensable for knowing about X. The metaphysical fact
that X is (partially) constituted by affective reactions is certainly relevant
to the substantiality of the self-knowledge of X but only in an indirect
manner, via the epistemological fact about X, i.e., the epistemological
fact about X obtains, when it does, often in virtue of the metaphysical
fact about X. For instance, knowing about relevant affective reactions
is indispensable for knowing about character traits in virtue of the fact
that character traits are constituted by affective dispositions. However,
the metaphysical fact about X does not necessarily imply the epistemo-
logical fact about X. According to functionalism or dispositionalism,
believing that it is raining outside and desiring another cup of chocolate
ice cream are constituted by some affective reactions. But it does not
seem to be the case that knowing about relevant affective reactions is
indispensable for knowing about beliefs about raining outside or desires
for another cup of chocolate ice cream. Typically, we identify our belief
about raining outside or desire for another cup of chocolate ice cream in
a direct and immediate way without going through affective forecasting.
For a similar reason, Goldman (1993, 2006) rejects the idea that we
acquire self-knowledge of belief by tracking its functional role or dispo-
sitional profile; self-knowledge of belief is direct and immediate, while
functional or dispositional properties (including the property of causing
relevant affective responses) cannot be detected directly or immediately. In
response, one might deny the idea of direct and immediate access to one’s
own beliefs and think that self-knowledge in general is tracking functional
or dispositional properties (e.g., Carruthers 2009, 2011). But the skepti-
cism about direct and immediate access is empirically and theoretically
controversial (see Engelbert and Carruthers [2010] for an overview), and
one of us (Miyazono forthcoming) presents an argument against it; such
a skeptical view fails to explain the self-ascription of belief by people with
delusion; they regard their delusions to be their beliefs, while their delu-
sions often lack functional or dispositional properties of belief.
1.6.2 Objection 2: Inductive Objection

Knowing about relevant affective reactions is (at least typically) indis-
pensable for knowing about courage. Even if this is true, do we really
need affective forecasting in order to know about relevant affective reac-
tions? Perhaps in some cases, we have some past experience of affective
reactions to dangers that are enough to support an inductive inference
about a conclusion. Perhaps somebody has been constantly fearless in
the face of dangers in the past, and he can inductively come to the con-
clusion that he is courageous.
There are, however, some reasons to think that the past experience is
not sufficient for knowing about courage at least in many cases. Firstly,
some of the targets of SSK, such as character traits and virtues, are sup-
posed to be stable and constant across time and situation. For this rea-
son, it is likely that in many cases the limited past experiences in limited
situations are not sufficient for knowing about character traits and vir-
tues; you also need to think about different possible future situations.
Secondly and relatedly, past experiences are open to different interpre-
tations. Even if you have constantly been fearful in the face of dangers
in the past, it is still possible to explain it away by saying that past situ-
ations were not quite right. You might argue that you will be different
the next time, in the right kind of situation. And we need to appeal to
affective forecasting in order to test these hypotheses.
That said, we do think that past experience can be sufficient at least
for some people in some cases. It is possible that elderly people have suf-
ficient past experience to inductively know about their own characters,
values, aptitudes, etc., while young people do not have sufficient past
experience and thus need to appeal to affective forecasts. This is con-
sistent with the commonsensical observation that knowing about one’s
own characters, values, aptitudes, etc. is a more serious and difficult
issue for younger people than for elderly people. It is typically young
people rather than elderly people who seriously contemplate their own
characters, values, aptitudes, etc. For instance, a young army soldier
with no real combat experience might reasonably wonder whether he is
courageous enough for being a good soldier, while a decorated veteran
with rich combat experience might reasonably be confident about his
courageousness. The difference between them can be explained by the
fact that the veteran can appeal to induction, while the young soldier
needs to appeal to affective forecasting.
1.7 Conclusion
In our chapter, we discussed Cassam’s useful distinction between SSK
and TSK and proposed that what makes a case of self-knowledge sub-
stantive is the evidential situation of the agent. In the case of SSK, the
agent needs evidence that is more difficult to gather than evidence in
the case of TSK. We then argued that within the domain of SSK, there
are more or less substantial forms of self-knowledge and that the more
substantial cases are those in which the relevant evidence includes facts
about one’s affective reactions. Since knowing these facts requires engag-
ing in affective forecasting and it is well established that people easily
fail at affective forecasting, our account provides a neat explanation as
to why some cases of SSK are especially difficult to acquire.
Acknowledgments
This chapter benefited greatly from the audience’s feedback at the
“Emotional Self-Knowledge” workshop (May 4–6, 2022), organized by
Alba Montes Sánchez and Alessandro Salice. We are especially grateful
to Íngrid Vendrell Ferran for her challenging and insightful commentary.
We also thank Rui Kubota for his comments on the final version of the
manuscript. We acknowledge the support of Estonian Research Council
grant MOBTP1004 and JSPS KAKENHI 19F19762 & 21H00464.
Notes
1. In fact, others may play a crucial role in making such self-knowledge possible
in the first place (see Edward Harcourt’s contribution to the present volume).
2. See Tooming (2020) for a complementary analysis of what makes Katherine’s
case a case of SSK. According to Tooming, it is the lack of experiential famili-
arity with the content of the self-ascribed desire that makes it difficult to know
if one has the desire. The lack of such familiarity can contribute to the expla-
nation as to why the evidential circumstances were poor in Katherine’s case.
3. Since the feeling that one’s child was a mistake carries extremely negative
moral overtones, the reader can substitute this example with a more neutral
one. What matters is that we have a case in which an agent took herself to
value something and that self-ascription of value informed her decision, but
she turns out to be disappointed in the outcome of her decision and to regret it.
4. We look at self-knowledge of values more closely below, in Section 5.2.
5. Not all affective reactions are equally relevant, of course. There are differ-
ences in the extent to which an affective response reveals something about
ourselves (see Krista Thomason’s contribution to this volume).
6. When we talk about values here, we take it to be a shorthand for the subjec-
tive attitude of valuing.
7. We leave open as to whether knowing one’s affective dispositions is also nec-
essary for the self-knowledge of desire because the answer to this question
depends on what conception of desire one has in mind. We prefer not to take
a stand on this.
8. On boredom and self-knowledge, see Antonio Gómez Ramos’s contribution
to this volume.
9. For some doubts about Levine et al.’s arguments, see Wilson and Gilbert (2013).
10. Another, more speculative, idea as to why affective forecasting is prone to
failure is that an agent predicts her emotional reaction by imagining it, in
which case she can easily misattribute her actual emotional response during
the imagining to the content of the imagining. In imagining the reaction,
one’s perspective is doubled, in that there is the imagined affective reaction to
the imagined scenario, but there is usually also the actual affective reaction to
the imagining (see Goldie 2012, 80). One’s emotional response to one’s affec-
tive forecast regarding an imagined scenario can be either exaggerated or
subdued when compared to the emotional response that one would actually
have to the scenario in question. When the agent takes the former to reflect
the latter, she can thus be easily mistaken.
11. Cassam acknowledges the situationist critique of the idea that there are
character traits as dispositions that robustly explain people’s actions. How-
ever, he points out that such a critique still lets us maintain that character
traits can explain behavior at least sometimes and that the critique hasn’t
really disputed the existence of character-constituting dispositions other than
dispositions to act, such as dispositions to think, feel, and want in certain
ways (Cassam 2014, 174f).
12. Here we are talking about empathy as a character trait rather than empathy
as a state, e.g., “You may have a general disposition to feel for others in
need, and this trait may have amplified the empathic concern you felt for
your friend” (Batson 2018, 33). For different senses of “empathy”, see Batson
(2018) and Maibom (2012).
13. Interestingly, among philosophers of antiquity, there was a divide between those
who thought that affective states were necessary for virtue (e.g., Plato and Aris-
totle) and those who said that they weren’t (e.g., Socrates and the Stoics) (see
Homiak, 2019). Needless to say, we align ourselves with Plato and Aristotle.
14. Compare this with Kelahan’s (2018) interpretation of Hume’s mitigated
skepticism as a golden mean.
15. Arguably, valuing X also involves the experience of grasping the value of X,
and that experience has a distinctive phenomenological character. However,
if a person who has that experience is not disposed in any way to affectively
respond to X, it seems counterintuitive to take that person to actually value
X. We thank Íngrid Vendrell Ferran for pressing us on this issue.
16. Cassam, in contrast, appeals to Lewis’s conception of valuing, according to
which it is a kind of second-order desire (Cassam 2014, 179). Under such
a conception, affective disposition might not seem immediately relevant for
valuing. However, we find the more complex notion of valuing more realistic.
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2 Alienated Emotions
and Self-Knowledge
Krista K. Thomason
I might be afraid of mice. I say “might be” because I have conflicting

evidence. On the one hand, when I was a child, I had a mouse as a
pet (her name was Rocky). I would take her out of her cedar chip-
filled aquarium and happily hold her. I loved her like any other pet and
mourned her when she died. On the other hand, there is what I call “the
kitchen incident.” As an adult, in the first house I owned, I once heard
odd noises coming from my kitchen at night. I gingerly walked down the
hall from my bedroom and flipped on the kitchen light to look around.
A mouse scrambled across my bare foot. I screamed so loud that I woke
up my husband. I was so paralyzed with fear that he had to take my hand
and physically walk me back to the bedroom because I refused to leave
the safety of the kitchen mat next to the sink.
Since the kitchen incident, I do not how to answer the question “Are
you afraid of mice?” Prior to the kitchen incident, I would have answered,
obviously no. How could someone who had a pet mouse be afraid of mice?
I would have bristled at the stereotype: the familiar cartoonish image of a
woman standing on a chair in terror of a little harmless mouse. Back then,
if you had asked me how I would have reacted to a mouse in the kitchen,
I might have said that I would be startled, but I never would have pre-
dicted my actual reaction. My fear was completely surprising to me. In the
moment, I simply found myself paralyzed on the kitchen mat screaming
my head off and unable to take a step without the help of another person.
My goal for this chapter is not to determine whether I am afraid of mice.
I want to explore what I will call the ethics of emotional self-knowledge.
I am particularly interested in how we relate to what I will call alienated
emotions: emotional experiences that are unusual, surprising, or even
disturbing.1 Alienated emotions are those that make us feel “momen-
tarily or robustly alienated…from one’s own ‘self’” (Szanto 2017, 264).
What, if anything, do our alienated emotions tell us about who we are?
Before I proceed, I need to make a few clarifications. First, I am thinking
of self-knowledge in a broadly moral sense and in terms of what Cassam
calls “substantial self-knowledge” (2015, 10). I will assume that trying
to gain self-knowledge is a good or worthwhile thing to do, but I do not
DOI: 10.4324/9781003310945-4
40 Krista K. Thomason
want to cash it out in narrow moral terms, such as duty, obligation, or
permissibility. Instead, I will characterize it as a practical project: some-
thing human beings do as they figure out how to live meaningfully in the
world. As such, I will set aside some of the more foundational questions
from philosophy of mind and epistemology about, for example, privi-
leged access or self-ascriptions of mental states. Second, I do not want
to assume at the outset any particular view about what self-knowledge
looks like, though I am primarily concerned with our self-concept.
Because of that, my affinities with normative narrative selfhood will
no doubt come through. 2 I do not wish to stake out a position about
what kind of narrativist I am (if I am one), and, in particular, I do not
intend to make any strong claims about whether self-understanding is
essentially narrative in structure. I will return to some of these issues
later in the chapter. Finally, I will use several terms interchangeably: self-
knowledge, self-discovery, self-understanding, and self-examination will
all pick out basically the same process or the same goal.
2.1 Emotions Tell Us Things about Ourselves

Let me start with a claim that I take to be relatively uncontroversial,
namely that emotions do indeed tell us things about ourselves. There
are at least two ways they might do so. First, emotions reveal what we
care about or what we judge.3 Michael Stocker argues that caring about
something is essentially an affective activity—what it means for me to
care about baseball is to be sad when I do not get to watch it, thrilled by
an exciting game, or angry when my team makes stupid roster moves.4
Robert Solomon and Angela Smith argue that emotions are tied to our
judgments.5 The fact that I feel contempt for my neighbor means that
I have judged her to be beneath me or the fact that I scream my head off
when the mouse runs across my foot means I judge it to be scary.
Second, emotions reveal our character traits. This claim has a long
history and is featured in Confucius, Aristotle, and Hume. Particularly
for Confucius and Aristotle, the person with the right sort of character
will feel the emotions that are appropriate to that character (e.g., the
courageous person will feel the right amount of fear in the right way and
at the right time).6 We take someone’s emotional response to be evidence
that they have developed a certain trait (either a vice or a virtue). We can
see this via an analogy between emotions and actions. As Hume argues,
we blame people for their “criminal actions” because they are “proofs
of criminal passions or principles in the mind” (2007, 2.3.2, 264–285).
We infer, in other words, that someone’s actions are produced by their
character. The same can be true of our emotional responses. We can
infer that someone who is prone to fear or who feels fear at, say, a small
harmless rodent, is probably a coward. Although Hume talks in terms
of blame, the same thing can be true of positive emotions. Someone who
Alienated Emotions and Self-Knowledge 41
weeps for another’s suffering is likely to be praised as a sympathetic or
compassionate person.
Of course, both of these connections immediately get complicated. First
of all, how precisely are the connections supposed to work? Why and how
does an emotion follow from my judgment? How exactly does an emo-
tional response “flow” from a character trait?7 Second, the connections
themselves are tenuous. Emotions can be recalcitrant—how we feel can
conflict with what we judge.8 I might sincerely think that mice are not
dangerous and yet, lo and behold, I am afraid when I see one (I will come
back to the issue of the alleged irrationality of recalcitrant emotions in a
moment). In the same way that we can act out of character, we can also feel
out of character. A person with a normally generous, sunny disposition can
feel malicious glee or a sudden sullenness, maybe even to her own surprise.
So, we end up with the following problem: sometimes emotions tell
us things about ourselves and sometimes they do not. How do we know
which is which with any particular emotion? Is the kitchen incident tell-
ing me that I am afraid of mice or not? When we confront conflicting
pieces of evidence in our quests for self-knowledge, it provides us an
opportunity for self-interpretation.9 But self-interpretation is a fraught
task, especially when it comes to emotions. First, there is the problem
of opacity: we are not transparent to ourselves.10 I do not always know
what I feel, why I feel it, or at the very least I have trouble articulating
it. Second, there is the problem of confabulation. Psychological research
purports to show that people will invent plausible, but false, explana-
tions for their own behavior.11 We tend to create reasons for our actions
that may not have been the reasons why we in fact acted. We do the same
with our emotions: suppose I am feeling sad for no particular reason.
I might try to find reasons for my feelings, but in doing so I actually
invent reasons (e.g., I decide that I do not like the paint color in my living
room even though it has never bothered me before). Finally, and relat-
edly, there is the problem of self-deception.12 My emotions may indeed
tell me things about myself, but they may tell me things I do not like. If I
do not want to face up to these unpleasant facts about me, I may dismiss
the feelings as an aberration. If I am motivated to see myself in a certain
way, I might ignore or downplay feelings that present me differently.
If self-knowledge is a good thing and we ought to try to achieve it,
I take it we should try to avoid or address these pitfalls, if we can. Just
as there are better and worse ways to deliberate, there are better and
worse ways to engage in self-interpretation. How do we self-interpret
well when it comes to our emotions? In what follows, I want to try to
make some headway into this question by examining cases of alienated
emotions, like the kitchen incident. I want to first identify some tempting
responses we might have to our alienated emotions and show why those
responses might be problematic. I will then try to identify what I will call
guiding values of self-interpretation.
2.2 Just a Reaction
Here is, I think, the first tempting response: my fear in the kitchen is an
aberration because it’s just a reaction in the moment. It was late at night,
I was already on high alert because I was hearing strange noises in the
house, and out of nowhere a furry, fast-moving thing runs across my bare
foot. I can imagine many people who are otherwise not afraid of mice
might react the same way. I think fear lends itself to the “just a reaction”
conclusion partly because it’s one of the so-called basic emotions.13 The
idea that there are emotional building blocks isn’t new—both Descartes
and Spinoza held something like a basic emotion thesis. The basic emo-
tion thesis is the idea that all human beings are born with a set of emo-
tions. This claim is supported by studies in emotion recognition: show
people from a wide array of backgrounds and regions a bunch of photos of
human faces with different emotional expressions and ask them to identify
the emotion in the photos.14 At least according to some studies, subjects
are successful at this emotion identification task. Since we can identify
emotions across cultures, basic emotions are supposed to be “hardwired”
into human psychobiology.15 This claim is then supported by evolutionary
psychology, which tries to determine what evolutionary function the basic
emotions are meant to play. Fear, for instance, causes your blood to flow
more freely to your large muscle groups.16 More blood flow makes it easier
to run, so presumably feelings of fear evolved to help us flee from danger.
If all this provides an accurate description of fear, then perhaps my fear of
the mouse in the kitchen incident means very little—it was a psychobio-
logical reaction, like flight or fight, nothing more.
When it comes to emotions and self-knowledge, I think this answer
is unhelpful, both in general and also in my particular case. To start
with, although this is not so central to my arguments there, it is impor-
tant to note that the research on basic emotions is not unassailable. The
psychologist Lisa Feldman Barrett, for example, argues against the basic
emotion thesis (2017, Chapter 3). Her research raises questions about the
results of the facial recognition studies. In some of the original studies,
subjects were asked to choose the emotion depicted in the photo by select-
ing from a list. Barrett ran the experiment without the list; her researchers
just asked people “what emotion is this person feeling?” Without the list,
subjects had a much more difficult time identifying the emotion (2017,
44–46). Barrett thus doubts that there are basic emotions and that they
are “passed down” from our earlier ancestors (2017, 157–174).
It is not central to my argument whether there are or are not basic
emotions, but it is important to think about how classifications like these
might influence how we relate to our emotions. One of the downsides of
classifying an emotion as basic is that it sometimes ends up getting cast
as simplistic. Fear becomes equated to the flight-or-fight mechanism or
the startle reflex. Of course, the basic emotion thesis is meant to make
emotions reductive to a certain extent: the point is to identify the simpler
parts that make up the more complex emotional structures. For that rea-
son, it focuses on more simplistic cases of fear rather than, say, thinking
about the fear of death, the fear that your loved ones secretly resent you,
or the fear that you are becoming exactly like your mother. Because of
this, we tend to look at unexpected fear responses as not particularly
deep and therefore easier to dismiss as aberrations.
A second reason to doubt the “just a reaction” interpretation is that
emotions help us discover things about ourselves that we do not already
know. An unpredictable emotional response may nevertheless be a genu-
ine one. You might learn that you are afraid of heights only after you have
decided to hike up a mountain or ride Ferris wheel. You might discover
that you harbor romantic feelings for someone only upon hearing that
they have a date planned with someone else. If I had never encountered
a mouse prior to the kitchen incident, I might easily conclude from my
reaction that I am afraid of them even if I did not realize it beforehand.
Of course, one emotional reaction all by itself might not be enough evi-
dence to draw wider conclusions. You might need to try hiking a few
more times to know if you are afraid of heights. Still, if your fear is
serious the first time—if you are terror-stricken on the summit—the
claim that it is “just a reaction” might be self-deception. In the kitchen
incident, I was (to my utter surprise) screaming uncontrollably and quite
literally paralyzed with fear. I was not merely startled; but I was also in
a full-blown panic. The severity of my fear makes it not only shocking,
but also much harder to dismiss. Even when our emotional reactions are
surprising or unpredictable, it does not mean they are mistaken.
2.3 Recalcitrant Fear

Another tempting way to think about the kitchen incident is to say my fear
was recalcitrant. An emotion is recalcitrant because it is “at odds with a
decisive better judgment of the subject” (Mele 1989, 279) or “persists
despite the agent’s conflicting judgment or belief” (Döring 2015, 381) or
“exists despite the agent’s making a judgment that is in tension with it”
(D’Arms and Jacobson 2003, 129). Most of the literature on recalcitrant
emotions uses fear as an example: Patricia Greenspan’s landmark case
is about someone who had a terrifying incident with one dog and then
develops a general fear of dogs (1988, 17–18). This person then meets
Fido, the harmless old arthritic dog. The person knows that Fido is not
dangerous and yet fears him anyway. Recalcitrant emotions are the kind
that we know we have no reason for, that we ourselves sometimes claim
are irrational, and that persist despite our other beliefs and judgments.
In my example, the case for recalcitrance would go like this: I went
through my whole life having positive attitudes toward mice. Given this,
and given that I know mice are not dangerous, my considered belief or
judgment is that I am not afraid of them. The fact that I was panic-stricken
in the kitchen incident could have a number of different explanations, but
it did not represent my real, authentic, or considered attitude toward mice.
So, in my quest for self-knowledge, I can safely disregard it.
Classifying an emotion as recalcitrant is harder than it looks. Let me
borrow from Smith’s rational relations view to illustrate.17 Smith’s view
provides a way of explaining how moral agents can be responsible for
their attitudes that does not rely on tracing those attitudes back to some
sort of choice, endorsement, or control.18 We can and do have attitudes
that we do not choose or endorse, but on Smith’s view, we can still be
answerable for them and open to evaluation because of them. What
makes our emotions open to evaluation is that they reflect our values
in the right ways—they “bear rational relations to our evaluative judg-
ments and commitments” (2005, 260). Contrast my fear in the kitchen
incident to the startle reaction I might have when I unexpectedly run
into someone coming around the corner. I cannot be called to account
for my startle reaction because it is not attached to any values I have. No
one will look at my startle reaction and say, “Wow, you must think peo-
ple walking around corners are dangerous.” A startle is not a reflection
of judgment or a commitment.
As Smith points out, your judgments could be deeply mistaken and yet
your emotions still be connected to them in the right ways (2005, 253–
254). Suppose I am afraid of mice because I falsely judge that they are ven-
omous. My fear of them is indeed a reflection of my judgment and the fact
that venomous things are dangerous even makes my fear reasonable under
that description. I am just wrong about the facts regarding which animals
are venomous. If my judgment gets corrected and yet my fear persists, then
my fear would be a classic case of recalcitrance because it would properly
conflict with my considered judgment. When this occurs, Smith thinks
we are faced with “an interpretative difficulty” because we cannot trace a
clear route from the emotion to the judgment (2005, 255).
My fear in the kitchen incident is not like the startle reaction in that
it might actually reflect my judgments. Why suppose this? I think the
intensity of my response is one reason. When I run into someone coming
around the corner, I might jump and even scream a bit, but it is over
quickly. I might even laugh about it immediately afterward. The inten-
sity of my fear in the kitchen incident has not been so easy to get over or
laugh off. My views about mice have been unsettled ever since. Because
my reaction was so shocking to me, I have since wondered what would
happen if I came in close contact with another mouse. I no longer trust
myself around them and I am still amassing conflicting evidence. I have
been to pet stores where they are in aquariums and had no fear response.
I have seen them outside while walking my dog and have not been
gripped with terror, but I was uncomfortable. I could not help trying to
make sure I kept sight of them and worrying that they would suddenly
scurry back across my path. I read a news article about a man who fell
through the cracked sidewalk in New York City into a pile of rats and I
nearly break into a cold sweat every time I think about it. On television,
I have seen videos of lots of field mice running around in Australia and
had to turn my head away from the screen. So, although the terror I had
in the kitchen incident has not reoccurred, it has forced me to pay closer
attention to and re-evaluate my other responses. Although no one else
has judged me for my fear (partly because I have not told that many peo-
ple), I absolutely judge myself or at the very least I see myself as open to
judgment. I can imagine people asking me the very same questions I have
asked myself: are you that afraid of mice? Did you think it was going to
hurt you? Why did you react that way?
Now comes the crux of the problem. On the rational relations view,
we are answerable for our emotions when they reflect what we judge, yet
in my own case, I cannot figure out where my fear came from. Up until
the kitchen incident, I would have identified nothing in my judgments or
commitments that would have predicted my response. I am an animal
lover, I am not prone to terror over other things like bugs or spiders, and
I used to have a mouse as a pet. My emotion conflicts with all of this, but
does that mean that my fear is floating free from the rest of my psychol-
ogy? Or is it that I do not know myself as well as I thought?
When it comes to self-knowledge, the mere fact that an emotion con-
flicts with our considered judgments does not all by itself count as a reason
to disregard it.19 First, as Smith points out, our conflicted attitudes are not
“alien forces” that operate within us (2004, 399). When we struggle with
feelings that we wish we did not have, we nevertheless recognize them as
ours. Who I am as a person is comprised of things that I do not necessarily
choose: where I grew up, the activities that I enjoy, and the people I love
are not always hand-selected by me only after careful consideration. We
do not choose our families, but (most of the time) we love them anyway.
I stumbled into philosophy almost by accident and fell madly in love with
it. We don’t decide what feelings to have because emotions simply do not
work that way, but that does not make them not authentically ours. The
sphere of my identity is bigger than my willing and deliberating.20
One of the common conclusions we draw about recalcitrant emotions
is that they are irrational. If that is right, so this reasoning goes, we do
not need to care much what they might tell us. I have argued elsewhere
that it is hard to determine how recalcitrant emotions are irrational. 21
The case in favor of irrationality for recalcitrant emotions relies heavily
on the notion of emotions having formal objects. 22 Fear is supposed to
track or perceive “the dangerous.” But fear that looks irrational might
be tracking something that is outside the scope of an emotion’s usual
formal object. Take the fear of spiders as an example. What if some-
one fears spiders not because they are dangerous, but because they are
creepy-crawly? Again, we tend to construe fear’s formal object in a nar-
row way, as though “the dangerous” can only include things that can
cause one serious physical harm. But we are also afraid of the disgusting,
the eerie, the creepy, or the uncanny. 23 You see a spider and you watch
its little hairy legs creep across the floor; you imagine that if you get too
close, it might suddenly scurry across your foot or up your leg. Notice
that the fear of the creepy-crawly is not alleviated by knowing that the
spider is not venomous—creepy-crawlies do not have to be venomous
to be scary. Fears that look irrational might not be once we realize that
they are attuned to atypical objects. For the purposes of self-knowledge,
we would be better served not to apply the recalcitrant label too quickly.
Even if it is true that recalcitrant emotions are irrational, why should
we merely disregard them for the purposes of self-knowledge? An irra-
tional instance of an emotion is still an instance of that emotion. As
Pugmire puts it, “Irrational guilt is not pseudo-guilt” (1998, 123).
Irrational emotions are not fake, feigned, or false, even if we have no
clear reason to feel them. Objectless emotions illustrate this: we can be
sad or happy without being able to explain exactly why, but objectless
sadness and happiness are still classified as sadness and happiness. 24
Objectless emotions do not seem to strike people as particularly irra-
tional, unless they persist for a long time or are very intense. Even if I
judge my own emotion to be irrational, it could still tell me something
about myself. Suppose I feel guilty for turning down yet another service
request, even though I am not interested in the project and I have too
much to do already. My irrational guilt might be revealing all sorts of
things about me—that I am a people-pleaser, that I agree to things for
the wrong reasons, or that I am struggling with wanting to do too much.
Additionally, the fact that an emotion conflicts with my judgments
does not mean my considered judgments are correct. As I mentioned
earlier, our emotions can alert us to things about ourselves that we do
not already know and sometimes they know better than we do. Let me
illustrate with a case from Nomy Arpaly (2000, 496–498). Sam is a col-
lege student worried about doing well on final exams. He decides that
he should restrict his social life to the absolute minimum so that he can
study as much as possible. In his deliberations, Sam fails to realize that
when he does not maintain a balanced social life, his academic perfor-
mance suffers because he becomes depressed. His considered judgment
about what is best for him is that he ought to become a hermit during
finals, but Arpaly argues that Sam would be more rational or make a
better overall decision if he acted against his considered judgment.
Arpaly’s case demonstrates that we are imperfect reasoners.
Deliberation is a messier thing that the philosophical literature some-
times makes it seem. We might think that we have come to a good con-
clusion about our considered judgments and values, but we can be wrong
about them. We can also be self-deceived or unduly influenced by other
people’s expectations about what is best. We tell ourselves stories about
what we think we want and who we think we are. Emotions that conflict
with considered judgments might be giving us a more holistic picture
of ourselves and our situations. Suppose Sam is irritable and depressed
during his isolation. He might attribute his feelings to the stress of finals.
He might chastise himself for being weak-willed when he longs wistfully
to join his friends for dinner. But his emotions—his anger, sadness, and
longing—are pointing to a truth of his situation that he is unable to real-
ize or see. This sort of thing happens all the time. If you are crying to and
from work every day, it might be because you hate your job. If you dread
seeing your family, your relationship to them might not be as healthy
as you think. Of course, not every conflicting emotion is like this—my
boredom and lack of focus does not necessarily mean that I hate what I’m
working on. But the mere fact that a feeling goes against our considered
judgment does not mean the feeling is the mistaken one.
So far, I have tried to make the case that we should not just ignore
or dismiss emotional reactions that seem like aberrations. They may
not be just reactions and they may not be recalcitrant. Even if they are
irrational, that does not disqualify them from the project of self-knowl-
edge. Emotional reactions that are shocking, disturbing, or surprising
might still reveal something about ourselves. The troubling word here is
“might.” How do we know when an emotion is telling and when it is not?
I’m not sanguine about the possibility of actually answering the question
I just posed, but I think there are better and worse ways of trying to
answer it. In this final section, I want to try to sketch some general princi-
ples for good emotional self-discovery. When we are trying to understand
ourselves, how should we reflect on our emotional experiences?
2.4 What Does Good Emotional Self-Knowledge Look Like?

The conclusion I want to draw from what I have argued so far is that
there is no reason to prioritize our considered judgments over our emo-
tions in cases of emotional self-alienation. I think we have a tendency
to assume that a surprising emotion—particularly when it is a strong
one—is the problem. My main goal in this chapter has been to argue
against this tendency. There is no reason to think that a surprising emo-
tion is a fluke that tells me nothing about myself, and there is no reason
to assume that my considered judgments are ironclad. Although alien-
ated emotions are shocking or surprising, it is not the mere fact that they
are surprising that involves them in self-knowledge. I might be excited
to go to a museum and yet nevertheless the experience leaves me cold.
This is not what I expected, but it need not threaten my sense of myself
as someone who loves museums (unless it happens over and over again).
What stands out about the kitchen incident is that my fear was con-
trary to a relatively clear and stable self-image that I had good reason to
believe was authentic. Up until the incident, I had no reason to imagine
that I would be terror-stricken at the sight of a mouse in my kitchen and
no reason to think of myself as a person who might be afraid of mice.
My feelings of fear have made me doubt some of the self-knowledge or
self-clarity that I thought I had obtained.
If we accept that emotions can reveal things to us about ourselves and
that they might be more revealing than our considered judgments, then
alienated emotions could be telling the truth about who we are. This
is what can make them upsetting or disturbing. When people develop
romantic feelings for someone other than their partners, when they
respond with a sudden burst of rage or cruelty, when they react with
disgust toward someone they thought they cared about, these are all
possible examples of emotional alienation. Alienated emotions are the
ones that haunt us—the ones that make us doubt that we actually know
ourselves as well as we thought. These moments of self-doubt should not
be dismissed or ignored just because it is a strong emotional response
that occasions them. I think we ought to take experiences of emotional
self-alienation seriously when we are trying to gain self-knowledge.
When you have an emotion that is shocking or surprising to you, you
ought to take it as a call to engage in self-examination rather than dis-
miss the feeling as an aberration. Sometimes feelings are just feelings,
but sometimes they are more. There is no a priori way to know which is
which unless we engage in self-interpretation.
My claim here is essentially a normative one. That is, we can be bet-
ter and worse at our quest for self-knowledge, and if we want to do it
well, we ought not dismiss our alienated emotions. Alienated emotions
help highlight the challenge we face in engaging in self-interpretation
well. Self-interpretation about alienated emotions can be particularly
fraught because of the way the emotions conflict with our self-image.25
By “self-image” here, I just mean the way that I understand myself. A
self-image can be more and less stable, and it can be revised over time.
I can also get my self-image wrong: I can be incorrect or deceived about
who I am. Alienated emotions surprise or confuse us because they seem
to conflict with who we think we are.26 Prior to the kitchen incident, I
understood myself as someone who was fond of (and decidedly not scared
of) mice. My fear response thus felt alienated. Not only did I have the
self-image of someone who was not afraid of mice, but I also had become
invested in that self-image. We can invest in our self-images for a num-
ber of different reasons—some flattering and some not-so-flattering. One
of the possible reasons I was invested in my mouse-loving self-image is
because I could safely inoculate myself against the sexist stereotype of
women who are afraid of mice. Those of us who are members of margin-
alized groups can be overly sensitive to stereotypes—we fear falling into
them and often try to cultivate the opposite in ourselves. I might have
taken a secret pride in my sense of myself as “not one of those women,”
and I might have only been nascently aware I felt this way.
It is easy to see how our investment in our self-image can stem from
motivated reasoning, but such investment need not be so nefarious.
Coming to clarity about who I am is intimately tied to my ability to be
a person in the world. Knowing what I value, what I desire, and what
I hope to accomplish in my life is inseparable from having some sort of
understanding of myself. Identity crises are painful in part because they
make it hard to go forward with our life—not knowing who you are can
mean that you no longer know what matters to you. There is nothing
self-deceptive about wanting to have some stable sense of who you are,
but that desire can lead us to dismiss or ignore emotional responses that
conflict with our self-image.
Given the fact that alienated emotions conflict with our self-image,
we are especially prone to bad faith or self-deception in interpreting
them. How might we avoid these pitfalls? It would be helpful to have a
sense of what values should be guiding our search for self-knowledge.
Although I cannot offer a full account of good self-interpretation here, I
want to offer three possibilities for values or principles that might serve
as guides: accuracy, consistency, and honesty. The first two are, I think,
problematic while the last one gets closer to the mark.
Let me start with accuracy. When I am thinking about my fear in the
kitchen incident and weighing it against my self-conception as a person
who likes mice, I do not think I am doing this just so I can settle the ques-
tion “am I afraid of mice?” Of course, I do want to know whether I am
afraid of mice. Some of my reasons are practical—if I am afraid of mice,
it would be good to know so that, for instance, I do not suddenly decide
to switch careers and become an exterminator. Some of my reasons are
purely for the sake of knowing myself. I do not like the idea that my fears
are mysterious to me and I want to have clarity about the sort of person
I am. But knowing myself is not identical to amassing a collection of true
facts about me, like an encyclopedia entry. Self-knowledge is also not a
particular instance of the overall goal of having true beliefs. It is not as
though I want to have true beliefs about the world, and since I am part of
the world, I also want to have true beliefs about me. First, self-knowledge
is practical rather than theoretical: knowing myself is intimately tied to
how I live and what I care about. Second, the thing that I am trying to
know is not a stable object. Unlike facts about tigers, what I learn about
myself changes how I relate to myself, which is to say, it changes me. Self-
knowledge is not best understood as merely a subset of world-knowledge.27
Another value that I think is a false start is coherence. Here is where
I think some of the stronger versions of narrative selfhood get into trouble.
I have in mind positions that Dan Hutto refers to as “strong narrativist”
(2016, 26). Purportedly, strong narrativists hold some combination
of the following claims: that the self is essentially narrative in structure
(that having or making a self is to tell a story) and that we ought to
(construed broadly) engage in story-telling so that we have or maintain a
sense of self. The first claim is ontological and the second is normative.
I cannot argue against these claims here, but I think strong versions of
both are implausible. 28 I would deny, as Dan Zahavi writes, that “the
self is a narratively constructed entity and that every access to self and
other are mediated by narratives” (2007, 184). The primary worry I
want to raise here is against the normative claim—that we should try to
tell a story about who we are and aim at coherence.
There are, I think, two ways to understand coherence, one of which I
do not want to argue against. As I mentioned earlier, I agree that human
beings are sense-making creatures who try to understand themselves as
they live in the world, so to this extent, we are guided by some notion
of coherence. The stronger understanding of coherence is that we ought
to (as an ethical matter) aim at a kind of “narrative unity” of ourselves
and our lives (Rudd 2009, 67). This form of coherence is not only more
substantive, I take it, but it also has no built-in defense against self-de-
ception. Let me be clear that my objection here is not to narrativity in
general: I do not mean to suggest that narrativity is inherently unrelia-
ble, motivated, or selective.29 Rather, the trouble is that the imperative
that you organize your life into a narrative does not automatically mean
that you will construct that narrative well. The idea that I ought to be
able to tell a unified or coherent story about who I am does not prevent
me from telling an inaccurate, self-aggrandizing story. A self-deceptive
story is still a coherent story. In order to address this worry, narrativists
have argued that there is some robust relationship between self-narrative
and the good.30 This argument is meant to ward off the possibility of
someone living a unified narrative that is also a bad one—a supervillain
might have narrative unity of self and yet be vicious.31
But my concern is different: if we are supposed to aim at coherence,
there is no built-in guidance for what to do with parts of ourselves that
contradict that narrative. Until the kitchen incident, I had a narrative
unity of myself as someone who was not squeamish about rodents. My
terror in the kitchen disrupts that narrative. If I am aiming at coherence,
what is to stop me from simply dismissing that response as an aberration
and jettisoning it from my story? This is especially tempting in my case
because I had perfectly good non-deceptive reasons for constructing my
narrative as I did and I do not want to think of myself as someone who is
squeamish about rodents. Taking coherence as my guide would, I think,
push me toward explaining away my shocking or surprising reactions
rather than taking them seriously.
For this reason, I want to propose that one of our guiding values in the
quest for self-knowledge ought to be honesty.32 We are used to thinking of
honesty in the context of speech and the context of virtue, but less so as it
is related to self-knowledge. Honesty, on my view, is a way to undertake
the project of self-knowledge.33 It is a commitment we make to try to see
ourselves as we are and not how we want ourselves to be. Honesty requires
an openness to all the parts of ourselves, including the not-so-flattering,
quirky, dark, and obscure parts. Being honest means that we accept the
limitations of our self-knowledge without giving up on the project.
Honesty as a guiding value has advantages over both accuracy and
coherence. First, honesty is compatible with self-opacity. We can be con-
fused, deceived, and surprised by ourselves, which can make accurate
self-knowledge hard to come by. Taylor and Moran point out that there
is a special relationship between our emotions and our sense of, aware-
ness of, and evaluations of them.34 The fact that I realize that I am angry
has the potential to change my feelings of anger—it can weaken them,
strengthen them, or cast them in a new light. As I mentioned earlier,
my terror in the kitchen incident has made me re-evaluate my sense of
myself, my other fears, and my memories of past events. Because of the
way our inner mental life is layered on top of itself, there may be depths
of our psychology that we cannot plumb. Honesty simply requires that
we acknowledge this, which means that we cannot simply dismiss with-
out further reflection responses that seem shocking or surprising to us.
We also have to be honest about the obstacles to self-knowledge that we
put in our own way. For example, because I am sensitive to the feminine
stereotype of women who are scared of mice, I may cling a bit too hard to
my self-image as someone who breaks that stereotype. I may be loath to
question it or let it go, even when my emotional responses go against it.
Honesty also works better than coherence. It allows space for emo-
tional conflict and ambivalence. We occupy, as Amelie Rorty puts it, “a
wide variety of modes of life,” not all of which move seamlessly together
(2010, 427). Too much focus on coherence and resolving conflicts may
make us insensitive to bits of self-knowledge that present themselves only
when things are not in harmony. Feeling conflicted about something is
sometimes a way of acknowledging that we are faced with two important
and competing values. Resolving our feelings too quickly might require
that we falsely downplay one of the values.35 Honesty also helps resolve
some of the worries about self-deception in coherence. Using honesty to
guide self-knowledge would make us less prone to rationalizing away
our alienated emotions. In my own case, the more honest answer to the
question “am I afraid of mice?” might be “I feel conflicted about them.”
I might feel some practical pressure to resolve this conflict so that I can,
for example, avoid situations where there will be mice. But, in terms
of self-knowledge, it may be more honest for me to simply accept my
ambivalent feelings. Honesty also does not require that we ensure our
selfhood story is always unified. Instead, we ought to see our stories as
open-ended and possibly changing direction. Because we are at times
opaque to ourselves, there is an ineliminable element of discovery in the
project of self-knowledge. If we are honest, we will take those discov-
eries as they come and explore them without worrying too much about
how they fit into the story we’ve already written.
Am I afraid of mice? I do not know, but settling the question is less
important to me than being honest about it. Alienated emotions can
still tell us about ourselves even when we do not recognize ourselves in
them. Self-knowledge involves, as Solomon puts it, an “ongoing emo-
tional-reflective process” where our emotional responses and our sense
of ourselves develop and change together (2007, 265).
Notes
1. I constructed this term by rephrasing Szanto’s term “emotional self-aliena-
tion” (2017, 262). His use of the term is different from the way I am using it
in this chapter.
2. For an overview of this literature, see Crone (2020).
3. For a small sample of literature that argues this, see Stocker (1996), Smith
(2005), Solomon (1993, 2007), Baier (2010), Helm (2001) and his chapter in
this volume.
4. Stocker (1996, 56–57).
5. Solomon (1993, 125–127) and Smith (2005, 249–250).
6. Confucius (2003) and Aristotle (2002). Compare with the classical Indian
views from MacKenzie’s chapter in this volume.
7. I take the term “flow” from Wolf 2015, 357.
8. For just a sample of that literature, see Greenspan (1988), Mele (1989),
D’Arms and Jacobson (2003), Räikkä (2005), Brady (2009), Benbaji (2013),
Döring (2015), and Helm (2015).
9. I am borrowing this term from Taylor (1985), Solomon (2007), and Smith
(2005).
10. The literature I am drawing on here is primarily from Kant scholarship on
moral self-knowledge, known as the “Opacity Thesis.” See, for example,
Ware (2009).
11. Confabulation is primarily discussed in literature having to do with straight-
forward ascriptions of mental states. See Scaife (2014) for a helpful overview.
12. The literature on self-deception is enormous. See Vendrell Ferran’s chapter in
this volume.
13. Solomon has a helpful chapter on this (2003, Chapter 8).
14. These experiments are described in Barrett (2017, 4–8).
15. For a review of some of the seminal papers in this literature and critiques of
them, see Solomon (2003, 122–124).
16. This example comes from Goleman (1995, 6).
17. That view is spelled out in a number of papers, see Smith (2004, 2005, 2008).
18. For critiques of her attempt, see Fischer and Tognazzi (2009) and Shoemaker
(2011).
19. This section is drawing on work I have done in another paper, see Thomason
(2022).
20. I have argued elsewhere for this, see Thomason (2018, 87–94).
21. Thomason (2022).
22. For discussions of fit, correctness conditions, and formal objects, see D’Arms
and Jacobson (2000).
23. Windsor (2019) argues for a claim like this about the uncanny, although he
maintains that we find the uncanny threatening in some way.
24. See Lamb (1987) and Price (2006) for helpful discussions. Both Lamb and
Price distinguish objectless emotions from moods. Although moods are also
objectless, there can also be, as Lamb puts it, “emotion-instances” that are
objectless (1987, 108). For example, I can not only be in an anxious mood,
but I can also experience a sudden nameless dread.
25. See Bortolan in this volume.
26. This is true even when the emotion is authentic and our self-image is deceived.
Suppose, for example, that I am convinced I am not the sort of person who
dates musicians, and yet I find myself attracted to a guitar player. My attrac-
tion can be authentic, but if it conflicts with how I see myself, I will experi-
ence it as alienated.
27. As Moran points out, even when we are trying to identify what we feel (and
so, in some sense “get the facts”), taking a purely theoretical interest in your
emotions alienates you from them (1988, 141–142).
28. The classic arguments against narrativity obviously come from Strawson
(2004).
29. I’m drawing on Strawson’s discussion of “revision” here (2004, 442–445).
30. Taylor (1989, 51–52) and Rudd (2009, 69).
31. Rudd interprets the concern this way (2009, 69–71).
32. I don’t mean to suggest that honesty should be our only guiding value.
33. My thinking about honesty is drawing on the work of Montaigne and
Nietzsche. For a good reconstruction of Nietzsche on honesty, see Harper
(2015). For secondary literature on Montaigne, see Shklar (1984, chap 5)
and Bakewell (2011).
34. Moran (1988) and Taylor (1985). They cash this relationship out in different
ways.
35. Coates (2017) makes this argument.
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3 Acquiring Self-Knowledge
from Others1
Edward Harcourt
0. According to the western philosophical mainstream, acquiring certain

sorts of knowledge of myself is easier for me than it is for anybody else. It
may still be a problem for philosophers to say what self-knowledge is or
how it’s acquired. But it isn’t seen as a problem, within that mainstream,
for knowers. Indeed famously, according to some, self-knowledge
is what’s left when all other knowledge is doubtful. That acquiring cer-
tain sorts of knowledge of myself is easier for me than for others is of
course just a special case of the idea that for me to acquire certain sorts
of knowledge of myself is easier than it is for me to acquire those same
sorts of knowledge of others, the idea that lies behind the “problem of
other minds”: the special case, that is, where the would-be knower is
someone else and the other mind is my own.
Along with this familiar idea comes another, that the way in which I
know at least some things about myself is different from, and less round-
about than, the way or ways it’s available to others to know about me.
Formulating this idea more precisely is difficult, because there’s no consensus
about what these contrasting ways are, and in particular, no consensus
about the way—or should it be “ways”?—of knowing about myself which
is supposedly available only to me. Thus, the route to some self-knowledge
is said by some to be “introspective” as opposed to “inferential” (however
automatic the inference); more cautiously among Wittgensteinians, it’s
“non-observational” as opposed to “observational” (Anscombe 1957).
But sometimes, it seems, others know me better than I do: as we say,
others are a “mirror” to ourselves from which we can learn things we
wouldn’t know otherwise. The aim of this chapter is to take this idea seri-
ously and explore what it might amount to.2 Of course, in some form or
other, the thought that I can learn from others things I don’t know about
myself is already familiar in this area of philosophy. But its familiar form
is that in which I can learn things about myself from others via ways of
knowing in which I can also learn a range of other things from them that
have nothing to do with me. I can learn a whole range of things from reli-
able witnesses, and these include but are by no means restricted to facts
about me, such as what I got up to in my early life. So I propose to focus not
DOI: 10.4324/9781003310945-5
Acquiring Self-Knowledge from Others 57
on this mode of operation of the “mirror”, but rather on the thought that
others can be—in senses to be explained—a direct source of my knowledge
of myself. Since directness is seemingly a feature, if not a unique feature, of
the way or ways of knowing about myself which, according to orthodoxy,
are reserved for myself alone, this thought constitutes a challenge to the
priority of self-knowledge over others’ knowledge of me.
***
1. Various sources will help me in this exploration. First, Philosophical

Investigations §244 (Wittgenstein 1953):
[W]ords are connected with the primitive, the natural, expressions

of the sensation and used in their place. A child has hurt himself and
he cries; and then adults talk to him and teach him exclamations
and, later, sentences. They teach the child new pain-behaviour.
In the little transaction Wittgenstein describes here, at least if I’m a

learner, I don’t know that what I have got is pain until someone else—
an adult—says something like “poor you, that hurts”. But saying that
requires that someone else gets to know what’s in my mind before I do.
They then become my source of knowledge about it.
Of course, there are objections to this reading of the transaction.
Wittgenstein himself is well-known for rejecting the idea that the most
primitive, spontaneous uses of the sentence “I am in pain” express
knowledge at all (1953, §246). So whatever the child who has hurt
himself learns to say from the observing adult, it isn’t yet a piece of
self-knowledge (because he still doesn’t have it). Others, by contrast, have
wanted to insist that even before learning to say “I’m in pain”, the child
knows it is (because it is “aware of the sensation”). So again the adult’s
efforts expand the child’s linguistic capacities but not its self-knowledge.
Replying fully to these objections would take a long time. Though nei-
ther objection challenges the claim that the adult knows what’s in my
mind, the second challenges the idea that the adult knows what’s in my
mind before I do. So provisional replies will have to do here. To the latter
objection, one might reply that “is aware of the sensation” is a synonym
of “has the sensation”. Nobody doubts that the learner has it; the ques-
tion is whether having it is the same as knowing one has it to which, in
the absence of the capacity to self-ascribe it, one might say the answer is
“no”. To the former objection, the efforts of the adult surely add some-
thing: the child is set on its way to being able to deploy the sentence in
contexts which are neither primitive nor spontaneous, to thinking about
what it feels and thereby to integrating the thought that it is in pain into
the rest of its mental life. “Knowledge” is thus not a bad word to mark
the difference the adults’ efforts make.
58 Edward Harcourt
My second source is psychoanalysis and related therapies: see the
work for example of W.R. Bion (1984), D.W. Winnicott (1990 and see
Miller et al. 1989 for a useful summary), Jonathan Lear (1990), and
mentalization therapy as developed by Peter Fonagy (Fonagy 1999,
Fonagy et al. 1995). Here, by offering interpretations, the analyst gives
shape to my (the analysand’s) inarticulate mental contents and helps to
render them sayable (and indeed thinkable) for me. A considerable chunk
of psychoanalytic literature dwells on what can go wrong if this doesn’t
happen—“acting out”, for example, or “concrete thinking”, in which
words are not understood as meaning things, but rather as being the very
things they mean (Segal 1957). Conversely, being helped “to leave behind
‘concrete thinking’ and ‘acting out’ in favour of a genuine capacity for
symbolic thought” (Wright 2018, Levine 2011) may be therapeutically
valuable, for example if my mental contents have hitherto been express-
ing themselves symptomatically. What I express by vomiting (Lear 1990)
or a bout of eczema with the analyst’s help I come to express in articulate
thought, and having got that far, I may be able to go further—for exam-
ple, to reflect on how I got into the state I was expressing symptomati-
cally, or on whether the state is merited by the circumstances.
Thirdly and finally, there are simpler examples outside the context
of psychoanalysis or psychotherapy. When in ordinary life parent says
to child, or adult friend says to friend, “I think you’re sad”, “you’re
hungry”, or “you’re tired”, they are not looking for agreement to their
clever observation—they are helping their interlocutor by sharing with
them knowledge of their (the interlocutor’s) own state which they don’t
yet have. They thus enable their interlocutor to express it themselves.
Of course, there are differences between these various cases. The
psychoanalytic cases are surely different from the transaction in the
Investigations, at least if we can sometimes express in words as well as
merely symptomatically states of mind which are unmentalized (Fonagy
et al. 1995) or which we do not have the resources to process or “contain”
(Bion 1984)—acute anxiety, for example. So the change effected in
Wittgenstein (1953, §244) isn’t the same as “mentalizing” or “contain-
ing”. Nor are the psychoanalytic or the intermediate cases essentially
about learning new words or concepts. The overexcited child who is
crying and then calms down when told it is tired may already know the
word “tired” (and may calm down even if it doesn’t know the word). 3
Conversely, the ten-year old who doesn’t know they are sad on a given
occasion may be a thorough master of the concept of sadness and be able,
on another occasion, to tell their parent they (the parent) are sad when
they don’t themselves know it. But these differences don’t matter for my
purposes here. All three kinds of case show how someone else commonly
knows what’s in my mind before I do, and thus enables me to come to
know it. I also want to resist at this point in the discussion any distinction
between “trivial” and “substantive” self-knowledge (Cassam 2015).4
It’s not that there isn’t a distinction between cases where one’s not know-
ing about oneself is explained by repression or self-deception and cases
where there is no such interesting explanation. It’s rather that we would
be hard-pressed to apply that distinction in such a way that it mapped
onto distinct classes of knowable contents: “I’m sad” and even “I’m in
pain” can both not only be self-ascribed effortlessly but also elaborately
concealed from oneself—i.e., can be alternately, as one might put it, triv-
ial and substantive. Thus, I’m going to assume that what I have to say
goes potentially for any possible content of self-knowledge.
***
2. I now want to turn to the second mainstream idea that—whoever as

it were gets there first—I and others at least sometimes have to arrive at
our knowledge of me in different ways. That’s a view held in common by
those who are fully committed to the idea that there’s a special way to
self-knowledge that only I have—such as “introspection”—and by those
Wittgensteinians who are unhappy with the very idea of self-knowledge
being characteristically arrived at by a “way”.
Nobody doubts that the route by which I and others arrive at knowl-
edge of me can be the same. For example, others can arrive laboriously at
knowledge of me from evidence. Typically, when that happens, others will
pass the knowledge on to me either via testimony or via sharing evidence
with me. But we can find those same things out for ourselves—e.g., watch-
ing videos of ourselves, or listening to what others say about us, we can
arrive at pieces of self-knowledge such as “I chew my ponytails when I am
nervous” or “I am always less patient with clients just before lunch”.
Moreover, whatever the way or ways by which others acquire knowl-
edge of me and which is also open to me—be it inference from observa-
tions, or interpretation, or some third thing—my knowledge of myself
does not always come about in that way. Thus it’s a familiar stumbling
block for behaviourism, for example, that it seems committed to the
view that I could only know myself in the way it says is characteristic
of others’ knowledge of me, that is, inference from observed behaviour.
Or as Moran puts it, even though some of the knowledge one typically
has of oneself is “based on the same kinds of consideration available to
others” (Moran 2001), self-knowledge in any remotely well-functioning
person couldn’t only be “mind-reading”—i.e., Moran’s term for the way
we normally find out about others: whether this means interpretation,
inference or some third thing is not clear—“applied to oneself” (2001).5
However, all this is compatible with the claim that there is a way—
perhaps indeed more than one, but never mind that—by which only
I can arrive at knowledge of myself.
Generalizing about this is tricky, because the greater the number of
different ways in which others get to know about me, the harder it is to
60 Edward Harcourt
draw a firm general conclusion from the observation that, to be sure,
my self-knowledge couldn’t only come by some particular one of them,
be it “mind-reading” or interpretation or what have you. What Moran,
the anti-behaviourists and others are all getting at is something like this:
some self-knowledge is immediate, and some of its characteristic expres-
sions completely spontaneous—as “mind-reading”, interpretation, etc.,
are not. Once we have learnt the lesson described in Wittgenstein (1953,
§244), the piece of self-knowledge expressed (pace Wittgenstein) by “I
am in pain” is something we come straight out with, with the spontane-
ity of a cry or a groan. I agree with that. Not all self-knowledge could be
as roundabout as mind-reading and the rest.
Let me be clear, however, about what I don’t want to say. First, my
main claim is not that for any way in which I know about myself, others
can know about me in that very way, though I do explore this possibility
further below. Second, I don’t want to argue for the claim that others
can know about me directly—not because I want to deny it, but because
I rather assume that they can, though it is not essential to what I have
to say here. What I want to say is rather more niche than either of those
two claims. It is that there is a way I have of knowing about myself that
is spontaneous or direct and that integral to that way of knowing is the
knowledge others have of me. That way of knowing would thus seem to
be different from what people usually have in mind—whatever exactly
that is—when they speak about the way of knowing about myself that’s
supposedly reserved to me alone.
***
3. To edge forward with this idea, let’s begin with what Moran calls
my mere “intellectual acceptance” of a psychotherapist’s interpretation
of my words and behaviour. Psychotherapists from time to time offer
their patients interpretations, based on their observations, background
knowledge, etc. The scenario is like this: a patient agrees that she is envi-
ous of her mother and that explains why she cannot celebrate the fact
that her mother has happily remarried. But the agreement is somehow
“cold”—the real penny-dropping, potentially transformative moment
would be for the patient to avow her envy (i.e., to give voice to a piece
of self-knowledge spontaneously), and mere intellectual acceptance falls
short of this. To get from this, intellectual or “theoretical” acceptance
to avowal—if that’s the word for it—requires, says Moran, a possibly
lengthy process of “working through” (Moran 2001).
I’m not sure the idea of “mere intellectual acceptance” of contents
which others ascribe to me really makes sense, at least where this is
understood as a step on the way to (but which falls short of) avowal by
me of the same contents. There’s a good deal of knowledge of myself
which I have acquired from others and which I have now confidently
incorporated into my autobiography. We’ve already considered “I chew
my ponytails when I’m nervous”, and there are numerous other exam-
ples. At least where I myself am the evidence-gatherer, self-ascriptions
of these contents remain answerable to the same kinds of consideration
(whatever they are) which form the basis of others’ ascriptions of them to
me, so they no more could be spontaneously avowed than “it’s snowing in
Scotland”, if—and it is quite a big “if”—spontaneous avowal implies (as
in Wittgenstein) evidencelessness as opposed simply to absence of reflec-
tion. But because they are not contents to which I could have evidence-
less access, it seems wrong to describe my acceptance of them as merely
intellectual: mere in comparison to what? On the other hand, there is
the patient of Ron Britton’s (1998: 60; cp. Levine 2011: 207 and Moran
2001: 89) who says that some “unacceptable facts” about themselves of
which the analyst reminds them are “true in theory”. Here, what’s going
on is surely not that on the basis of considerations presented by the ana-
lyst, they accept the truth of a proposition about themselves but cannot
yet avow it (as it were, avowal minus). What we have is instead more
akin to self-deception: at some level, we have avowable knowledge of
what the analyst ascribes, combined with denial of it, which is expressed
in the fact that they half-heartedly acknowledge the other’s ascription to
them only as true “in theory”. For, as with self-deception, if the subject
hadn’t already in some sense made this knowledge their own, why would
they be so busy keeping it at arm’s length? The expression “merely intel-
lectual acceptance” fits the case, but the fact that the patient classifies it
this way is part of their mechanism of denial, not a piece of epistemolog-
ical theorizing which they clear-sightedly apply to themselves.
But even if there is a class of cases where I accept intellectually but as yet
do not avow another’s observation- (or interpretation-) based knowledge of
me, certainly it is not the norm for another’s ascription to me of a state to
get stuck in the limbo of “intellectual acceptance” en route to my avowal
of that state. Indeed I would go further:6 nor is it the norm for another’s
ascription to me of a state, even if it doesn’t get stuck, to require lengthy
“working through”—as on Moran’s picture—in order for it to be converted
into an avowal, that is, a piece of spontaneously expressed self-knowledge.
Once again the literature of psychotherapy provides us with a sugges-
tive example. Peter Fonagy and Mary Target studied the kind of caregiver
response which most effectively calms down eight-month-old infants when
taken to the doctor for an inoculation (Fonagy and Target 1997: 684; cp.
Fonagy et al. 1995). Especially interesting is the difference between car-
egivers whose responses are—in the jargon—“contingent”, that is, which
show in content and timing that they are keeping track of what’s going
on, and those whose responses are not only contingent but also “marked”
(Gergely and Watson 1996). An example of the former is “catching” the
baby’s incipient panic at the sight of the needle and panicking oneself; with
the latter—“markedness”—the caregiver incorporates into her expression a
62 Edward Harcourt
clear indication that she is not expressing her own feelings, but those of the
baby (Bateman and Fonagy 2003: 193).7 Marked responses, that is, involve
reflecting the infant’s mental state not by duplicating it but by something
like play-acting it. The caregiver “combines a ‘mirror’ with a display incom-
patible with the child’s affect”, for example, “smiling, questioning, mocking
display” (Fonagy and Target 1997: 684). The child is soothed most effec-
tively when the caregiver’s responses are marked, in Fonagy and Target’s
thought because marked responsiveness enables the child to “mentalize”
its experience. In already verbal children, this would be precisely the kind
of transaction we’ve described before in the transition from “you’re tired”
to “I’m tired”. And it enables this because the caregiver offers the child a
representation of its state of mind which, by making it its own, enables the
child to represent that state to itself—in another idiom, enables it to know
that it has it—which is a step beyond simply having the state.
When I have discussed this case in earlier work (Harcourt 2017),
I spoke of the “effortless traffic” between other’s knowledge of me and
my knowledge of myself, meaning to draw attention to how easy it is for
me to “convert” others’ knowledge of me into my own spontaneous—that
is, not observation- or interpretation-based—expressions of self-knowl-
edge. No laborious “working through” needed, in other words. However,
though I stressed the ease of these transactions—and they are extremely
common, not just in therapeutic contexts—I still made the assumption
that what they exemplify is the conversion of one kind of knowledge of
us—of the kinds that’s available to others—into another kind, the spon-
taneous knowledge we sometimes have of ourselves. I now think this
assumption is questionable. Certainly if there is “conversion”, it happens
very fast—someone says to me “look, you’re sad” and I say (in an impec-
cable Moran-esque avowal) “you’re right, I’m sad”, or simply start cry-
ing. But if the knowledge of me you serve up is observational or otherwise
non-spontaneous and the self-knowledge into which I convert it is not, we
ought to be more puzzled than we usually are that we manage to turn one
into the other so effortlessly. At least “working through” names a process
by which one gets turned into the other. The problem is that there’s no
evidence that anything like that process always takes place. It might be
suggested that the way I learn about myself from another is testimonial.
But though this undoubtedly happens in cases such as the receiving of
information as to where I was born, how I behaved as a small child,
etc., as an account of my knowledge of my occurrent mental states it is
implausible. I can come to avow my own sadness thanks to the ascription
to me of sadness by a total stranger, but whence the trust in that stranger
as a reliable witness, so I regard their testimony as credible? A better
response to the problem therefore seems to be that what makes the traffic
between others’ ascriptions to me and my spontaneous self-ascriptions
effortless is that no “conversion” is necessary. I want to pause now to
unpack this position, which has more than one element to it.
The first and basic element of the position is that others can be a
direct source, for me, of self-knowledge. Otherwise put, I can know my
own state of mind both directly (no inference, evidence, “interpretation”
or the like) and from another. I see myself, as we say, in the “mirror”
of the other. But several other ideas lie behind this possibility. One is
the idea we have already considered that others sometimes know more
about me than I do (or know about me before I do). I take it that that is
now uncontroversial. But, second, do we also have to commit ourselves
to how others come to know all that? Would it imperil the basic posi-
tion if others came by that knowledge as I (sometimes) do not, by inter-
pretation or from evidence? Do we have to say that others must come
by that knowledge directly (e.g., as some say, perceptually: McDowell
1978, 1982)? I am not sure of the answer to these questions though I am
inclined to think the answer to both is “no”. But I shall move on to the
third underlying idea, for the moment without further discussion. This
is that, in order for others to be direct sources for me of self-knowledge
others, perhaps unexpectedly, must be able to express my states of mind.
This idea underlies the position because it is from the other’s expres-
sion of my state of mind that my direct self-knowledge in the cases I’m
focusing on seems to derive: that is part of what’s involved in saying that
others can be a “mirror” to ourselves. I see (or otherwise identify) my
state of mind in the other’s expression and thereby come to know that I
am in that state. I shall dwell on this idea first, before returning to the
way or ways in which we and others know us.
The active ingredient of success in the inoculation case (and others
like it) is that the caregiver is not overwhelmed by, and so doesn’t simply
duplicate, the infant’s state. This requires patience on the caregiver’s part:
anyone who has looked after small children will know how tempting it
can be, when you have already done everything in your power to attend
to the child’s needs and yet it screams at you one more time, simply to
scream back. I want to take at face value Fonagy and Target’s descrip-
tion of what happens when the caregiver has the patience not to scream
(“oh dear, are you tired?”), namely that a person distinct from the child
spontaneously gives expression to the child’s state. One may object “but
there’s a difference: the other is ‘containing’ the state, whereas the child
is as it were helplessly driven by it”. There surely is this difference, but
remember that after this transaction (or perhaps a series of others like it),
expressing its own state in this “contained” or articulate way is what the
child too will become able to do. So there is indeed a difference between
the articulate and the inarticulate expression of a state, but at least in
the articulate case that difference is neutral with respect to who may be
expressing it—the possessor of the state or someone else.
But how can another express my state of mind? Fonagy and Target
explain “marked” responsiveness as “play acting”. Remember how-
ever that the audience in the particular case they have in mind is an
64 Edward Harcourt
eight-month-old infant, so we should not imagine the core idea is always
something theatrical. The core idea is that while expressing a state, I also
convey the fact that the state I am expressing is not mine. Sometimes
actors precisely don’t do that—the fact that an actor is expressing
Hamlet’s state rather than the actor’s own is carried by the conventions
of the theatre, not by any feature of the performance. On the other hand,
we can also express others’ thoughts without any special gestures or
facial expressions. This happens in ordinary language when we use the
first-person pronoun of another, or we use the second-person pronoun
of someone other than the person we are addressing. All our interlocutor
need do to understand what is going on is track the different contexts
of discourse I have in mind—bearing in mind that the one I am actually
in may not be the one I am seeking to represent.8 Thus, “She said I’m
really frustrated”, as said by me, could mean she attributed the state of
frustration to me (the reporter), or to herself (the person being reported).
A philosopher might say that, in the latter case, the words following
“said” belong in quotation marks and that in the former case, by con-
trast, there is a suppressed “that”. But quotation marks are a relatively
recent typographical convention, so this is not a fundamental difference,
but rather a convenient way of marking a difference in what’s going on
that needs to be explainable without appeal to quotation marks. It thus
indirectly affirms the point that context-sensitive pronouns may pick
up their reference from the context of reporting or from the context
reported. When “I” as said by me refers to someone else, it picks up its
reference from the context reported—a non-theatrical way for me to
express a state of mind while making it clear it is someone else’s. Fonagy
and Target’s cases are more theatrical examples of the same thing.
I now want to return to the second of the three ideas behind the posi-
tion I am exploring. The central claim I wish to defend is that others
can be direct sources for me of knowledge of my states of mind. Does
this place any constraints on how these others come to know my mind?
Might they not simply be expressing states of mind of mine, knowledge
of which they can come by any old how?
Recall that the worry about Moran’s view was how I manage to
convert another’s laborious evidence-based ascription into something
spontaneous. An answer to that would be that no conversion is needed,
because what I get from others is something they already have—that is,
knowledge of me that is of the very same kind which the orthodox view
takes to be reserved to myself alone. In defence of that radical view, one
might call in aid Wittgenstein once again. Consider these passages from
Zettel (Wittgenstein 1981):
540. It is a help here to remember that it is a primitive reaction

to tend, to treat, the part that hurts when someone else is in pain;
and not merely when oneself is—and so to pay attention to other
people’s pain-behaviour, as one does not pay attention to one’s own
pain behaviour.
541. But what is the word “primitive” meant to say here?
Presumably that this sort of behaviour is pre-linguistic: … that it is
the prototype of a way of thinking and not the result of thought. …
545. … Being sure that someone is in pain, doubting whether he
is, and so on, are so many natural, instinctive, kinds of behaviour
towards other human beings, and our language is merely an auxil-
iary to, and further extension of, this relation. Our language-game
is an extension of primitive behaviour.
I think Wittgenstein is right about the “natural, instinctive kinds of

behaviour towards other human beings”. They are all, as Wittgenstein
puts it elsewhere, “wrung from us” (1953, §546)—far from being the
result of thought, it would be an effort to inhibit these kinds of behaviour.
Sometimes they are the same as the kinds of behaviour in others which
we’re reacting to, as in wincing when someone else cuts themselves, or
weeping in sympathy with another’s weeping. Sometimes they are not,
as when we become unpleasantly agitated when we see someone excit-
edly walking along a high wall. Wittgenstein’s follow-up thought paral-
lels his better known thought at 1953 §244: just as “I’m in pain” can be
the extension of one’s own unlearnt pain-behaviour, “you’re in pain” or
“he’s in pain”—I make no distinction here for the time being—can be the
extension of one’s own unlearnt reaction to another’s injury, or another’s
expressive behaviour. If that relationship between concept and unlearnt
reaction helps to dislodge an introspectionist picture of my primitive
self-ascriptions of pain (etc.), it might help to dislodge an inferential or
interpretative picture of my primitive other-ascriptions too (including
others’ primitive ascriptions to me). The language of the other-ascription
simply embroiders a pre-linguistic reaction. But the Zettel passage also
supplements 1953 §244, since that famous passage has nothing to say
about the epistemology of the “adults talk[ing] to him and teach[ing]
him exclamations and, later, sentences”. The Zettel passage proposes an
account of what might lie at the base of that talking and teaching.
I say “might lie”, however, advisedly. It would be very radical indeed
to suggest that whenever another represents my mental state to me, it
has to be via the mechanism described in Zettel. It would also surely be
wrong. First, others can represent my mental states to me truthfully but
without any immediate reaction or “movement of sympathy” of the kind
Wittgenstein describes: our ability to be mirrors to others would be very
limited if that were not so. Indeed, it is not clear what the “reaction”
would even be that goes with “you are envious of your mother: that’s
why you can’t celebrate the fact that she has remarried”. Second, the
more our other-ascriptions resemble spontaneous reactions of the Zettel
variety, the harder it will surely be to achieve the kind of “markedness”
66 Edward Harcourt
which is so important (on Fonagy and Target’s [1997] account) to oth-
ers’ ability to represent my states of mind to me, as opposed merely
to duplicating them. Markedness depends on sympathy plus a kind of
distance.9 So it is surely wise to be as agnostic as possible on how others
come by the knowledge of me which they end up representing to me.
Even so, it would be quite a dent to orthodoxy if it were even possible
for others’ knowledge of me to be of the very same kind as the knowledge
of myself, however that is to be characterized, which is usually said to be
reserved to myself. So is it possible? Again it is unclear what we should
say, because it is not clear what would count as “the same”. In §244, the
idea that verbal self-ascription embroiders an unlearnt reaction is meant
to dislodge an introspectionist or recognitional model of self-knowl-
edge. That helps make the case against the view that others’ knowledge
of me must perforce be indirect, because it presents the self-knower’s
relationship to their own states with which others’ knowledge of them
unfavourably contrasts as not a case of epistemic contact at all, and so
a fortiori not of direct epistemic contact. So others’ knowledge of me
might, on this picture, be as direct as can be. That’s how things stand on
perceptualist accounts of others’ knowledge of me. Still, many who hold
such an account would baulk at the idea that others’ knowledge of me,
direct as it may be, can ever be of the very same kind as my spontaneous
knowledge of myself: it’s the fact that the latter knowledge precisely isn’t
perceptual that makes room for the former to be direct. This account,
however, might be questioned for at least two reasons. First, the moral
of the Zettel passages might be said to be that what enables others’
knowledge of me to be direct is that verbal other-ascriptions elaborate
primitive reactivity—just like the self-ascriptions of Wittgenstein (1953,
§244). Is that or isn’t that a case of the two types of knowledge being
of the same kind? Furthermore, while it is natural enough to contrast
self-ascriptions which elaborate primitive reactions with other-ascrip-
tions which are direct but perceptual, in a Wittgensteinian context,
this contrast is questionable: saying (as one would conventionally put
it) “on the basis of its look” that something is red—which for some is
the paradigm case of a “report of observation”—is, for Wittgenstein
(1953, §381; Part II, 118) no less a “reaction” than a primitive verbal
self-ascription of pain is. Though one and not the other reports an outer
phenomenon, Wittgenstein seems to deny that there is a “basis” for the
knowledge-claim in either case.
In summary, it is possible that others’ knowledge of me may some-
times be of the very same kind as the spontaneous self-knowledge which
is ordinarily said to be reserved to me alone. But others’ knowledge of
me is surely not always of this kind. My main contention is that however
others acquire their knowledge of me, they as well as I are capable of
expressing my states of mind.10 That enables them to be a direct source
for me of knowledge of myself. So, just as others are able to know my
state of mind directly via my expressions of it, so I am able to know
my state of mind directly from others via their expressions of it. On
the picture, I am tentatively presenting, therefore, the traffic between
others’ ascriptions to me and my self-ascriptions is effortless not because
their ascriptions have to be arrived at directly—they need not be, even if
they sometimes are. It is rather that my self-knowledge can derive from
their expressions of my states of mind directly. What I have in mind
here—strange as it may sound—is a kind of “psychological commons”
that I and others indifferently can both spontaneously contribute to and
draw upon. This goes together with a picture of intersubjectivity as a
shared space, and of the social world as a shared resource which we can
all draw upon in the course of the development of mind.
***
4. Emotions have featured repeatedly in this chapter but as it were in the

margins. In the final section, I want to be more explicit about the role of
emotion in other’s knowledge of us and in the relationship between oth-
er’s knowledge of us and the knowledge we have of ourselves. Emotion
has featured chiefly in two different contexts—first, as an object of
self-knowledge (or of other’s knowledge of us) and, second, as a putative
enabling condition of the knowledge others have of us and, thereby, of
the knowledge we have of ourselves.
Let us consider the second of these ideas first. I’ve said in earlier work
that there is a link between others’ love of us and their knowledge of us
(Harcourt 2011; see also De Jaegher 2019). I am now somewhat sceptical
of this idea. To be sure, people who know me well will—trivially—know
more about me than those who don’t. Also my relationship to others may
make me more inclined to accept and make my own what they say about
me, although it is important that the transaction cannot—on pain of
defeating the idea proposed in this chapter—be reduced to the model of
accepting testimony from a trustworthy source. (And, once again, I can
learn about myself from someone I have never met before, and so where
a love-relation is certainly absent.) The alternative I’ve argued for here
is that I (immediately) recognize my state in their expression. The other
is a mirror of us, in which, we see ourselves. But even where I do learn
from others’ trustworthy testimony, this needn’t only go with stand-
ing loving relationships. My old enemies may know me very well, and
the analyst-analysand relationship is only problematically described as
a love-relation because of its many asymmetries. To summarize: knowl-
edge of us and positive emotional attitudes to us often go together but
knowledge of us is also much more widely distributed.
Let’s turn now to the first idea. Even if others needn’t love me in order
to know me, it’s a common thought that others’ love for (or other pos-
itive emotional attitudes towards) me favours tolerance of my states of
68 Edward Harcourt
mind, and so favours self-knowledge that way. To explore the idea more
closely, we can consider a useful recent paper by Strijbos and Jongepier
(2018). They see therapeutic efficacy roughly as I have done, in terms of
the regulation (in my vocabulary, “containment”) of states of mind. And
they stress that for self-knowledge to be therapeutically efficacious, an
“allocentric perspective” on one’s own mental states is needed—i.e., the
perspective which would be taken by another. But they reject the thought,
which they ascribe to Moran, that the only thing such an allocentric per-
spective could be is what they call an “empirical” (evidence-gathering)
approach to acquiring knowledge of the mental states of another.
We do not think all varieties of the allocentric self-relation come

down to such an “empirical” self-relation … We regard self-regulation
primarily as a second-person relation, modelled on the interaction
between people. Accordingly, allocentric self-regulation generally
involves a kind of normative and affective engagement with oneself
that is similar to that which one can have with other people. In
therapy, the aim is to realize a shift towards second-personal self-di-
rected attitudes such as love, concern, and compassion (and away
from attitudes like disgust, hatred and contempt).
Clearly there is overlap here with the Fonagy and Target view, where
another’s perspective on the child’s state helps to regulate it (and after that
it can become a self-regulator by having that allocentric perspective on
itself). However, I’m not sure that the third-person/second-person contrast
is the right way to mark the distinction between an “empirical” attitude
to another’s states and, say, a compassionate attitude (or indeed any emo-
tionally engaged attitude). One can feel compassion (or hatred, or concern,
etc.) towards someone even if one is not in any position to address them,
have a relationship with them or whatever else is required to relate to them
second-personally—for example feeling compassionate towards refugees
one has never met and never will meet. So if self-regulation does involve
internalizing another’s relationship to oneself, one does not pinpoint the
nature of that relationship by saying that it is compassionate.
I also worry that making the “allocentric perspective on oneself” a
matter of self-directed positive emotions gets things wrong in a more
fundamental way. First of all, I can harbour a host of negative self-di-
rected emotions, like being ashamed of myself or disgusted at myself—
surely?—while being fully capable of “containing” or regulating my own
mental states.11 That follows partly from the fact that emotions can be
the object of other emotions. So, I can coolly admit that I am frightened
of a meeting aimed at reconciliation with a long-estranged relative while
at the same time feeling ashamed of myself for feeling that. That seems
to speak against the thought that the capacity to make this kind of cool
admission rests on self-love, self-compassion or the like. Furthermore,
compassion for others has many manifestations. To be persuaded by
Strijbos and Jongepier’s theory, one would need to be told—as they don’t
tell us—what the manifestations of self-compassion are apart from the
capacity to regulate one’s states of mind. Otherwise the theory that
self-regulation shows self-compassion, i.e., reproduces in self-directed
form the attitude to oneself of the therapist (or whoever) from whom one
learnt it, looks too much like relabelling rather than theorizing. It could
be that we indeed acquire the ability to regulate or “contain” our own
mental states from others’ patience or compassion, but that what we
end up with is just that ability, not a self-directed emotion or emotional
attitude.12 So, while positive emotional attitudes to us do indeed seem to
favour the capacity for self-knowledge, it is doubtful whether the expla-
nation needs to pass via self-directed versions of those attitudes.
Is there anything essentially emotionally inflected about the transition
from others’ knowledge of us to self-knowledge? Many of the exam-
ples we have looked at are emotionally “high-stakes”, which may give
the impression that there is. Thus, we may be especially prone not to
be self-knowers when the as yet inarticulate content poses a threat in
some way, and it is for this reason that it needs a “containing other”
to allow it to become articulate. The containing other makes its artic-
ulation bearable, where it wasn’t before. That’s certainly the case with
hysterical paralysis: Freud’s Elisabeth von R (Freud and Breuer 1953-
66/1895) symptomatizes because she can’t give articulate expression to
her mental contents, because they are—as we say—repressed. Anxiety
manifests itself in somebody as a skin rash because they regard it as
unmanly to say they are anxious. (That doesn’t mean, by the way, that
emotion is present because the repressed content is an emotion—we may
be defended against admitting we are in pain or tired, e.g., if we are too
proud to admit it, and these are not emotions.) But alongside these cases,
there are very many cases where we move from being known by others
to knowing ourselves and the emotional stakes are very low. This is so in
the Wittgenstein examples. Once again, physical pain isn’t an emotion.
Saying you’re in pain may not make the pain any less and—a different
sort of low-stakes point—acknowledging pain is not something the child
is “defended against”, but merely something it doesn’t have the resources
to say yet. Thus, the Wittgensteinian account fits just as well “you’re
counting”, “you’re helpful”, “you want to do it yourself”. Sadness can be
something we defend ourselves against acknowledging, as can tiredness.
But there are plenty of simple cases of non-self-transparency. Moreover,
though emotions are certainly among the states of mind of others that
we need to be able to know, it would be strange if there were one kind
of account of other-knowledge where the object was an emotion, and a
completely different account where it wasn’t—and there are many cases
where it isn’t. Moran’s account has this virtue that it applies seamlessly
to emotions, desires, and beliefs.
70 Edward Harcourt
But in trying to pin down the respect in which the transactions I’ve been
discussing are emotionally inflected, I suspect the category of emotion
itself may be unhelpful. So I want to distinguish between emotions prop-
erly so-called (if indeed there is anything that is properly so-called), and
our ordinary aliveness to one another. This aliveness can be to hesitation,
fresh resolve, a smile at a new thought, engagement with and withdrawal
from a task or another person, attention to a sound or colour, concen-
tration, effort, running out of steam, impatience, frustration, pleasure at
one’s own fluency—many of which can happen simultaneously and can
change second by second, but which do not amount to anything as gross
as an emotion. To understand what I mean, think of how disturbed we are
by still face experiments where this aliveness is deliberately suppressed.
It is so pervasive ordinarily that we don’t notice it, with our attention
tending to be grabbed by the emotional headlines. The relevance of oth-
er-knowledge to self-knowledge—in the special form of other-knowledge
when the object of the other’s knowledge is ourselves—seems to require
this aliveness and to be frustrated by its absence. But to say that our ordi-
nary aliveness to one another is not constantly emotion-involving is not
to say that it is “merely cognitive” either: the point of the phrase is that it
is meant to straddle what we are accustomed to call “emotional” and—
when there aren’t enough emotions to go round—what we are accustomed
to hive off as “cognitive”. For others’ knowledge of us to have the impor-
tance I am suggesting it has, we need to be continuously available to each
other through our facial, vocal, and bodily mobility—including, as I’ve
suggested, where what that mobility makes available to others is their own
as well as our own states of mind.
Notes
1. This chapter draws on (but also goes beyond) two previous papers of mine,
Harcourt (2011) and (2017).
2. I use the expression “knowledge” here throughout, but the considerations in
play are much the same—though not exactly—if the self- and other-ascrip-
tions in question fall short of knowledge.
3. Though NB truth can be a false friend here: sometimes the last thing to do
with an exhausted child is to tell it it’s tired. Perhaps better to say “you’re
not tired, you’re just a bit frazzled”, choosing the word precisely because the
child won’t have heard it before and so will find it easier to accept.
4. In Harcourt (2011), I called this distinction the “mundane” and the “Delphic”.
5. Strijbos and Jongepier (2018) agree that “one can know about one’s mental
states in a more or less ‘theoretical’ way, e.g. through reading about it in a
psychology book or listening to the folk theories and advice of others, and
on that basis make a conjecture about one’s own state of mind”, though this
falls short of knowing them “experientially”.
6. I discuss this at some length in Harcourt (2017).
7. My italics.
8. I explore these ideas in detail in Harcourt (1999). The idea that I can use the
first-person pronoun to represent the first person thoughts of another is due
originally to Altham (1979), “I can use ‘I’ to talk about another”. Another
common example of expressing another’s first-person thoughts for them is
free indirect speech.
9. Though there is the interesting case where I spontaneously react to the other’s
state and they, seeing their state in my expression, come to know—as they
didn’t before—what state they are in, despite the fact that I am unable to
articulate this. You might come to realize that you are afraid by reading your
fear in my face, though I couldn’t have told you that you are in that state. This
type of case supplies an additional reason for rejecting a testimonial model of
the “mirror” phenomenon, at least if testimony essentially involves telling.
10. Note, however, that the claim that I can express another’s mental states is not
supposed to imply that I can have another’s mental states—I can’t. The claim
is supposed to be arresting not because it implies I can have another’s states,
but rather because it overturns what seems to be a common assumption viz.
that the only states I can express are the ones I have, i.e., my own.
11. For negative emotions and difficulties that may lie in the way of acknowledg-
ing them, see Vendrell Ferran (2023) and Salice and Sanchez (2023).
12. This may be the moral of more physiologically oriented explanations of the
relationship between loving care and self-regulation: various manifestations
of loving care, e.g., rocking, and singing help to down-regulate the produc-
tion of stress hormones and this facilitates the growth of the capacity to
reflect upon one’s states of mind rather than entering “fight or flight” mode
(Gerhardt 2004). So the specific internalization of the caregiver’s attitude to
oneself seems to drop out as explanatorily redundant.
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4 Emotions and the Contestation
of Social Identities
Bennett W. Helm
My topic is how certain complex social structures of emotions make it

possible for us (a) to contest social identities, (b) thereby to discover that
we collectively have gotten them wrong (or right), and so (c) to attain
partial knowledge of one’s identity as this particular person.
I have elsewhere understood one’s identity to be the structured set
of values and priorities defining the kind of life worth one’s living, and
I have argued that one’s personal values—values an individual person
has that need not be shared with others—are constituted by the pro-
jectible, rational patterns in one’s reflexive person-focused emotions:
emotions like pride and shame that evaluate one’s well-being as this
particular person. Moreover, I have tried to offer an account of how
we can deliberate about personal values partly through the interplay of
emotions and evaluative judgments in self-interpretation (Helm 2001).
Such deliberation makes possible the discovery of one’s identity and so
one form of self-knowledge, albeit one that’s consistent with one’s auton-
omy in determining that same identity.
My concern here, however, is with our social identities (including
gender, race, class, and religion) and the communal norms and values
these identities involve. What makes a social identity be social includes
at least the following: (a) that its occupants play a particular role in
relation to others, (b) that the meanings or values these roles and rela-
tionships have are assigned collectively, and (c) that these roles, relation-
ships, meanings, and values are informed and potentially justified by our
shared understandings of them. My claim will be that once again we can
discover what these social identities are and that we have one or another
of them, making a form of self-knowledge possible, albeit in a way that’s
consistent with a kind of autonomy in determining those identities. My
focus will be on the role of complex social structures of emotions in
the processes of forming, refining, and improving our social identities—
processes that are central to the possibility of such discovery.
It is widely acknowledged that social identities are socially con-
structed. Generally speaking, in order to be socially constructed, an
object or property must be in some sense the product of certain sorts of
DOI: 10.4324/9781003310945-6
74 Bennett W. Helm
patterns in human social interactions that somehow bring those objects
into being (Foucault 1978; Hacking 1986; Searle 1995; Root 2000;
Mikkola 2011; Ásta 2012; Haslanger 2012; McKitrick 2014; Barnes
2016; Mallon 2016; Schaffer 2016; Griffith 2017; Dembroff 2018). As
many have insisted, that something is socially constructed does not mean
it’s not real; for example, Elizabeth Barnes (2016, 8) rightly claims that
individuals collectively interact to form a complex system. And once

that system gets complex enough, properties of that system emerge
which aren’t explainable simply via reference to the individuals, and
which have causal influence on the behavior of those individuals.
That is, those socially constructed properties or other objects affect the
very perceptions, behavior, and interactions that construct them in the first
place, in a kind of “looping effect” (Hacking 1995; see also the descrip-
tion of “dynamic nominalism” in Hacking 1986). Consequently, particular
people truly have various social identities because we collectively under-
stand them that way (whether or not they understand themselves that way),
which thereby alters who they are, which in turn shapes our understanding
of them. Anything that can have such a causal influence must be real.
Nonetheless, while acknowledging the reality of socially constructed
identities, we might still question the sort of objectivity they have. From
what has been said so far, the reality of social identities is compatible with
their having only a limited form of objectivity in that, while individual
community members might be mistaken about how to understand certain
social identities (I might be mistaken about what being a man is) or about
whether a particular person has a particular social identity (I might be
mistaken in thinking that someone—including even myself—is a man), the
community itself cannot get things wrong. For on most accounts of social
construction, there is nothing more to the reality of the socially constructed
objects than the de facto patterns of social interactions: whatever it is to be
a man is whatever we say it is. My thesis in this chapter, however, is that
this is a mistake: we can discover that we have been mistaken about the
entities we construct and so that we have collectively misconstructed them.
We can see the possibility of such misconstruction in other cases of
social construction. Consider games, which we might think are mere
inventions and so are not the sort of thing we could get wrong. However,
it is a non-trivial accomplishment to construct a playable game, and suc-
cess in doing so reveals what John Haugeland calls the “empirical con-
tent” of the game (1998b, 330). For example, Haugeland says, a game
of baseball that required the pitcher to pitch so that the ball hangs for
a while in front of the batter before proceeding on to the catcher would
be unplayable: the world will not cooperate with this requirement. We
might add, what Haugeland does not, that “playability” involves more
than just physical possibility; some “games” we might try to invent
Emotions and the Contestation of Social Identities 75
would be so tedious and boring that, while we might be physically able
to go through the required motions, doing so could not be considered
playing in any legitimate sense and our creation would have failed to
be a game at all. Playability thus imposes other empirical constraints,
grounded in human psychology and relationships, on the construction of
games, where these constraints concern the point of such games within
human lives. These empirical constraints can lead to the discovery that
certain activities are not games because once again the world (which,
after all, includes our psychology and relationships) will not cooperate.1
Similar points can be made about the social construction of money.
Money is a socially constructed medium of exchange with the point
of facilitating economic activity. While we might use certain valuable
objects (cowrie shells, precious metals) as money, 2 with sufficiently com-
plex economies we might discover that a fiat money system, where the
medium of exchange itself has basically no value except for our declaring
that it does, turns out to have advantages over, for example, the gold
standard in being able to manipulate the money supply and so to allow
a central bank to respond to economic shocks: money is better as money
when constructed by fiat (in the context of a central banking system), a
discovery that tells us something about what money is.
One might object to my claim that certain attempts to construct
games or systems of money involve misconstructions of these objects
because the result falls short of achieving the “point” of these con-
structed objects. After all, such a point is a merely pragmatic consid-
eration that only reveals the game to be a poor game, not that it is not
a game at all: tedious and boring games (like counting blades of grass)
are still games, we might think. The same is true, mutatis mutandis, for
money. In reply, the force of the objection comes through the suggestion
that such “pragmatic” considerations provide us with merely practical
(and not epistemic) reasons for not using or, perhaps, for altering such
poor games or money systems. This is misleading, however. Insofar as
the point in question is “internal” (in a sense that needs to be clari-
fied) to the construction of games or money, considerations of how well
that point is upheld in particular cases can be relevant to their ontology
and so can be discoveries both about the thing in question (the game
of counting blades of grass) and about the category (games) in terms of
whose point we assess this thing as a good or poor instance of that kind.
We might have thought that counting blades of grass would be a game,
but on trying to play it we discover that it’s such a poor game as to be
not a game at all; similarly, we might discover that a commodity money
system is not as good a system as we had initially thought, and that a fiat
money system is better. In both cases, this tells us something about what
games and money are. The same is true, I shall argue, for social identities
such as gender and race: we might discover that we have misconstructed
them—failed to construct them properly given the kind of thing they
76 Bennett W. Helm
are—where such discoveries can tell us something both about what it is
to be a man (or White) and about what gender (or race) themselves are.
This claim may sound similar to Sally Haslanger’s “ameliorative pro-
ject”. As Haslanger (2012) describes it, an ameliorative project is one in
which we assess our concepts in terms of what concepts would be best
in helping us achieve a certain purpose we have in undertaking some
inquiry—in terms of the point of that inquiry. Thus, she argues, for the
purposes of reducing injustice (a central point of her inquiry), we should
reconceive race and gender in ways that make explicit the kinds of domina-
tion and subordination that are a part of these identities as we have in fact
constructed them, for by doing so we can better address the problems in
our social structures so as to achieve that purpose. That is, for Haslanger
correcting our concepts of man and woman and of White and Black
in these ways enables us to get clearer, for certain political purposes,
about the identities we had anyway. This is a theoretical move that on
its own does not change our identities, since those are fixed by our social
structures, but merely arrives at new knowledge of those identities from
a particular standpoint. Of course, correcting these concepts has practi-
cal consequences, but changing our identities to reduce this injustice—
altering this construction—will make us no longer have this social identity:
one will no longer be this type of thing—a man or a woman, say—but will
become something different (Haslanger 2012, 367–68).
Here we start to see important differences between Haslanger’s claims
and mine. For Haslanger, our social constructions of gender and race
ought to be altered because they violate independent requirements of
justice. I think something like this is right as far as it goes, but it is only
part of the story. In addition, I shall argue, we can say that our social
constructions ought to be altered because those constructions warp or
distort the very social identities they thereby construct. That is, what I
object to in Haslanger’s account is her presupposition, common to all
the accounts of social construction cited above, that how we have in
fact constructed ourselves is ontologically prior to what we really are,
so that there can be no sense in which our constructions are answerable
to the facts they construct. In rejecting this claim, I am not asserting an
opposite priority, for that would make a mockery of the idea of social
construction. Rather, I reject ontological priority here entirely. How
we construct our social identities of course plays a significant role in
defining what those social identities really are; simultaneously, however,
what our social identities really are can provide constraints on how we
ought to construct them, so that in so constructing them we can get
them wrong. This allows me to say that I have been constructed as hav-
ing a particular social identity in a way that distorts what I “really” am. 3
How is it possible for our social identities to constrain the construc-
tion of those very social identities, so that our constructions can get
the phenomena they construct wrong? Note that this is not a question
about how I can avoid vicious circularity; that question has already
been answered inasmuch as the viciousness of the circularity involved
in a particular case presupposes the very ontological priority that I have
denied. Rather, the question concerns how the denial of such priority is
intelligible in this case. My aim is to answer this question by presenting
at least in outline some of the complex social structures of emotions that
I claimed at the outset make self-knowledge possible. While my claim
here focuses on the object of self-knowledge, I also think the emotions
are essential to making the attitude of knowledge possible, whether of
the self or anything else, and I shall suggest without argument later (at
the end of Section 4.3.3) that our status as epistemic agents is itself a
social role through which we are held responsible to certain norms (of
truth and evidence, for example) and therefore, along with the capacity
for knowledge itself, depends on the emotions.
It is important to recognize that my claim concerns rational patterns
of emotions. Most philosophical treatments of emotions only consider
emotions taken one by one, in isolation from other emotions—whether
the topic is token emotions or types of emotions. In doing so, they
thereby blind themselves to what I have argued is most fundamental
about emotions, namely their constitutive connection to a variety of
forms of caring, including valuing, loving, and respecting, and to the
nature of rationality itself. It is primarily in these terms that we can
appreciate the place emotions have in self-knowledge.
In arguing for this, I shall first briefly lay out some background theory
concerning the relationship between emotions and caring (Section 4.1.1)
and emotions and individual identities (Section 4.1.2), in the process
sketching an account of how our individual identities can be proper
objects of discovery. In Sections 4.2–4.3, I extend this to include our social
identities, which considerably complicates the picture. Thus, Section 4.2
clarifies the nature of social identities and presents an account of how they
are constructed, a construction in which interpersonal rational patterns of
emotion play a central role. In Section 4.3, I discuss how social identities
can be contested, arguing first that we can have evidence for contesting
them (Section 4.3.1), then clarifying the role of emotional commitments
in such contestation (Section 4.3.2), and finally expanding this to include
resistant communities, in terms of which we can ultimately make sense of
the misconstruction of our social identities (Section 4.3.3).
4.1 Background
For almost 30 years, I have argued that for something to be an agent is
not merely for it to exhibit a kind of goal-directedness in its behavior,
as is true for a chess-playing computer (cf. Dennett 1987), but to be a
subject of import: a subject that cares about things and so can have and
act on desires it finds worth pursuing. I have further argued that we
78 Bennett W. Helm
persons are agents that are able to care about—to value—the kind of life
worth our living and to take responsibility for both what we do and who
we are. In all of this as well as the extension here to thinking about our
social identities, caring about something—finding it to have import—is
fundamental, and I have argued that we can understand these different
forms of caring, including valuing, loving, and respecting, in terms of
projectible, rational patterns of emotions, desires, and evaluative judg-
ments. It will be necessary, therefore, to present a brief recap, albeit one
that focuses on the emotions and without any pretense of argument.
4.1.1 Emotions and Caring

One starting intuition is that never to respond emotionally to something
when it is harmed or benefited, no matter what, is not to care about it.
Of course, one might fail on occasion, whether because something else is
more important here and now or simply through temporary inattentive-
ness or other rational failures; but never to respond, to ignore it entirely,
is simply not to care. We can start to explain this intuition by recognizing
that emotions just are a distinctive form of responsiveness to what has
import to one: they are “intentional feelings of import”. Bringing out the
structure of this responsiveness requires attending not simply to the target
of emotions but to their focuses. Thus, in fear, one responds in part to the
target of fear as dangerous; but something is dangerous only if it threat-
ens the well-being of something else that in fear one takes to have import
to one, and it is this “something else” that is the focus of that fear. Often
in the case of fear the focus is oneself or one’s physical safety, the import
of which philosophers of emotion often take for granted, but it need not
be: I can be afraid that the dead tree branch will fall on my parked car,
where in feeling this fear I am responding in part to the import my car
has for me. (If it did not have that import, the branch would not be a
danger.) In this case, my car is the focus of my fear.
Emotions are not merely passive responses to the imports of their focuses:
they are rational commitments to feel other emotions with the same focus
in the relevant circumstances. There would be something rationally odd
about my being afraid of the branch—about my fearing for my car—if
I did not also respond emotionally to other things that affect my car’s
well-being, such as when someone crashes into it or my mechanic master-
fully fixes the damage. This means that for any emotion to be rationally
appropriate, it must be a part of a broader pattern of emotional commit-
ments to the import of a common focus. And my claim has been that this
rational pattern of emotions with a common focus constitutes the import
of that focus (Helm 1994, 2001, 2002, 2009a).4 Emotions are thus simul-
taneously individually responsive to and collectively constitutive of import.
Note that caring is always about something as something, for it is
only in terms of such a description that particular events can affect its
well-being. I might care about my car as a flashy status symbol or merely
as a reliable mode of transportation, and the difference is constituted
in part by the patterns of my emotions, such as whether I get upset by
minor scratches or dings or worry about regular oil changes. Indeed, I
might think that I only care about my car as a reliable mode of transpor-
tation, only to discover that this is mistaken when I start getting upset
in the ways I do. In this way, one’s emotions can reveal one’s judgments
about what one cares about to be mistaken.
4.1.2 Emotions, Valuing, and Individual Identities

A person is an agent that not only can find particular things in the world
to be worthwhile but also can evaluate their own life as worth living or
not; moreover, we persons are autonomous in that we have the capacity,
to a significant degree, to define what sort of life this is. We do this not
merely by caring about particular things but, more deeply, by valuing
them as components of this sort of life—by finding them to have value,
this kind of import—together with a sense of priorities among these
values. Consequently, at least as a first pass that omits the idea of social
identities (which I shall consider in Section 4.2), we can understand a
person’s identity to be the description under which they value themselves
(Korsgaard 1996, 392); one’s values (and priorities among those values)
are thus central to defining who one is as this particular person (Helm
2000; especially Chapter 4 of 2001).
Given the role values play in defining the identities of persons, they
are “deeper” than the sort of ordinary caring described in Section 4.1.1.
“Ordinary” emotions like hope, fear, joy, and anger constitute this
ordinary caring, the capacity for which we share with at least the
higher animals. By contrast, valuing is constituted by person-focused
emotions like pride, shame, anxiety, and self-assurance, which are
deeper in that they involve rational commitments to such values as
a part of a commitment to the import of a particular person (oneself
or another) as such—to their identity as this particular person.
Consequently, I have argued (Helm 2009c; 2010, chap. 5), rational
patterns of person-focused emotions with a common focus constitute
one’s love for that focus as this particular person. When the object of
one’s love is a person other than oneself, one is thereby responsive to
their existing identity and values, so that one values the things they
value for their sake, as a part of loving them. In the case of self-love,
such a pattern isn’t merely responsive to an already existing identity
but itself partly constitutes one’s identity and hence these values (and
priorities) as a part of it (Helm 2009d; 2010, chap. 4). Exercising auton-
omy over one’s identity requires partially articulating what sort of life
one finds worth living and then exercising what I call “freedom of the
heart” to bring one’s person-focused emotions into line (Helm 1996).
80 Bennett W. Helm
There is no guarantee that such an exercise of autonomy will succeed,
that one can impose one’s will on one’s emotions; there are empirical
limits on what each of us can care about and value. One may find that
one’s emotions, one’s “deepest unstructured sense of what is impor-
tant” (Taylor 1985, 41), resist such attempts at change, thereby provid-
ing defeasible evidence that one’s attempted articulation of one’s values,
one’s interpretation of oneself, has gotten things wrong and needs to
be revisited.5 One may be, for example, mistaken in the focus of one’s
caring (whether one cares about this or that), or one may be mistaken
in the depth of one’s caring (whether it is ordinary caring or valuing), or
in the description under which one cares about it (whether as a reliable
mode of transportation or as a flashy status symbol). In this latter case,
the resistance of one’s emotions to one’s self-interpretation may reveal
that the concepts in terms of which one articulates one’s identity may
stand in need of revision.6 In all these cases, however, the evidence that
one is mistaken comes not from single emotions taken one by one but
from rational patterns of emotions with a common focus. (Thus, Taylor
is mistaken to think that one’s “deepest … sense of what is important”
is “unstructured”: the rational structure of these patterns is necessary to
provide purchase for interpretation.) Yet one’s emotions do not provide
the last word: reinterpretation and further attempts to exercise freedom
of the heart are always possible.7 As a result, one’s identity can emerge
through an interpretive back-and-forth between one’s person-focused
emotions and one’s evaluative judgments: “an articulation can be wrong,
and yet it shapes what it is wrong about” (Taylor 1985, 38). In this way,
one’s identity is a possible object of simultaneous autonomous invention
and rational discovery (Helm 2000, 2001, especially Chapter 7).
This brief description of the relationship between our judgments about
who we are and our emotions thus reveals the complex, “looping” rela-
tionship (alluded to in the Introduction) that will become important later.
Knowing ourselves and constituting ourselves are two sides of the same
coin, a coin forged out of an alloy of emotions, linguistic concepts, and
judgments. Recognizing the objectivity of our identities requires thinking
about ourselves holistically and in terms of on-going emotional and judg-
mental processes that form patterns extending into the past and, crucially
(as we’ll see in Sections 4.3.2 and 4.4), projecting into the future.
4.2 Emotions and Social Identities

Thus far, I have gestured at my account of how a person can simulta-
neously autonomously create and rationally discover their personal val-
ues: values that partially define a particular person’s identity. Personal
values are thus relative to the individual, an important locus of individ-
ual autonomy; as such, outside of loving personal relationships, there
is no reason they should be shared with others or why others should
change their identities when I do. This account of a person’s identity
is inadequate, however, for it fails to acknowledge that who we are as
persons is not simply a personal matter. We can and do have identities
imposed on us by the communities to which we belong. As indicated in
the Introduction, what makes social identities like gender, race, and class
be social is that (a) their occupants play a particular role in relation to
others, (b) the meanings or values these roles and relationships have (and
which prescribe or proscribe certain aspects of their occupants lives as
worthwhile) are assigned collectively, and (c) that these roles, relation-
ships, meanings, and values are informed and potentially justified by our
shared understandings of them. What exactly are such social identities,
how are they constituted, and what role do our emotions play in our
knowing ourselves through them?
To occupy a social role is in part to be subject to a variety of communal
norms and values. What makes such norms and values communal is not
merely that a particular population of people has dispositions to abide
by them or even that those dispositions are stabilized via rewards or
punishments. Rather, what’s needed is that we hold each other (includ-
ing oneself) responsible for successes or failures in upholding them. Talk
of responsibility here implies that members of the community have a cer-
tain standing as bound by these norms as well as the authority to hold
others responsible to them (Darwall 2006; Helm 2015b). We can under-
stand such responsibility and the corresponding standing and authority
in terms of interpersonal rational patterns of reactive attitudes.
Peter Strawson (1962) introduced the idea of reactive attitudes as
those emotions whereby we “demand some degree of goodwill or regard
on the part of those who stand in these [personal] relationships to
us” (Strawson 1962, 192), and he distinguished three types: the per-
sonal reactive attitudes, like gratitude and resentment, which we feel in
response to someone’s meeting or failing to meet such a demand with
respect to ourselves; the vicarious reactive attitudes, like approbation
and indignation, which we feel in response to someone’s doing so with
respect to a third party; and the self-reactive attitudes, like self-appro-
bation and guilt, which we feel in response to our own actions. In each
case, I have argued (Helm 2011, 2012, 2014a, 2015b, 2017a), these emo-
tional demands involve commitments (a) to someone (the “victim”) as
meriting this regard, (b) to a certain norm or expectation concerning an
action or attitude through which such regard is to be manifest, and (c)
to the “perpetrator” as having the standing as bound by this norm. Yet
part of what is distinctive about the reactive attitudes is that these com-
mitments purport to be not just mine but ours. My resentment of you
for shoving me out of the way calls on you to feel guilt and on witnesses
to feel disapprobation or indignation, feelings whereby we together take
up the commitment to the relevant norms and to each other as having
both the standing as bound by these norms and, in our responsiveness to
82 Bennett W. Helm
this “call”, the authority to hold each other responsible to them. When
a group is responsive to the calls of each other’s reactive attitudes so
that their collective reactive attitudes form projectible, rational patterns
focused on each other and on certain norms, such a pattern constitutes
their respect for each other and for these norms, and it thereby consti-
tutes them each as members of a community of respect.
There is considerable disagreement concerning which emotions are
reactive attitudes and which are not (see, for example, Wallace 1994;
Bennett 2008). The account I’ve provided offers one principled answer:
reactive attitudes are those emotions that fit into interpersonal rational
patterns constitutive of our joint respect for each other and for certain
norms. This means that our list of reactive attitudes should include “for-
ward-looking” emotions like (self-)trust and (self-)distrust, emotions
that prospectively hold someone responsible and thereby commit one
to feeling reactive attitudes like gratitude or resentment when that trust
is upheld or violated (Helm 2014b); and it should include emotions like
esteem, contempt, self-esteem, and shame, which are rationally con-
nected to the standard reactive attitudes in a variety of ways that help
constitute not just norms of action but norms of character and thereby
communal values: communal commitments to what for us makes a life
worthy or unworthy (Helm 2017a, chap. 7). All of these emotions will
be important for the account to come.
So far I have described communal norms and values generically, as
if they all apply equally to all members of a community of respect. Yet
some norms apply only to particular people. As the cook in my family, it
is my responsibility to come up with a meal plan, shop for groceries, and
have meals ready on schedule; family members hold me (and not others)
to this responsibility via their reactive attitudes. Moreover, these norms
can define special powers one has insofar as others are expected to treat
one in a particular way, as when the leader of the club has the power to
determine who speaks and when—a power they have insofar as others
are bound by the norm to defer to that power. In this way, one has not
only the standing as responsible to certain norms but also the standing
as meriting consideration by others (Helm 2017a, 161) and correspond-
ing authority to exercise certain powers, including the power to hold
others responsible. These interlocking norms defining the responsibili-
ties and powers we have in relation to each other thus institute various
social roles. And when these norms involve communal values, partial
specifications of what sort of life is worthwhile for occupants of that
social role, they constitute social identities.8
The norms defining a particular social identity are interlocking inso-
far as the norms governing the actions, motivation, and character of one
or more members depend on the norms governing others’ responses to
these, and vice versa. In addition, the social identities themselves are
interlocking insofar as who the relevant members are that are bound
by such interlocking norms is in general articulable only in terms of the
relevant social identity categories. Social identities, therefore, are in gen-
eral intelligible only in terms of their holders’ relationships with others
holding other, correlative social identities. For example, traditionally in
contemporary Western cultures, the social identity of being a man is
defined centrally by the norm that men be in control (and signify that
they are in control) to each other and to women, and being a woman is
correlatively defined by the norm of deferring to men in this regard (see
Section 4.3.2 for some details). This means that given the interlocking
nature of these social identities, we should understand communal values
as delineating not merely how it’s best for each of us to live as individu-
als, but rather how it is best for us to live together. After all, it is we who
are committed to respecting each other and the relevant norms and so,
ultimately, to the form of life these define.
Social identities are thus constructed by the interlocking, interpersonal
patterns of reactive attitudes within a community of respect. These pat-
terns of reactive attitudes offer a partial specification of what is mean-
ingful or valuable in the lives of the holders of these identities in terms of
which we can assess the lives of those with these social identities as going
better or worse and so assess them as flourishing or not, both individu-
ally and in relation to each other. Indeed, offering such a specification
of how we can best live together—of what our collective flourishing is
like—is the point of social identities.
What matters for the construction of these identities and their appli-
cation to particular individuals is the overall patterns in our collective
reactive attitudes. Such patterns might be in place even when there fails
to be unanimity within the community about what communal norms
and values, what powers and responsibilities, define a particular social
role or who occupies those roles. Nonetheless, too much disagreement or
diversity in how we hold occupants of particular roles to what norms can
lead to indeterminacy in what powers and responsibilities those occu-
pants have or can even destroy the constructed pattern and the associ-
ated roles entirely. To achieve and sustain a rough consensus, it can help
them to articulate to each other these social roles and reasons for occu-
pants to have special powers and responsibilities. Just as it may seem to
make sense to have the cook bear the responsibility of shopping for gro-
ceries, since substitutions may need to be made when the store is out of a
certain item and the cook, with their special expertise, is best positioned
to be able to make those substitutions, so too it may seem to make sense
for men, with their “natural” advantages of strength and rationality, to
have special responsibilities to plan for and protect against dangers, and
for women, with their “natural” advantages of emotional connectedness
and nurturing, to have special responsibilities for caring for the family.
Such background “theories” or ideologies embed particular concepts
(like man and woman) that come to inform our emotions and evaluative
84 Bennett W. Helm
judgments and hence our sense of these social identities, and they thus
purport to explain and justify the social roles and identities we have
constructed.9 In the process, such “theories” make explicit the under-
standing of those roles and identities that is implicit in the patterns of
reactive attitudes, thereby imposing further structure on those patterns.
In addition to constructing these social identities themselves, the com-
munity also constructs particular people as having particular social iden-
tities by treating them as occupying that social identity. For via the past
and present patterns of reactive attitudes constituted by the consensus in
how others respond to someone, individuals acquire a certain standing
as responsible and as meriting consideration as well as the standings and
authority that define their occupying that social identity. Indeed, this
can be true even when they explicitly reject that identity, either in whole
or in part. (As I shall argue later, however, to focus only on the past and
present patterns is to ignore the way these patterns must also project into
the future, so that the issues are considerably more complicated than I
have presented them so far.)
In short, while emotions individually are responsive to our values and
identities, whether personal or communal/social, the individual or inter-
personal patterns these emotions form, together with associated desires
and evaluative judgments, constitute those very values and identities. In
this way, my account thus far has understood social identities as having
the first two characteristics identified in the Introduction: (a) by specifying
the social roles the occupants of particular social identities play in relation
to others and (b) in laying out the meanings or values we collectively assign
to this identity in the form of the relevant communal norms and values.
(I shall return in Section 4.3.3 to the third characteristic that our shared
understandings can inform and potentially justify these social identities.)
4.3 Contesting Social Identities

In the Introduction, I argued that the idea of social construction is
compatible with our collectively being mistaken about what we thereby
construct; in particular, we can misconstruct social identities, and we
can discover this by seeing how well our attempted construction, within
the context of a broader form of life, enables us to achieve or uphold
their point. Such a point thereby provides an empirical constraint on
our constructions. In Section 4.2, I offered a preliminary account of the
construction of social identities, the point of which is to offer a partial
specification of how we who occupy various interlocking social identi-
ties can best live together—of what flourishing looks like for us. And
while there is room in the account so far to say that individuals might
be out of step with the rest of the community, both with respect to what
norms and values define a particular social identity and with respect to
whether someone occupies this or that social identity, so far nothing
has been said about how the community itself might get our social iden-
tities wrong—about how it’s possible for us to be, and discover that
we are, collectively mistaken about how we have constructed various
social identities. How in more detail does this work? More precisely,
how might we discover that existing social identities fail to provide the
best avenue for our flourishing and that alternative ways we might con-
struct social identities might do better?
That social identities are socially constructed means that there is no
fact independent of our practices that can be the standard against which
we can measure our social constructions for correctness. Rather, if we
are to take seriously the idea that the identities themselves are socially
constructed, then whatever form of objectivity they might have in terms
of which we might discover clearer, less distorted versions of them—that
form of objectivity must not be independent of that construction itself
but must instead emerge from on-going processes of contestation and
experimentation within the community itself. The best we can do at any
given stage is to show that we have reason to think that one way of con-
structing a particular identity is better than the alternatives, potentially
including the dominant way of doing so—better in the sense of being
clearer and less distorting of the phenomena and so enabling those phe-
nomena to be more fully what they are. That is, as I shall argue, mak-
ing sense of the objectivity of some social construction, of there being
standards of correctness at stake therein, requires only that we be able
to identify reasons for improvement, not that some particular alterna-
tive construction is without distortions that might be uncovered through
further processes of contestation. As with science, we can make progress
toward getting things objectively right from an imperfect starting point
and without any determinate specification of some ideal in terms of
which we measure our progress. Consequently, my focus will be on how
from within our practices and given the evidence as we can now make it
out we can rationally contest certain social identities or aspects thereof.
4.3.1 Evidence
If we are to discover that we are mistaken, we need evidence; here are
three potential (and potentially overlapping) sources.
First, we can point to demographic data: seemingly “objectively”
measurable outcomes relevant to people’s flourishing in both absolute
and relative terms (see, for example, https://www.oecdbetterlifeindex.
org). How well do members of various social identities fare with respect
to life expectancy, overall physical and mental health, housing condi-
tions, incidence of crime, civic engagement, educational achievement,
wealth, and so on, as well as access to resources that make all of that
possible? Of course, for any of these measures, there may be a certain
threshold beyond which additional gains are not reliably connected to
86 Bennett W. Helm
one’s quality of life. Moreover, we might dispute exactly which meas-
urable outcomes are relevant to flourishing or how they do so, thereby
questioning the veneer of “objectivity” such measures involve. Finally,
evidence can be interpreted in different ways given different background
presuppositions and theories, including those presuppositions inherent
in various forms of hate (Helm forthcoming). Thus, we might expect a
White supremacist, for example, to read the poor educational, health,
and economic outcomes of people of color to be evidence not of unjust
systemic oppression indicative of a failure to construct race properly but
rather of the “other’s” inherent inferiority, evidence that is taken to jus-
tify their subordination. Nonetheless, whether this is right is not merely a
matter of opinion, since the social sciences have developed tools and tech-
niques for settling such disputes empirically—which is to say that there
is evidence to which we ought to be open for how best to interpret these
data. The upshot is that indications that holders of a particular social
identity10 tend because of that identity to lag behind holders of some
correlative social identity on such measures provides important but con-
testable and defeasible evidence that the way we have constructed these
identities falls short of the empirical constraints on those constructions.
Second, as the example of ideologically motivated interpretation of
“objective” data indicates, the background of such “objectively” meas-
urable outcomes involve moral values in terms of which we can assess
these outcomes as just or unjust. Such an appeal to morality in general
and injustice in particular are made explicit in Haslanger’s arguments
about gender and race (2012): that women or people of color generally
fare worse on these measures because of their social identities is an injus-
tice that justifies our resisting and rejecting these social constructions.
Yet as Haslanger recognizes, the appeal to injustice need not be restricted
to injustice revealed by such “objectively” measurable outcomes; domi-
nation and subordination themselves, for example, are unjust and ought
to be resisted, regardless of whether or not they have any additional
negative effects that show up on the measures we use; indeed, the fact
of such injustice can be used to argue for altered or additional measures
in a potentially problematic attempt to quantify the harms that injustice
involves. Consequently, manifest injustices can be a second source of
evidence that we have badly constructed certain social identities.
One might object that such an appeal to injustice (or to such “objec-
tively” measurable outcomes) is an appeal to criteria that are external
to the social identities we thereby criticize, providing us with merely
practical reasons for changing these social identities, not theoretical rea-
sons for thinking we are mistaken about the social identities themselves.
If this is right then, for example, Haslanger’s ameliorative project of
construing various social identities in ways that can help us alleviate the
injustices they involve (by understanding gender and race as essentially
involving domination and subordination) would be a matter of using a
distorted ontology to achieve the aims of what turns out to be a laudable
but merely political project. However, as my discussion of the point of
social identities reveals, this appeal to moral considerations is directly
relevant to the ontological/epistemological project of understanding
what these social identities themselves are, thereby revealing something
important about who we are. Practical and theoretical considerations
cannot be so neatly pulled apart here.11
I want to focus, however, on a third source of evidence: our “subjec-
tive” experiences of the quality and meaning of our lives and relationships
together. The relevance of our emotional experiences should be apparent
from my account of emotions as intentional feelings of import (Section
4.1.1): our emotions, taken one by one, are responsive to how things are
going in our lives, whether well or poorly, and so are indicators of the
extent to which we are flourishing. Thus, when things go right, emotions
just are ways of taking in, just are ways of knowing, how things are going
with respect to our flourishing. More important, though, is that our emo-
tions are also responses to the values underlying these assessments, to
what flourishing itself consists in, and once again when things go right
they just are ways of knowing those values themselves. Consequently, our
emotions are a mode of access to the reasons there are for retaining or
modifying how we construct our social identities.
Notice that my claim is not that our emotions themselves are evidence
that we might use to learn something about what values things have or
the extent to which we uphold those values, so that by recognizing that
we have some emotions we infer that this is how things are. That would
be like saying that my perception that this grass is green is (“qualitative”?)
evidence we might use to infer that this grass is green. Such a claim involves,
if not an appeal to the Myth of the Given (Sellars 1963), then opening
oneself up to radical skepticism (McDowell 1994). Rather, when things go
right, we should understand such perceptions themselves as being ways of
knowing directly that this grass is green. Likewise, emotional feelings are
not hedonic “qualia” that are “given” to us and from which we might infer
the imports things have; they are intentional experiences directly taking
in that import (Helm 1994, 2009b; see also Goldie 2000). Of course, any
experience, including our emotions, can get things wrong and therefore
must be subject to critical scrutiny. We might question whether this grass
really is green, even though that’s what it looks like to me, for a variety of
reasons: perhaps the environmental conditions are abnormal (it’s foggy)
or my eyesight isn’t what it used to be (I have developed cataracts). In the
face of any of these challenges, I can respond by pointing to evidence that
I, a competent perceiver fluent in our shared background “theory” of color
and having ensured that perceptual conditions were normal, exercised my
perceptual capacities correctly and thereby saw that this grass is green.12
Likewise, challenges that my emotional experiences have misapprehended
the imports things have or the bearing of the current circumstances on
88 Bennett W. Helm
that import can be met by pointing to evidence of my general emotional
competence and fluency and that I have properly exercised my emotional
capacities in the particular case. (Precisely what such emotional compe-
tence and fluency amounts to stands in need of clarification and will be
addressed in Section 4.3.3.)
4.3.2 Emotional Commitments to Social Identities

Emotions are not just like sense perceptions, however. For emotions are
not merely experiences of import but are simultaneously commitments
to that import, such that the appropriate rational patterns of such com-
mitments constitute that very import.13 Especially in the case of com-
munal norms and values, this considerably complicates the picture of
how assessments of flourishing can be challenged and so ultimately what
reasons there can be for contesting particular social identities. To bring
out these complications, consider the following example.
Assume that Bruce is a man living in a community with traditional
Western gender norms:
In Western cultures, and in the contemporary United States espe-

cially, the essential element [of the masculine self] is a capacity to
exert control or to resist being controlled …. To elicit the attribu-
tion of possessing a masculine self thus requires signifying—with or
without conscious awareness—that one possesses the capacities to
make things happen and to resist being dominated by others.
(Schrock and Schwalbe 2009, 280)
In particular, men are expected to do this by being competitive, loyal,

daring, and instrumentally rational, by regulating their emotions to the
point of being emotionally detached, by exhibiting both the capacity
for violence and “displays of strength and endurance” (Schrock and
Schwalbe 2009, 283), by sexualizing and objectifying women as a
means of subordinating them and so using them as “props for signifying
heterosexuality” (Schrock and Schwalbe 2009, 282), and by generally
demanding deference from women (as well as other men) in order to
establish their own control and dominance. Such expectations, defined
by and upheld through interpersonal rational patterns of reactive atti-
tudes, constitute some of the communal norms and values defining the
social identity of being a man and thereby our implicit understanding
of what it is to be a man, with all of it serving to distinguish men from
those with other gender identities. Moreover, these norms, values, and
understandings are all grounded within a broader “theory” or ideology
that purports to explain and justify them (see Section 4.2). All of this
applies to Bruce, partially defining his identity and so how we ought to
understand him (and how he ought to understand himself) as a man.
Assume, however, that Bruce experiences discomfort with important
parts of this, especially the demand for control that tends toward dom-
ination of others and the demand for a kind of Stoic regulation of his
emotions. Such “discomfort” on its own is not evidence that there is any-
thing wrong with our construction of this social identity. Perhaps Bruce
is overly emotional and consequently lacks self-confidence and courage
to take the risks that properly masculine control requires, and so perhaps
what he needs is someone, such as a role model or mentor, to help him
reform his character, to train him to be more rationally detached and
less timid, and thereby to help him become a “real” man. Whether this is
the right way to understand his discomfort and how to respond to it is a
matter of interpretation for which there can be evidence in the way this
understanding fits into a broader pattern of emotions. Here, assume, the
evidence points to a different interpretation, which Bruce embraces: the
loving relationship he has with his wife involves valuing her as an equal
partner, such that he would feel attempts to control and dominate her as
shameful; and he finds that he values such cooperative, “plural” agency
(Helm 2008) with other significant people in his life, relationships within
which he and his partners value expressions of vulnerability and mutual
support. Consequently, his “discomfort” in particular cases is more prop-
erly understood to be an emotion that engages his personal values: when
he falls back into old habits from his traditional upbringing or caves into
peer pressure, he is ashamed; and when he overcomes this and is able to
muster the courage to open himself up to others, he feels pride.14
As described so far, that Bruce has these personal values of cooperative
sharing of control and emotional closeness with others and yet still iden-
tifies as a man sets up a conflict with the dominant community’s under-
standing of what it is to be a man and the communal norms and values
this involves: in certain respects, he values having an identity contrary to
the social identity that is imposed on him, and this can lead to emotional
ambivalence, in which he simultaneously feels pride in upholding his
personal values and guilt or even reactive shame15 for violating commu-
nal norms. So far this is not yet to contest the dominant understanding
of what it is to be a man, for such feelings of reactive shame and guilt are
commitments Bruce makes as one of us to that dominant understanding,
even if such commitments are contrary to his commitments to personal
values. Even so, such contrary commitments are unstable and provide
some reason to reconsider and resolve the contrariety.
To contest the dominant understanding of this social identity, Bruce
would need to go further: questioning the theory of gender we have in
the dominant understanding of masculinity and thereby trying to reform
our shared commitments to the relevant communal norms and values.
Thus, he may try to distinguish different forms of control and come to
see that men as men don’t have to be domineering individuals in order
to be in control inasmuch as control can be shared, and that men as men
90 Bennett W. Helm
can be emotionally vulnerable insofar as such vulnerability itself can be
a form of control over one’s actions and identity. These conclusions must
be rationally grounded in his experience, albeit experience that is shaped
by efforts at self-interpretation that succeed only insofar as these inter-
pretations not only fit the past pattern of his emotions but also come to
inform his commitments to import and hence come to shape both his
subsequent emotions and thereby their future patterns. For example, he
may reinterpret what he formerly thought were person-focused emotions,
through which he is committed to personal values, instead to be reac-
tive attitudes, through which he is committed to communal norms and
values. Yet to be successful, this reinterpretation must project forward:
his pride in successfully navigated cooperative control and in allowing
himself to be emotionally vulnerable, if it is to be reactive pride, must be
responsive to these as communal norms and values partly defining the
social identity of being a man. This involves not only the commitment
that Bruce himself feels other reactive attitudes in response to his own or
others’ successes or failures to uphold these norms and values, reactive
attitudes that hold both himself and others responsible for these successes
or failures. In addition, that commitment purports to be our shared com-
mitment to these norms and values such that in feeling these reactive
attitudes Bruce thereby calls on others in the community to share this
commitment as our communal commitment and so calls on us to respond
with correlative reactive attitudes, such as gratitude or approbation in
response to his emotional vulnerability; when others do not but instead
respond with disapprobation and criticism of him, he ought to resent
their criticism and attempts to hold him to norms he rejects, where such
resentment itself is a further call for them to take up the commitment to
these norms and values. As this makes clear, these attempts at reinter-
pretation may not be successful: others may not take up this call and
our (collective) emotions may thereby resist Bruce’s efforts to shape them
in this way. Nonetheless, success provides defeasible evidence, via our
shared experience of import, for the correctness of our interpretations
and hence for Bruce’s alternative understanding of what it is to be a man.
In thus questioning and trying to reform this social identity, however,
Bruce does not provide others with much by way of reasons to take up
the commitments implicit in the call of his reactive attitudes. As I have
argued, reasons for changing a particular social construction are to be
found in the point of that construction, where the point of a social iden-
tity is to offer a partial specification of how we can flourish together, both
individually and as a community; so far, we do not have such reasons.
Indeed, precisely because Bruce is out of step with the dominant under-
standing of masculinity and so violates our shared norms and values, oth-
ers may evaluate Bruce as a poor excuse for a man—a woke, emasculated
wimp, say—and consequently hold him responsible for these violations
that (according to them) manifestly undercut his (and potentially others’)
flourishing as a man. Of course, Bruce would likely understand such
treatment of him to be a matter of bullying or subordinating him, where
that bullying itself is the reason for his failure to flourish under his
reformed identity as a man rather than anything problematic about that
identity itself. (Here there is further room for the contestation of the dom-
inant understanding, on which see Section 4.3.3.) On the other hand,
even if Bruce himself were to flourish in this reformed identity, that does
not mean the rest of us would do so, either individually or collectively;
indeed, it may be that permitting him to take on this reformed iden-
tity could undercut something the rest of us find valuable and important
about being a man. So far, then, we do not have evidence that such a
revised social identity better fulfills the point of social identities.
4.3.3 Resistant Communities and Evidence

I noted in Section 4.2 that social identities are interlocking in that each
social identity is defined partly in terms of the relationships its occupants
have with others holding correlative social identities: one cannot now
have the social identity of a feudal serf, for example, because one cannot
now have the requisite relationships with others who occupy the relevant
other social identities, such as lords and priests (Hacking 1986, 167).
Likewise, in order for Bruce to occupy the social role of this reformed
identity as a man, he must be able to establish certain types of rela-
tionships with others holding correlative identities (men, women, etc.),
where such relationships are governed by shared communal norms and
values that similarly have been reformed.16 This means that in order for
Bruce to succeed in taking on this reformed identity as a social identity,
he must become part of a resistant community: a community of respect
whose members are a subset of a dominant community of respect and
who construct reformed social identities in place of the dominant com-
munity’s social identities, which they reject and resist.17 Given this, what
can provide evidence that the dominant community’s current construc-
tion of what it is to be a man is warped and should be replaced with an
alternative construction is not just how Bruce’s life on its own goes under
a reformed identity, but how such reforms make possible improved ways
for us to live together within a broader resistant community. How does
this work, and what form does that evidence take?
That such a reformed social identity is constructed from within a resist-
ant community means that the task of developing this identity and ques-
tioning and revising the background theory of gender—a task described
thus far only with reference to Bruce—must be undertaken by the resist-
ant community as a whole. Thus, participants in the resistant community
collectively must exhibit the interpersonal, rational patterns of reactive
attitudes that (a) constitute these reformed communal norms and values,
(b) construct a reformed social identity, and (c) thereby provide a joint but
92 Bennett W. Helm
implicit understanding of that identity in terms of which they experience
themselves and each other. In order for participants to resist the dom-
inant community’s construction of gender, they must at least partially
articulate what justifies the resistant construction of gender and their
criticisms of the dominant construction via an altered theory of gender
and revised concepts to which that theory provides substance.
Here the loopiness of self-interpretation is manifest once more in the
circular relationships among the resistant community’s norms and val-
ues, its participants’ reactive attitudes, their concepts, and their theory of
gender. For (1) participants’ communal norms and values are constituted
by the interpersonal, rational patterns in their reactive attitudes, reactive
attitudes that themselves are both responsive to those norms and values
and are potentially informed by certain concepts. In turn, (2) these con-
cepts are valid only if they succeed in informing participants’ emotional
commitments and thereby shape their communal norms and values,
though of course their emotions may well be resistant to any attempt to
shape them via revised concepts: participants may find themselves unable
to take on the commitments to import the use of such concepts would
seem to require of them. Moreover, (3) these concepts must be at least
partly articulated in the context of a (more rather than less successful)
theory that purports to explain and justify the norms and practices sur-
rounding these social identities. Finally, (4) these theories are successful
only to the extent that participants engage in and can get themselves to be
emotionally committed to the norms and practices that theory purports to
explain and justify. In “getting themselves” to be thus emotionally com-
mitted, they may need to exercise freedom of the heart, together instilling
in each other the relevant habits of perception and response their theories
require, all in a potentially successful attempt to take control over what
they collectively value.18 The relevant social identity concepts, therefore,
can be justified as improvements over the concepts they replace by the
quality of life and relationships they serve to articulate and explain, a
quality of life whose significance and meaning the community’s members
experience through emotions informed by those very concepts. (This sat-
isfies the third criterion for identities being genuinely social identified in
the Introduction.) In short, members of the resistant community must
be able to achieve a kind of reflective equilibrium among these disparate
elements; the circularity this all involves is not vicious given the holism
of the entire system, a holism within which the ontological and rational
priority that would make for such viciousness is rejected.
Success in this endeavor is not guaranteed but is a significant achieve-
ment, which is partly what makes that success an empirical matter
(Haugeland 1998a, 279; see also Haugeland 1998c, 298). By undertaking
this task and trying out alternatives to the dominant community’s form of
life, members of a resistant community are in effect carrying out what we
might call “experiments in living” to see what might work better, what
altered form of life might enable them better to live their lives together.
A resistant community that has managed to achieve such an equilibrium
among their reactive attitudes, the concepts that inform them, and the
relevant theories is in a position to offer reasons for the dominant com-
munity to reform how it has constructed particular social identities. Their
being in this position depends in part on their being members not merely
of the resistant community but also of the dominant community, for it is
only as members of the dominant community that they have the authority
to hold fellow members of the dominant community responsible to com-
munal norms—as informed by their understanding of these norms in light
of the reforms undertaken within the resistant community.
The reasons they offer both supplement and go beyond the appeals to
“objectively” measurable criteria and considerations of justice discussed
in Section 4.3.1. In part, this is because being able to recognize cer-
tain practices of the dominant community as unjust may require the use
of certain concepts developed or refined in the context of the resistant
community (du Bois 1903; Lugones 2003; Fricker 2007; Medina 2013,
among many others), concepts whose validation rests in major part on
their successfully informing certain (emotional) experiences of partici-
pants in the reformed practices of the resistant community. In addition,
these conceptually informed emotional experiences of import, in par-
ticular of the communal values that particular identities, practices, and
relationships have in the context of their reformed social identities, can
be direct experiences of greater flourishing relative to the social identi-
ties of the dominant community. For example, by reinterpreting the sort
of courage and self-confidence required of men to include facing up to
and expressing their emotional vulnerability in their relationships with
others, “reformed men” like Bruce may experience these relationships
with others as being deeper and more meaningful, and others in the
resistant community may have similarly deep and meaningful experi-
ences of their relationships with such “reformed men”.
All of this means that the evidence there is that the dominant com-
munity has misconstructed a particular social identity is provided not
by any single element but rather by the complex social structures, prac-
tices, and conceptual understandings of the resistant community as a
whole, all of which are essentially grounded in participants’ emotional
experiences. Because the concepts needed to recognize such evidence are
validated essentially by their success in informing their emotional expe-
riences, that they ought to use these reformed concepts rather than those
of the dominant community is something only those “fluent in the prac-
tices”19 of the resistant community are able to appreciate. The reasons
they have for adopting their revised understanding of these social iden-
tities are thus partly internal to that understanding itself. Consequently,
members of the dominant community who lack this fluency with the
practices of the resistant community may be blind to the reasons there
94 Bennett W. Helm
are for change: for them, such reasons are, we might say, “external rea-
sons” (cf. Williams 1981). 20 Sensitizing them to these reasons, therefore,
may require something like a conversion to “considering the matter
aright” (McDowell 1998, 100).
The idea of conversion would function here as the idea of an intel-

ligible shift in motivational orientation that is exactly not effected
by inducing a person to discover, by practical reasoning controlled
by existing motivations, some internal reasons that he did not previ-
ously realize he had.
(McDowell 1998, 102)
Such a “motivational orientation”, as McDowell understands it, is not

merely a matter of being pushed to do this or that irrespective of the val-
ues things have; rather, it essentially involves the capacity to experience
something as valuable, where such an experience is simultaneously a
commitment to uphold that value (McDowell 1979). It is, in effect, the
very sort of thing I have described as an emotional feeling of import,
with the caveat that what is required in the context of social identities is
our joint (rather than merely individual) commitments-cum-experiences
of communal norms and values (cf. Wiggins 1998).
Of course all of this is contestable. We might contest how we under-
stand flourishing and what sorts of “objectively” measurable criteria are
involved in such flourishing and how to weigh them against each other
and against other criteria. We might contest how to understand justice
and how it applies in particular cases, such as whether certain ways of
treating someone involve unjust subordination or marginalization rather
than necessary protection for their own good. And we might contest
how it is proper to experience our lives and relationships, including the
concepts that inform those experiences. Members of the resistant com-
munity may fail to recognize certain values or ways of understanding
things that are central to how those in the dominant community expe-
rience these social identities and that undercut their criticisms; or they
may be blind to the ways the relationships they have developed them-
selves essentially involve various harms or injustices to others (such as to
groups in the dominant community who are not a part of the resistant
community); or they may simply be conceptually confused or insuffi-
ciently self-reflective; etc.—all of which can blunt their criticism of the
dominant community or show that it is the resistant community that has
a more distorted understanding of these social identities.
In this contestation, there is room for considerable bad faith, willful
ignorance (Frye 1983; Ortega 2006; Mills 2007; Pohlhaus 2011), and
epistemic injustice (Fricker 2007; Medina 2013), all of which are exac-
erbated by the resistant community’s reasons for reform being external
to the perspective of those in the dominant community. As many have
argued (see, for example, Fricker 2007, 172; Medina 2013, sec. 2.3),
virtue epistemology is relevant for this assessment, inasmuch as these
problems can be mitigated by the epistemic virtue of open-mindedness,
especially as practiced by those in positions of social privilege in the
dominant community: those who are victims of injustice are often better
situated to know and understand that injustice than those who are not.
Moreover, we might add, such open-mindedness would seem to be a pre-
requisite to acquiring the sort of fluency in the practices of the resistant
community required to appreciate whatever reasons they might provide.
However, this appeal to virtue epistemology cannot be the full story,
for it only raises once again questions about what such open-minded-
ness consists in, to what extent we ought to be open-minded, and more
generally what epistemic practices and traits we have reason to value,
what these virtues are, etc.—all of which are also contestable within the
community. After all, our status as epistemic agents is itself a social role
governed by communal norms and values to which we hold each other
responsible, and this social identity is contestable as such. 21
4.4 Conclusion
I have been discussing how complex social structures of emotionally
grounded, conceptually informed practices make possible the objectiv-
ity of social identities. Whereas we normally conceive of objectivity as
involving the ontological priority of the phenomena over our experiences
of them, given their status as socially constructed our social identities
cannot have this sort of objectivity. Nonetheless, I have argued that
social identities have a kind of objectivity insofar as we can discover
that we are mistaken about them. Such discovery is made possible by the
complex rational structures I have been at pains to articulate, structures
that both underlie the construction of these social identities and are that
in terms of which we can rationally contest not only what social identity
a particular person has but more fundamentally what communal norms
and values a particular social identity involves and even the concepts in
terms of which all of that is to be articulated, experienced, and justified.
Most philosophical approaches to the construction of our social iden-
tities understand such construction to be a matter of what our historical
and present social structures and practices have been and are, a largely
backward-looking approach.22 Indeed, it is here that the presupposition of
ontological and rational priority is most evident: because what it is to have
a particular social identity is a matter of the historical facts in our social
structures and practices, there is no way for those facts to be answerable
to the social identity they construct, for that identity cannot somehow
reach back into the past and alter those facts. Consequently, it is generally
thought, our constructings are ontologically and rationally prior to these
constructed social identities. A similar conclusion might be reached from
96 Bennett W. Helm
a different direction. Our social identities are essentially contestable, and
I have argued that we find here the potential for a struggle, both among
individuals and between individuals and the community more broadly,
over who has the power to determine our social identities as well as the
concepts in terms of which they are to be understood. That there are
power struggles, however, might lead one to conclude that “truth” in this
area is simply a matter of power, as seems to be suggested by Foucault
(1980, especially Chapter 6). Once again, our exercises of power would
thus seem to be ontologically and rationally prior to the social identities
such exercises construct, and so the relevant contestations would rest on
practical considerations of how one is to respond within or against such
power structures rather than theoretical considerations of how best to
understand the phenomena these power structures produce.
My approach is fundamentally different not by reversing this priority
but by rejecting priority altogether. I understand the communal norms
and values at the heart of social identities to be constituted by interper-
sonal, rational patterns of reactive attitudes, where I understand such
reactive attitudes to be commitments-cum-experiences to/of import,
including especially the import of these communal norms and values. As
experiences, these emotions are responsive to the imports things have,
which is partly a responsiveness to the historical patterns of emotions;
but as commitments, they project forward into the continuation of
those patterns in the future, which patterns constitute that very import.
Such patterns of emotions and import thus emerge together, simulta-
neously and holistically, with neither prior to the other. Because these
patterns of emotional commitments constitutive of import are holistic
and temporally extended, stretching both backward into the past and
forward into the future, our emotions can be the locus of a kind of free-
dom to define what these overall patterns, and hence that import and
our social identities, both are and have been. Creative innovations in
our understandings of a particular social identity can alter not just the
future course of the patterns of emotions these understandings inform
but also what those patterns have been all along, such that we can come
to discover that some emotional experiences we thought were central
to some such pattern in fact always were peripheral and unwarranted,
improperly sensitive to the imports things have, and others we thought
peripheral we may discover to be central.
Rejecting the ontological and rational priority of either import or these
patterns of emotions over the other opens up the possibility that our
social identities can be both socially constructed and objective as suitable
objects of discovery in the ways described above. For, as I have argued,
when it comes to our social identities, the practical and the theoretical are
inextricably linked. On the one hand, our joint theoretical understand-
ings of our social identities, articulated via various concepts and the back-
ground theories within which these concepts are embedded, both inform
and thereby shape our practical emotional commitments to import; these
emotional commitments include especially our commitments both to the
communal norms and values that make up our social identities and to
the resulting form of life of which they are a part. On the other hand,
these practical commitments simultaneously play out in our emotional
experiences of each other’s and our own lives as going well or poorly
(both individually and in relationship with each other), thereby disclosing
evidence for or against those theoretical understandings. Consequently,
the grounds for which we can be held responsible for how we exercise
our epistemic agency concerning social identities, including whether that
exercise involves bad faith, willful ignorance, epistemic injustice, or the
like—such grounds rest on the empirical content of our experiences and
practices and the social identities they constitute. Attaining a successful
equilibrium within and among our theoretical understandings and
communal practices is an empirical achievement that is simultaneously
a matter of constituting and discovering our social identities. Thus, our
emotions, as commitments-cum-experiences to/of import, are centrally
important to this bridging of the theoretical and practical and so to mak-
ing intelligible the potential objectivity of the social construction of our
identities. As a result, our constructings are in fact answerable to the
social identities they construct.
Notes
1. The “point” of games is itself something that is malleable, within empirical
limits, so that we might discover new ways to understand what that point is.
It may turn out that counting blades of grass or solving protein folding prob-
lems (http://fold.it) can be activities that some people engage with in ways
we find relevantly similar to how we generally engage with more paradigm
games, and considering why they do so might lead to a refinement in our
concept of game. Insofar as there are empirical limits here, such a refinement
can be understood as a discovery. This will be important for my discussion of
the contestability of social identities in Section 4.3.
2. Not just any object with a value can be used, however: if we tried using sand,
the world once again would not cooperate.
3. Such distortion can thus give rise to what I call metaphysical injustice: the injus-
tice of not being allowed to be who one in some sense “really” is. Metaphysical
injustice is thus a kind of injustice in addition to the sorts of injustices arising
out of subordination and oppression that Haslanger is focused on, and one can
be subject to metaphysical injustice even if one is a member of the dominant
group and is not thus subordinated or oppressed. Metaphysical injustice might
sound very much like Robin Dembroff’s notion of “ontological oppression”,
but it is distinct. As Dembroff describes it, ontological oppression “occurs
when the social kinds (or the lack thereof) unjustly constrain (or enable) per-
sons’ behaviors, concepts, or affect due to their group membership” (2018,
26). However, for Dembroff the locus of the oppression lies in the constraints
on one’s behaviors or mental states rather than (for metaphysical injustice) in
one’s identity itself, and this is because, as already indicated, Dembroff under-
stands our social constructions to be ontologically prior to the social identities
98 Bennett W. Helm
they construct. This priority leaves Dembroff unable to acknowledge the possi-
bility, central to metaphysical injustice, that what social identity I “really” have
might be different from the one I am constructed as having.
4. Desires and evaluative judgments also fit into this pattern, but I shall ignore
that complication here.
5. See Thomason’s “Alienated Emotions and Self-Knowledge”, this volume, for
further reflections on the role of self-interpretation in knowing oneself.
6. This is in contrast to what Appiah (1994, 126) seems to suggest in saying,
“We do make choices, but we don’t determine the options among which we
choose”. My argument in Section 4.3 attempts to show how we can deter-
mine these options.
7. See also Edward Harcourt, “Self-Knowledge and Others’ Knowledge of
Me”, this volume, for a discussion of the importance of dialog with others
in coming to know oneself. I agree with Harcourt’s central point, and the
importance of dialog with others will come out below in my account of the
contestation of social identities in Section 4.3.3.
8. Note that one might personally value one’s occupying a particular social role,
whether or not that role is a social identity, and one might have personal
values that are contrary to one or more communal values that define one’s
social identity; I shall return to this latter case in Section 4.3.2.
9. Whether such attempted justifications succeed is another question, and I shall
discuss how they can be contested in Section 4.3.
10. It would be better to speak as well of intersecting social identities; for sim-
plicity, however, I shall leave intersectionality out of the picture here.
11. I shall return to this point in Section 4.4. That moral considerations are
important aspects of how things are is something that Haslanger herself
argues for in a different way: by merging Quinean naturalism and semantic
externalism (Haslanger 2005; see also Haslanger 2012, 13–16).
12. Of course this background theory and the underlying concepts themselves
might be contested; I shall return to this complication in Section 4.3.3.
13. For a general discussion of the relation between perception and the emotions,
see (Helm 2015a).
14. As mentioned briefly in Section 4.1.2, being able to achieve this coherence
between one’s self-interpretations and emotions may require freedom of the
heart: exercising control, partly via self-interpretation and judgment, over one’s
emotions and thereby one’s cares and values. Yet doing this requires considera-
ble self-confidence, potentially in the face of on-going and demeaning criticism
from others that may hermeneutically marginalize one (Fricker 2007, sec. 7.2)
and undermine one’s self-trust (Jones 2012). Consequently, attaining such
self-confidence may require support from others in what I call below a “resist-
ant community” (Section 4.3.3), though I cannot discuss this further here. For a
related discussion of the importance of recognition, see Taylor (1994).
15. Note that I distinguish personal shame (a person-focused emotion that is
partly constitutive of personal values) from reactive shame (a reactive atti-
tude focused on a particular community of respect and partly constitutive of
communal values). For details, see Helm (2017a, chap. 7).
16. Given that social identities in general are interlocking, to alter the communal
norms defining what it is to be a man will thereby require additional altera-
tions in the communal norms defining other genders. I shall largely ignore this
complication, though it should not be hard to extrapolate how this would go.
17. Bettcher (2013) offers an alternative but compatible take on “resistant com-
munities” and “resistant meanings”. See also Lugones (2003; Medina 2013).
18. Clearly more needs to be said about how such communal “freedom” can
work. As a first pass, we can point to individual efforts at exercising freedom
of the heart (Helm 1996), strengthened by the mutual support and criticism
that come with the call of the reactive attitudes. I cannot address this in
further detail here.
19. Compare this with my earlier discussion (Section 4.3.1) of competent per-
ceivers “fluent” in the relevant background theory of color. By “fluency in the
practices” I mean that one must be able, partly through an understanding of
the relevant, possibly refined concepts, to glom onto what the practices are
and how and why adherents would respond. This does not require that one
accept or endorse those practices; after all, understanding may bring about
disagreement and emotional resistance.
20. I have criticized the standard distinction between “internal” and “external
reasons” for being excessively individualistic, failing to recognize how our
access to reasons may depend on our interpersonal relationships (Helm
2013). The thought there (in the context of plural agency) and here (in the
context of communities of respect) is that, whereas the categories of internal
and external reasons are commonly thought to be mutually exclusive, one
can have access to the relevant reasons, which apparently makes such rea-
sons “internal”, but where this access can be provided only by and through
others, which apparently makes them be “external” insofar as on one’s own
one is not yet in a position to be able to understand such reasons.
21. Clearly much more needs to be said to flesh this out, though I am unable to
do so here. The basic idea is that the sort of epistemic agency characteristic
of us as persons requires that we be members of a community of respect of
all persons that holds its members responsible to (contestable) standards of
objective truth. See Helm (2017b) for an initial attempt along these lines.
22. Haslanger’s genealogical approach (2005) is especially clear on this point.
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5 Emotion, Self-Knowledge, and
Liberation in Indian Philosophy
Matt MacKenzie
Classical Indian thinkers—philosophers, dramatists, poets, medical

practitioners—developed a range of sophisticated accounts of the
emotions. The aim of this chapter is to introduce readers to the rich
philosophical insights of this tradition and to contribute to a more fully
cross-cultural inquiry into the emotions and self-knowledge. First, the
chapter will survey some influential accounts of the emotions in classical
Indian thought. For instance, in the Nāṭyaśāstra, Bharata posited eight
basic, stable emotions (sthāyi bhāva) that form the affective basis for
his rasa theory of aesthetics. Buddhist thinkers posited basic affective-
hedonic processes (vedanā) as one of the five aggregates (skandha)
that constitute a sentient being. And later Buddhist thinkers developed
sophisticated accounts of emotions such as love (rāga), hate (dveṣa), and
compassion (karuṇā). Second, it will turn to the connections between
emotion and cognition, and the role of emotion in self-knowledge.
Indian philosophers were particularly concerned with the complex
connections between our affective, conative, and cognitive capacities.
Do emotions hinder or facilitate reliable cognition (and under what
conditions)? On one widely held view, human emotions and desires
tend to distort our cognitive capacities. On another, properly directed
emotions such as love, devotion, even disgust had important cogni-
tive value. Are emotions self-revelatory or do they obscure the truth
about self? Are they even states or capacities of a self at all? Here the
reality (or unreality) and nature of the self becomes the central issue
of debate. Third, the chapter will take up the issue of emotion and
spiritual liberation (mokṣa). Are emotions impediments or aids to libera-
tion? Does liberation ultimately entail the transcendence of all emotion?
Classical Indian thinkers argued for both transcendent and immanent
accounts of liberation and the emotions. In the final section, I will draw
together the various threads of interpretation and suggest that there are
three core issues at stake in the Indian discussion: the mode of access
to the emotions, the relation between the emotions and the self, and
the relation between emotions and both immanent and transcendent
accounts of liberation.
DOI: 10.4324/9781003310945-7
104 Matt MacKenzie
5.1 Classical Theories of the Emotions
It is important to point out at the outset of this discussion that there is
in Sanskrit no exact equivalent to the English term “emotion.” Indeed,
even in English the modern term “emotion” has been used to designate a
range of distinct phenomena: passions, hedonic states, affections, senti-
ments, drives, etc. Contemporary philosophers of emotion have typically
restricted the term to affective states with a clear target and an evalu-
ative aspect (see the Introduction to this volume). It should not be sur-
prising, however, that the rich Sanskrit literature does not categorize the
phenomena in quite the same way. In this sense, it is not hermeneutically
innocent to discuss Indian theories of the “emotions.” We find in the
classical and medieval literature broad terms such as bhāva, vedanā, and
vikāra. We find rich and nuanced accounts of phenomena such as love,
grief, pleasure, delight, suffering, fear, and longing. We find rigorous
classifications of affective states or events and their relations to cogni-
tive, conative, and somatic states and processes. And we find discussions
of the role of these states in various ethical, aesthetic, and soteriological
contexts. So, while I will use the term “emotion” here, we should rec-
ognize its origins and limitations in any cross-cultural discussion. That
being said, I agree with Bilimoria and Wenta’s observation that:
It would be hard to deny the important role played by emotions in

the religious and philosophical landscape of India, from the most
remote past to the present. The emotional attitude pervades most—
if not all—intellectual and religious discourses of Indian culture. In
a variety of knowledge traditions, emotions often provide a basis
for the affective unfolding of conscious thought, thereby revealing
its depth and intensity; emotions also constitute the most tangible
and fundamental attitude in humankind’s quest for the sacred and
self-discovery.
(Bilimoria and Wenta 2020, 1)
The tradition of aesthetics, including poetics and dramaturgy, is one of

the most important sources for Indian theories of the emotions. At the
root of this tradition is Bharata’s Nāṭyaśāstra (Treatise on Drama), likely
composed between 500 BCE and 200 CE. Bharata articulates an aes-
thetic theory of rasa or “savoring” in which the aim of the performing
arts is to evoke a refined aesthetic experience (rasa) that involves a trans-
formation or elevation of basic emotions (bhāva), aesthetic judgment,
and a refinement of reflective (self-) consciousness. The distinct aesthetic
domains or fields of rasa include the erotic (śṛṅgāra), the comic (hāsya),
the pathetic or sorrowful (karuṇa), the furious (raudra), the heroic
(vīra), the terrible (bhayānaka), the odious (bībhatsa), and the marvelous
(adbhuta). Later rasa theorists added a ninth, śāntam (“tranquility”).
Emotion, Self-Knowledge, and Liberation in Indian Philosophy 105
According to Bharata, the refined rasas emerge from the coming together
of distinct elements in the aesthetic situation. He writes, “From the com-
bination of excitant determinants (vibhāva), expressive consequents
(anubhāva) and transient feelings (vyabhicāri), the relishable juice (rasa)
is realized (rasa-nisīpattihī)” (NŚ 6.31-32 [Chakrabarti, Ram-Prasad,
and Tan 2016]). These are linked to the ordinary, unrefined emotions
(bhāva) that serve as the basis for the rasas. The eight stable emotions
(sthāyi bhāva) are: rati (love), hāsa (laughter), śoka (grief), krodha (anger),
utsāha (enthusiasm), bhaya (fear), jugupsā (disgust), and vismaya (aston-
ishment). Furthermore, the rasa can only emerge when, in addition to
a skilled performance, there is an appropriately sensitive spectator,
one who “has the heart” (sahṛdaya) to receive the performance. Rasa,
then, emerges from an aesthetic situation characterized by skilled per-
formance, a receptive viewer, and the evocation of a complex suite of
stimulation, somatic response, and both transient and stable emotional
reactions. More specifically, the transformation of stable emotions into
refined aesthetic experience is called bhojakatva vyāpāra, the process
of delectation. The audience is said to “taste” or “chew” the basic emo-
tions expressed by the performer and end their own reactions, thereby
extracting the “flavor” (rasa) of the aesthetic situation. Later commenta-
tors unpack these metaphors in terms of the basic emotions, the mean-
ingful expressions, and empathetic imagination working together to give
rise to an affectively rich aesthetic experience (Panda 2009).
My concern here is the theory of emotions, rather than Indian aesthetics.
With this concern in mind, we can unpack several important elements of
Bharata’s account of the emotions. First, “bhāva” here is understood as a
complex, dynamic, and expressive phenomenon. He remarks, “‘Emotion’
(bhāva) is also so called because it serves to ‘bring into being’ (bhāvayan)
the poet’s inner emotion (bhāva), by means of the four registers of acting:
verbal, physical, psychophysical, and scenic”(NŚ 7.2 [Ghosh 2016, 231]).
Second, Bharata divides the emotions into the eight stable (sthayi) and the
thirty-three transitory (vyabhicāri). The transitory emotions included, for
instance, “repose or withdrawal (nirveda), debility or weakness (glāni),
doubt or apprehensiveness (śaṅkā), jealousy (asūyā), … shame (vrīḍā),
impulsiveness (capalatā), joy (harṣa), agitation (āvega), stupor (jaḍatā),
pride or arrogance (garva), despair (viṣāda), eagerness (autsukya)” (Rao and
Paranjpe 2015, 182). On this view, the stable emotions are also basic and
universal. In this respect, Bharata’s ancient theory of emotion anticipates
contemporary theories that posit a set of basic emotions (Ekman 1999).
For instance, Zinck and Newen (2008) argue that the basic human emo-
tions are fear, anger, sadness, and joy.
Among the vyabhicāri bhāvas are (what we would call) somatic states
or responses (weakness, drowsiness, convulsions, awakening, etc.),
feelings (anxiety, joy, despair, etc.), as well as more complex emotions
(pride, shame, infatuation, depression, doubt, etc.). In this way, the broad
106 Matt MacKenzie
category of bhāva spans the somatic, conative, affective, and cognitive. It
also covers the stable and the transitory, as well as the dispositional and
manifest aspects of emotions. Yet, despite this heterogeneity, Bharata
takes the bhāvas to be both natural and universal. In this sense, his view
is closer to those who take our categories of emotions potentially to
reflect natural kinds (Charland 2002) in contrast to those who are more
skeptical of emotions as natural kinds (Barrett 2006). Moreover, given
its role in the aesthetic theory of the performing arts, we can see that on
Bharata’s account, the emotions are social, contextual, and expressive.
Another interesting aspect of Bharata’s view, according to some later
commentators, is that there can be genuinely shared emotions within the
aesthetic situation (and presumably others). Early theorists were puzzled
by the proper subject or owner of certain emotions among the author,
the actors, and the audience. Later theorists developed an account of the
generalization (sādhāraṇīkaraṇa) of emotions, leading them to hold that
“aesthetic appreciation or rasa is an emotional experience commonly
shared by many individuals; it belongs to a transindividual social reality”
(Rao and Paranjpe 2015, 185).1 This classical work on shared emotions
in the aesthetic context may be relevant to current discussions of shared
affective intentionality, such as Schmid (2013).
Turning from the classical aesthetics of Bharata to the contemplative phi-
losophy of the Buddha, we see again that there is no one term with the same
semantic field as “emotion.” However, in the context of early Buddhism
and Abhidharma, the closest term would be vedanā or “feeling,” which is
used quite extensively in Buddhist writings. As Maria Heim has argued, the
various classification systems found in early Buddhism and Abhidharma
serve hermeneutic, analytic, and therapeutic purposes. She writes, “analy-
sis does not attempt to establish ontological reality, but rather is an open-
ended project of contextualization, classification, and reconfiguration of
experience for contemplative and therapeutic purposes … The canonical
Abhidhamma tradition and Buddhaghosa’s work do not stop at any single
list or set of categories, but rather deploy the categories of analysis to allow
an endlessly ramifying set of classifications with which to contemplate
experience” (Heim, Ram-Prasad, and Tzohar 2021, 89).
On the early2 Buddhist analysis, vedanā is one of the five skandhas
(“bundles” or “aggregates”) in terms of which a sentient being is ana-
lyzed and understood. A sentient being is not an enduring substance nor
a changeless self, but rather a dynamic system of distinct but interwo-
ven elemental events. These are grouped into five bundles: rūpa (body
or form), vedanā (feeling), saṃjñā (perception), saṃskāra (dispositions),
and vijñāna (consciousness). These five skandhas are not to be taken
as independent things but instead are seen as interdependent aspects
of a causally and functionally integrated psycho-physical (nāma-rūpa)
system or process (skandhasantāna: an “aggregate-stream” or “bundle-
continuum”). The life of a sentient being is understood in terms of the
dependent co-arising of these skandhas in on-going interaction with
larger causal flow of reality.
The vedanā-skandha denotes sensory and affective dimensions of the
person and her experience. In this sense, vedanā is a very broad category
in Buddhist thought. It ranges from sensory feelings, to hedonic states,
all the way to the deep equanimity of the trained contemplative. In the
twelve-fold chain of dependent co-arising (pratītyasamutpāda), vedanā
is one link in a chain of interconnected phenomena that constitute the
causal dynamics of saṃsāric experience.3 In these accounts, sensory con-
tact between a person and her environment gives rise to a visual sensa-
tion. The sensation then gives rise to feeling (vedanā) in the sense of a
hedonic valence (pleasant, unpleasant, or neutral) associated with the
sensation. This hedonic valence then conditions the arising of a primi-
tive conative response of craving (or aversion or indifference), and so on.
Elsewhere, in the famous teachings of the “two darts,” we see vedanā
used more broadly. In this context, an individual may feel an unpleasant
bodily (kāyika) pain as the first dart. But in response, he may also feel a
second dart in the form of a higher order emotional reaction to the pain.
On top of the painful sensation, he also “sorrows, grieves, laments,
weeps, beats his breast, and becomes bewildered” (Heim, Ram-Prasad,
and Tzohar 2021, 93). Here both the bodily feeling and the psychological
(cetasika) feeling are forms of vedanā.4
In the Indian tradition, a central motivation for cataloging and ana-
lyzing emotions is soteriological. Traditions such as Buddhism and Yoga
aim to understand the nature of the emotions in order to free one from
suffering and attain some form of spiritual freedom (mokṣa). In this
context, we see an emphasis on emotions (or emotion-laden states) as
consonant or inconsonant with the ultimate soteriological goal. In the
Buddhist tradition, mental states and acts are divided into the whole-
some (kuśala) and the unwholesome (akuśala) and the Buddhist psy-
chological and moral path involves the progressive abandonment of
the unwholesome and the cultivation of the wholesome. Unwholesome
mental states and actions are those characterized by the three poisons
or defilements (kleśas) of desire (rāga), aversion (dveṣa), and delusion
(moha). Wholesome mental actions are free from these defilements and
characterized by their opposites: generosity (dāna), kindness (maitri),
and wisdom (prajñā). In the Buddhist account, the kleśas are psycho-
logically complex. Desire and aversion, for example, have both affective
and motivational aspects: we feel desire and are moved by it. Further,
there is a cognitive dimension to desire in that, as a defilement, it is
conditioned by a false or mistaken view of the self (satkāyadṛṣti). In this
tradition, there is no self and the sense of self, while deeply embedded
in the psyche, is ultimately a delusion. And this core delusion conditions
one’s whole mental life. Thus, desire and aversion are deeply intertwined
with this false view of self. Finally, the defilements have an unpleasant
108 Matt MacKenzie
hedonic valence. To the individual in the grips of the defilements, anger
may seem to feel good, but a more careful and discerning awareness
reveals that anger is in fact deeply unpleasant.
In the Yoga tradition, the soteriological goal is the liberating recogni-
tion of puruṣa (pure awareness) in its pristine and eternal independence
(kaivalya) from prakṛti (the dynamic causal network of nature). The
bound individual is embroiled in the world and falsely identifies with
the body-mind as her true nature. The practice of yoga, then, involves
techniques allowing for direct recognition of one’s true nature as puruṣa
and subsequent liberation from bondage to the world. As in Buddhism,
however, there are deeply entrenched obstacles (kleśas) on the path to
liberation. In the second chapter of the Yoga Sūtras, Patañjali writes:
II.3 The impediments [kleśas] are ignorance, egoity, attachment, aver-

sion, and clinging to life.
II.4 Ignorance is the field [of the other kleśas] … whether they are in
a dormant, weak, attenuated, or active state.
II.5 Ignorance is the notion which mistakes the eternal, pure, joyful
self for the impermanent, impure, painful non-self.
II.6 Egoity (asmitā) is to confuse the seer and the power of seeing as
one self.5
Patañjali holds that asmitā—literally “I-am-ness,” but here having the

sense of egoity or egotism—arises from ignorance and is an impediment
to spiritual development. Ignorance (avidyā) is the primordial confu-
sion that conflates self and non-self, puruṣa and prakṛti. This ignorance
might take gross form in the false identification with external forms,
such as one’s social status, power, or bodily form. However, egoity is
thought to be a much subtler form of ignorance at the very root of one’s
normal sense of self.
In his discussion of the kleśas, after defining ignorance and egoity,
Patañjali goes on to say,
II.7 Attachment stems from [experiences of] happiness.

II.8 Aversion stems from [experiences of] pain.
II.9 Clinging to life affects even the wise; it is an inherent tendency.
II.10 These kleśas are subtle; they are destroyed when [the mind]
dissolves back into its original matrix.
Primordial ignorance is the field (kṣetra) within which the subsequent kleśas
take root and grow. Ignorance gives rise to egoity, the (ultimately false) iden-
tification of the body-mind as self, as the I-am. The emergent ego-self then
plays a central role in the psychological economy of the individual. That
is, egoity orients the individual toward the pursuit of its (felt or perceived)
interests. It is within this egoic framework that the individual is motivated
to pursue pleasure, avoid pain, and survive. Within the framework of
egoity, these are the primary forms of concern. In this sense, the ego is a
normal psychological function. However, note that in the above passage,
the pursuit and experience of pleasure gives rise to attachment (rāga), while
the avoidance or experience of pain gives rise to aversion (dveṣa). Yet, these
are considered maladaptive modes of psychological response. Rāga is a
form of craving and unhealthy attachment to the object of craving. Dveṣa
involves dysfunctional forms of fear, anger, or hatred. Clinging to life
(abhivineśā) involves not just a survival instinct, but also a deeply rooted
fear of mortality. Attachment, aversion, and clinging to life, then, are the
psychological patterns that characterize our egoic mode of being. And,
according to Yoga, these patterns inevitably lead to suffering and spiritual
bondage. That is, insofar as we are driven by ignorance, egotism, attach-
ment, aversion, and clinging to life, we are not free.
As mentioned at the beginning of this section, there is no Sanskrit term
that is exactly cognate with our modern English term “emotion.” Yet, as
one can see, the classical Indian tradition offers a rich understanding of
feelings, hedonic states, felt motivations, felt attitudes, higher order emo-
tional judgments and more. Moreover, Indian thinkers saw emotional
experience as complex, involving somatic, affective, conative, evaluative,
and cognitive dimensions. Broadly speaking, classical Indian thinkers
took emotions to be affective responses (to objects, events, situations, etc.)
that reflect the concerns of the subject. Additionally, emotions typically
involve bodily changes (often including expressive changes) and motiva-
tion to specific behavior. The affective subject is sensitive to the environ-
ment not only in that she can detect certain features of the environment,
of course, but also in that she can be affected or moved by those environ-
mental features. Certain objects, events, or states of affairs have signif-
icance or valence for the subject and evoke an affective response in the
subject. This response can then (re-) orient the subject in relation to the
environment and motivate an appropriate response. The affective subject
is moved and can move in response. Finally, particularly in the therapeutic-
soteriological context, emotions condition and are conditioned by the
subject’s background values, cognitive schemas, and beliefs. Thus, as we
have seen in both Buddhism and Yoga, a misapprehension of the self is
deeply implicated in the emotion-laden defilements (kleśas).6
5.2 Emotions and Self-Knowledge

These rich phenomenological accounts of emotion presuppose fairly sophis-
ticated capacities for self-awareness and, if accurate, self-knowledge. What
is the nature of this self-knowledge and how is it possible?7 Classical Indian
philosophers approached these types of questions through systematic
inquiry into the nature and scope of pramāṇa—valid means of knowledge
(pramā), or in the Buddhist context, the theory of valid cognition. Indian
110 Matt MacKenzie
epistemologists, despite many important differences, generally understood
a pramāṇa as a source or means of knowledge, a knowledge-generating
process (Phillips 2011). The most commonly discussed basic sources are
perception, inference, and testimony, though other sources such as anal-
ogy and memory are also widely discussed. On a fairly standard picture,
an episode of knowledge (pramā) is a veridical cognition (jñāna) that is
produced by a reliable process (pramāṇa). Thus, justification is primarily a
matter of pedigree, that is, of the true cognition having been produced in
the right way. There is also, among many Indian epistemologists, a prag-
matic element to justification in that a cognition’s guiding successful action
counts toward its justification. Finally, it is worth noting that Indian epis-
temologists tend to treat standard episodes of awareness or cognition as
presumptively, though defeasibly, veridical.
In the case of self-knowledge, then, it is important to understand both
the nature of self-awareness and its possible (sources of) justification. And
these two questions are tightly linked because the process by which an
episode of self-awareness is produced is central to its epistemic warrant
as well. Does one come to know one’s emotions through a direct (non-
inferential) form of awareness, a form of self-perception? Or is emotional
self-awareness an inferential process? Is self-awareness a distinct state or
is it built into the very nature of experience? Is self-awareness presump-
tively veridical? Infallible? Presumptively mistaken? These epistemic
questions are closely connected to soteriological questions as well. What
might emotions and emotional self-awareness reveal about the self or
one’s basic nature? Are they fundamentally revelatory or distortive?
Here I will discuss three distinct approaches to these questions,
found in later Buddhism, Nyāya, and Yoga. The later Buddhist account
is associated with the pramāṇavāda (logico-epistemological) thinkers
Dignāga, Dharmakīrti, and their successors.8 I have elsewhere dubbed
their basic model of the conscious mind “dual-aspect reflexivism”
(MacKenzie 2021). On this view, consciousness is by nature self-
luminous (svaprakāśa) or self-presenting, meaning that consciousness
presents itself even as it presents its intentional object. This implies, they
take it, that all awareness9 is (pre-reflective) awareness of awareness. As
Dharmakīrti puts it, “just as an illuminating light is considered to be the
illuminator of itself, because of its nature, just so, awareness is aware
of itself” ((PV 3:329) (Pandeya 1989)). These Buddhist thinkers call
this awareness of awareness “reflexive awareness” (svasaṃvedana) and
argue that it is not a form of voluntary reflection or introspection, but
rather an inherent feature of each moment of consciousness. In contem-
porary terms, it is a form of pre-reflective self-awareness (Zahavi 2020).
Due to this mode of self-awareness, subjects have direct awareness of
certain features of our own mental states, including “the self-awareness
(svasaṃvedana) of desire, anger, ignorance, pleasure, pain, etc.,” (PSV
1.11ab; (Kellner 2010)).
Furthermore, because reflexive awareness (svasaṃvedana) is an inhe
rent feature of each moment of consciousness, providing direct acquaint-
ance with both aspects of experience, these Buddhist thinkers take it to
be the fundamental pramāṇa. It is that mode of awareness without which
we would not be aware of anything else. So, on this account, we have
immediate experience of our own affective states, prior to reflection,
conceptualization, or inference. Buddhist reflexivists, then, are commit-
ted to a form of transparency with regard to reflexive awareness. Yet, we
can be mistaken about the nature of our emotions and the nature of the
self. Indeed, Buddhists insist that we are radically mistaken about both.
Classical Buddhist philosophers were proponents of anātmavāda, “the
view of no-self.” That is, they denied (and vigorously argued against) the
existence of the self. While there are complex psychophysical systems
with a sense of self, there is not—and never has been—any such entity
as a self. The denial of self is crucial to Buddhist soteriology because
the deep-seated but false sense of self leads to a dysfunctional form of
self-grasping (ātmagraha) which is in turn at the root of the defilements.
As Jonathon Gold aptly explains, the defilements “are defensive projec-
tions of the imagined needs of the constructed self: they are self-gratifying
cravings (“desire”), self-protecting fears (“aversion”), and self-deluding
avoidance of harsh realities that might threaten the integrity of the
self-image (“delusion”)” (Gold 2021, 2). So, while all awareness involves
a minimal awareness of awareness, accurate self-knowledge concerning
the nature of the emotions and the self is a different matter. For Buddhist
reflexivists, it is the very nature of consciousness to be self-luminous or
self-presenting, but the complex structures of the mind—concepts, dis-
positions, drives, and the sense of self—are ultimately delusional.
In sharp contrast to the Buddhist reflexivists, Nyāya thinkers reject the
reflexivity of awareness. The very nature of a conscious cognition or epi-
sode of awareness is illumination of that which is other, its intentional
object. Since a first-order cognition is exclusively other-directed, any kind
of self-awareness requires a distinct second-order cognition. According
to Nyāya, our first-order cognitions (vyavasāya) are cognized by a sub-
sequent, higher order cognition (anuvyavasāya) or apperception. In the
typical case of perception, a first-order cognition triggers a second-order
cognition that takes the first-order cognition as its intentional object.
Again, in contrast to the Buddhists, Nyāya is robustly realist about
the self (ātman). On their view, the self is an individual, enduring, uni-
tary, non-physical locus of consciousness and agency. It is the central
organizing principle of cognition and the condition of the possibility of
both world-knowledge and self-knowledge. In the Nyāya-sūtra (1.1.9),
the self is identified as a proper object of cognition (prameya). How is it
known? While apperception is considered subset of perception, Nyāya
does not take the self to be perceptible. That is, the subject can perceive
her own states but does not perceive the self as such. Instead, the self is
112 Matt MacKenzie
known by reliable inference (anumāna) from the characteristic mental
activities of desire, aversion, and the like (Dasti and Phillips 2017, 75).
We have introspective access to various mental activities—including
hedonic and affective activities—that are integrated synchronically and
diachronically. From this, we infer that there is a single enduring subject
or locus of these activities, which is the self (Dasti and Phillips 2017,
80). On the Nyāya view, we have secure (though fallible) apperceptive
knowledge of our emotions, desires, and the like. Like other forms of
perception, introspection is presumptively accurate, though that pre-
sumption can be undermined by further considerations. Additionally,
our introspective knowledge of our psychological states yields inferen-
tial knowledge of a real self because they are qualities or modes of the
self. In this way, self-awareness concerning the emotions and the self is
revelatory rather than distortive.
The philosophical school of Yoga presents a third distinct approach to
these issues. Drawing on the metaphysics of the older Sāṅkhya school,
Yoga philosophy is based on the fundamental ontological distinction
between prakṛti and puruṣa. Prakṛti here refers to material reality in all
its variegated forms. Puruṣa here refers to the most essential conscious,
spiritual self—what most other Hindu schools refer to as ātman. Puruṣa,
as pure awareness, is ontologically independent from prakṛti, includ-
ing the mind. Direct awareness of the distinction between puruṣa and
prakṛti is necessary for liberation.
As Patañjali puts it in the first chapter of the Yoga Sūtras:
I.2 Yoga is the stilling of the modifications of mind.

I.3 When that is accomplished, the seer abides in its own nature.
I.3 Otherwise, there is identification with the modifications [of mind].
Now among the central vṛttis or modifications of the mind are the emo-
tions and other affective states. As discussed in the previous sections,
emotions and affectively laden drives such as attachment and aversion are
among the kleśas or defilements. Moreover, somewhat as in Buddhism,
a deep but ultimately false sense of self or egoity (asmitā) conditions the
psyche, including the emotions. Typical forms of self-awareness are dis-
tortive rather than revelatory in that one mistakenly identifies with the
modifications of mind as if they were aspects of the self. In fact, how-
ever, they are modes of the body-mind and therefore ultimately modes of
prakṛti. The true self, as the “seer” or pure consciousness, is that which
reveals or illuminates experiential objects or contents and is therefore
distinct from any such objects. That is, pure consciousness, as that which
reveals all objects, can never itself be an object. It is the conflation of the
seer with the seen—the pure subject with its inner and outer objects—
that is at the root of suffering in the Yoga tradition. The path, then, is
to develop knowledge of the true self in contrast to both the domain of
experiential objects and the psychological construct of the ego.
5.3 Liberation
As we see from Section 5.2, Indian thinkers developed a number of dis-
tinct accounts of self-knowledge. But we may also raise the question of
the value of self-knowledge. As Quassim Cassam pointedly asks, “What’s
so good about self-knowledge and bad about self-ignorance?” (Cassam
2014, 210). He further distinguishes between what he calls “high road”
and “low road” approaches to the value of self-knowledge. High road
accounts “explain the value of self-knowledge by reference to abstract,
high-sounding ideals, and they regard self-knowledge as necessary for the
achievement of these ideals” (Cassam 2014, 211). In contrast, low road
accounts “are content to explain the value of self-knowledge in pragmatic
or practical terms, by reference to its contribution human well-being”
(Cassam 2014, 212). Buddhism, Yoga, and Nyāya situate both the under-
standing of emotions and self-knowledge more generally within a larger
soteriological project. The ultimate goal is freedom from suffering and
the cyclical spiritual bondage of saṃsāra. In this way, all three traditions
are committed to a high road account of the value of self-knowledge.
While there are practical benefits of self-knowledge, the ultimate justifi-
cation here is in terms of the highest good of spiritual liberation, which
transcends more mundane (laukika) concerns. It then falls to these think-
ers to articulate and defend the connection between worldly well-being
and spiritual liberation, including with regard to self-knowledge.10
In the context of the Hindu schools of Yoga and Nyāya, spiritual
freedom (mukti, mokṣa) is understood as the liberation of the self. For
Nyāya thinkers, this is achieved primarily through correct (philosoph-
ical) understanding. As the Nyāya-sūtra states: “When pain, rebirth,
activity, vice, and wrong understanding have been dispelled in reverse
order, there is final beatitude (apavarga)” (1.1.2 (Dasti and Phillips 2017,
158)). For Yogic thinkers, this is achieved primarily through self-mastery,
leading to accurate self-knowledge of the eternal distinction between
puruṣa and prakṛti. For thinkers in the Buddhist tradition, spiritual
liberation consists in nirvāṇa, the extinguishing or cooling of the fires
of suffering precipitated by a recognition of the impermanence, selfless-
ness, and unsatisfactoriness of all conditioned phenomena. Here nirvāṇa
is not liberation of the self, since there is no self, but rather liberation
from the deep-seated illusion of self.
Within this larger soteriological context, both introspection and the
classification of emotions take on a practical and therapeutic function.
As we’ve seen in the early Buddhist tradition, the analysis of vedanā
involves the discernment and classification of different types of feeling
114 Matt MacKenzie
relative to the larger psychological context and even to the subject’s
mode of life. And the ultimate goal of the analysis of emotions is libera-
tion from suffering. Likewise, in the context of Yoga, the identification
and classification of emotions is linked to the removal of the kleśas and
to the phenomenological distinction between the pure subject and the
various contents of experience. In the context of Nyāya, the emotions
are identified and analyzed in relation to the root ignorance or misun-
derstanding (mithyājñāna) that causes suffering and the perpetuation
of saṃsāra. In each case, then, the primary function of the analysis of
emotions is therapeutic and soteriological.
Furthermore, the emotions can be understood as both impediments
and (possible) aids to liberation. For the Buddhists, emotions can be cat-
egorized as either kuśala (“wholesome”) or akuśala (“unwholesome”)
depending on their overall effects on the quality or purity of mind. An
emotion is unwholesome because it is conditioned by the defilements of
desire, aversion, or delusion and diminishes the purity or quality of mind.
An emotion is wholesome (to the degree that) it is free from the defile-
ments and enhances the purity or quality of mind. Additionally, unwhole-
some states tend to drive unwholesome actions and their negative karmic
fruits, while wholesome actions do the opposite. In this view, there is
a cycle of mutual reinforcement among certain emotions and delusion,
desire, and aversion. Moreover, Buddhist thinkers tend to hold the view
that unwholesome states are painful or unpleasant. In contrast, whole-
some emotions are linked to wisdom, non-attachment, and friendliness
and are generally described as pleasant. So on this account, unwholesome
emotions are impediments to liberation, while wholesome emotions aid
liberation. The liberated arhat is free from unwholesome emotions but
has a rich array of wholesome emotions, which are conditioned by the
four brahmavihāras (“divine abodes”) of friendliness (maitrī), compas-
sion (karuṇā), sympathetic joy (muditā), and equanimity (upekṣā). When
the arhat dies and the five skandhas have come to an end, however, the
enlightened arhat has radically transcended all emotion.
As we have seen, Patañjali defines yoga as the stilling of mental mod-
ifications (vṛttis), including emotions and other affective states. Vṛttis
are classified as either impediments to liberation (kliṣṭa) or conducive
(akliṣṭa) to it. A mental modification is kliṣṭa when it is conditioned
by the kleśas, i.e., ignorance, egoity, desire, aversion, and clinging to
life. A mental modification is akliṣṭa when it is conditioned by wis-
dom, awareness of the true self, non-attachment, and so on. Akliṣṭa
emotions include joy, bliss, friendliness, and other positive emotions.
Thus, while Yoga aims at the stilling of the mind so that the true self
can be discerned, working with positive and negative emotions is inte-
gral to the path. Moreover, the positive, akliṣṭa emotions are character-
istic of the jīvanmukta, the individual who is enlightened while alive.
And, probably influenced by early Buddhism, Patañjali also endorses the
virtues of friendliness, compassion, sympathetic joy, and equanimity as
aspects of the enlightened mind. At death, the jīvanmukta achieves the
radically transcendent state of kaivālya (aloneness or independence), the
final liberation of puruṣa from saṃsāra.
In the case of Nyāya, emotions are states or activities of the embodied
self. Saṃsāra is rooted in ignorance or misunderstanding (mithyājñāna)
and this misunderstanding conditions emotions and attitudes, particu-
larly desire (rāga), aversion (dveṣa), and delusion (moha). These basic
motivations shape the whole range of emotions. For instance, emotions
conditioned by desire (rāga-paksa) include erotic love, selfishness, and
covetousness. Emotions conditioned by aversion (dveṣa-pakṣa) include
anger, jealousy, and resentment. Moreover, emotions are categorized
as good (śubha) or bad (pāpa) primarily in terms of the actions they
tend to motivate. The path to liberation in Nyāya entails the use of
rational inquiry to dispel ignorance and gain knowledge of the self, the
world, the proper means of knowledge, God, and so on. In contrast to
Buddhism and Yoga, Nyāya thinkers do not argue that we are mistaken
about the ontological relation between emotions and the self. Unlike the
Buddhists, they are strong realists about the self and unlike Yoga, they
take mental modifications to be real activities of the self. However, these
activities are possible only when the self is embodied. Final liberation in
Nyāya involves the separation of the self from embodiment and therefore
an end to all emotion.
On these accounts, emotions can both impede and aid spiritual devel-
opment, but ultimately all emotion is transcended. Yet we also find in
Indian thought more robustly immanent accounts of the relationship
between emotion and liberation. In the remainder of this section, I will
take up two such accounts: the Mahāyāna ideal of the bodhisattva and
the Advaita Vedānta and Tantric ideal of the jīvanmukta. In the classic of
Mahāyāna Buddhist ethics and moral psychology, the Bodhicaryāvatāra
(“Guide to the Awakened Life”) (Śāntideva 2008), Śāntideva (8th century
CE) sets out the rigorous path of the bodhisattva, the awakening being.
In this tradition, the bodhisattva strives not to become an arhat, one
who achieves liberation for herself alone, but a Buddha, the highest sote-
riological achievement. This goal is thought to take vast eons of time and
innumerable rebirths. What drives this ambitious spiritual path is bodhi-
citta (the awakening mind), understood here as the deep commitment to
attain Buddhahood for the sake of all sentient beings. Bodhicitta here
is grounded in the union of wisdom (prajñā) and compassion (karuṇā),
each of which has cognitive, conative, and affective aspects.
There are three ways that Śāntideva’s account of the bodhisattva path
involves a more immanent relation to the emotions. First, the practi-
tioner of the bodhisattva path must actively cultivate bodhicitta. And
this involves directly cultivating emotions such as regret at past mis-
deeds and, of special importance, a feeling and attitude of compassion
116 Matt MacKenzie
for the suffering of all sentient beings trapped in saṃsāra, “the prison of
existence” as Śāntideva puts it. Second, in dealing with the defilements
(kleśas,) Śāntideva deploys both destructive and transformative strategies.
That is, he advocates both destroying or extirpating the defilements and
harnessing or transmuting them as motivation for the path (Harris 2017).
In both cases, it is through bodhicitta that one deals with the kleśas, but
the case of transmutation is especially interesting here. Śāntideva advo-
cates deploying the motivating power of craving and aversion, coupled
with wisdom and compassion, in order to transform the unwholesome
states into wholesome ones. Thus, the aspiring bodhisattva may redirect
her sense of aversion from external things toward the tendency to aversion
itself, thereby using the motivating power of aversion in its own undoing.
Likewise, the practitioner may shift from craving pleasure or material
goods to craving the welfare of all sentient beings. In each case, the emo-
tions and related attitudes are not simply destroyed or transcended but
rather transformed into immanent aspects of the bodhisattva’s awaken-
ing mind. Of course, this method can be dangerous. Śāntideva likens it to
safely handling poison. So, the immanent use of emotions must be moti-
vated by compassion and guided by wisdom. Third, Śāntideva deploys
classical Buddhist arguments against the existence of the self in an effort
to undermine egoism and support the radical altruism of bodhicitta. Yet,
having seen through the illusion of a persisting self, he advocates for a
reconstruction of the provisional or conventional self on a new basis
(MacKenzie 2016). Rather than basing one’s sense of self on the kleśas of
delusion, desire, and aversion, the bodhisattva now adopts a sense of self
based on wise compassion. And whereas the earlier sense of self is bound
together by karma, the new sense of self is bound by the compassionate
commitment of bodhicitta (MacKenzie 2022).
Returning to the Hindu traditions, we find an important distinction
between bodiless liberation (videhamukti) and embodied liberation
(jīvanmukti). This distinction goes back to the Upaniṣads, with vide-
hamukti as radical transcendence of embodied existence as the predom-
inant soteriological ideal. However, with the later development of the
Advaita Vedānta school, we see a renewed emphasis on the possibil-
ity of liberation while embodied and embedded in the world. On the
Advaita Vedānta view, bondage and liberation are essentially a matter
of ignorance and knowledge. To attain liberation is to attain knowl-
edge of ātman, the true self and its identity with brahman, the ultimate
ground and nature of being. One can attain this spiritual knowledge
while embodied and so on can be a jīvanmukta.11 In the later Tantric
tradition of Pratyabhijñā, we see an even stronger emphasis on embodied
liberation. Here again, liberation is a matter of spiritual knowledge of
the identity between the true self and the ultimate ground of being. But
in the case of nondual Pratyabhijñā, the world and embodied being are
not seen as mere appearances or illusion, but as the real, dynamic, and
creative expression of the ultimate. In line with their world-affirming
monism, the jīvanmukta here is seen as the creative embodiment of the
bliss and enlightened qualities of the absolute consciousness that is the
sole reality. Therefore, the emotions and other aspects of experience are
not dismissed as metaphysically distinct from the self but as real expres-
sions of it. Here the emotions are transformed by spiritual knowledge
but not radically transcended. In this way, the ideal of the jīvanmukta
offers an immanent account of liberation involving the transformation
of embodied, emotional being rather than the transcendence or isolation
of a separate self or the dissolution of a merely illusory self.
5.4 Conclusion
Classical Indian views of emotion and self-knowledge should be under-
stood in the context of two interrelated aims. The first aim is phenom-
enological and epistemological. It is to gain an accurate account of the
emotions and their role in mental life. This includes developing typol-
ogies of emotions (and other affective states), an account of their rela-
tion to other mental states and processes, and an account of how they
may relate to their objects. Additionally, when it comes to the relation
between emotions and self-knowledge, questions of self and subjectivity
are at the forefront. Are emotions genuine states or expressions of the
self? Or are they misidentified as belonging to the self, either because
they are ontologically distinct from the real self or because the self is not
real? The second aim is soteriological. The classical schools of Indian
philosophy discussed here take liberation as the highest good. And in
this soteriological context, both accurate self-knowledge and appropri-
ate management of the emotions is critical. As we have seen, the emo-
tions can obstruct—and in some cases—facilitate liberation.
Given this overall picture, I think there are three distinct but intersect-
ing issues underlying the views we have considered in this chapter. The
first has to do with the mode of awareness or access to the emotions.
The issue here is whether the basic or immediate awareness of emo-
tional states is built into the states themselves or the awareness arises
from a distinct second-order awareness. In the former case, because con-
sciousness is self-luminous or self-presenting, the (experiential) emotions
are self-intimating. One has a basic awareness of the state just by being
in it. In the latter case, because consciousness is other-luminous even
conscious emotional states are not self-intimating. Being in a conscious
emotional state need not entail that the subject is in any way aware of
the state or being in the state. This type of view can be further divided
into direct and indirect versions. On the direct version, as seen in Nyāya,
the second-order awareness of the emotion is direct and non-inferential,
like an inner perception. On the indirect version, as seen in the
Buddhist philosopher Candrakīrti (Garfield 2006), the awareness arises
118 Matt MacKenzie
as an (implicit) inference based on a sign and a conceptual framework.
Just as one infers that she was bitten by seeing a mark on her skin, so
one infers that she is afraid based on certain bodily and sensory signs.12
In the case of the self-illumination theory, a subject’s awareness of her
own (conscious) emotions is transparent and epistemically secure. Yet,
because this immediate awareness is pre-reflective and non-conceptual,
it does not yield infallible conceptual understanding of the subject’s emo-
tions. In the case of the direct other-illumination theory, the relationship
between the emotional state and the subject’s awareness is causal and
contingent. Here inner perception is considered fallible but epistemically
secure. In the case of the indirect theory, a subject’s grasp of her own
emotional states is less epistemically secure, but more directly tied to an
overall understanding of the mind and its states. Moreover, the indirect
view allows for a symmetry between the modes of awareness by which a
subject knows her own states and those of others.
The second issue has to do with the relation between the emotions and
the subject or self. On the Buddhist view, ultimately there are no selves
or subjects, only a causal flux of interconnected events, both mental and
physical.13 The deep-seated sense that emotions belong to a subject or self
is a cognitive distortion that “perfumes” all other cognitive, affective,
and conative functions of the person. Correcting this distortion is a cen-
tral philosophical and soteriological task for the Buddhists. So, emotions
don’t belong to a self, but they do belong to the causally and functionally
integrated stream of events (skandha-santāna) that we habitually label a
self. And here we see that, on the Buddhist analysis, emotions, feelings,
and other affective states are pervasive aspects of mental life. In contrast
to Buddhist anātmavāda, the Hindu schools discussed all affirm the
existence of a persisting self. And yet they sharply disagree on the basic
relationship between emotions and the self. For Nyāya, the emotions
are states of the self and therefore express the nature of the self, at least
when it is embodied. Further, in the typical case, emotional states elicit
a higher order inner perception (an anuvyavasāya) that yields direct,
non-inferential awareness of the emotions. And since these are states of
the self, awareness of emotions is a form of self-awareness—one is aware
of one’s feelings as one’s own. A person’s emotions may be distorted or
dysfunctional in any number of ways, but they are not ontologically
distinct from the self. In the Yoga and Advaita Vedānta schools, how-
ever, emotions are ontologically distinct from the self. They are, in fact,
states of the distinct body-mind complex and are empirical objects of
the transcendental consciousness that is the true self. The root distortion
affecting the emotions is identification of emotions as states of the self.
Here we see three quite distinct models of subjectivity. The Buddhists
deploy a type of constructivist anti-realism about subjects. As Jonardon
Ganeri puts it, “There is nothing that owns mental tropes [dharmas]
and they don’t aggregate to form subjects (it is the fundamental wrong
move to think that any of the mental items, or the collective stream, is
a subject)” (Ganeri 2012, 42). There are complex causal and functional
connections between ephemeral mental events or tropes, but persisting
subjects are not ultimately real. The Naiyāyikas deploy a realist, sub-
stantialist view of the self as subject. Here emotional states are adjectival
on the subject, which is deeply, if contingently, embodied. Emotions,
then, are real features of the world, playing an important role in the cog-
nitive, affective, and conative commerce between persons and the world.
Finally, the Yogins and Advaita Vedāntins deploy a radically transcen-
dental account of subjects. The true self is that consciousness which is
both the condition of the possibility of all awareness of objects and that
which can never itself become an object. Indeed, it is precisely because
emotions can be inner empirical objects of awareness, that they are ulti-
mately distinct from the transcendental subject.
The third issue has to do with the relation between the emotions and
liberation. One might think that those with the most radically transcend-
ent (or transcendental) accounts of the relation between the subject and
the emotions would also endorse the most transcendent view of libera-
tion. Yet, the issues are messier and more complex than that. In Nyāya,
we have seen a strong connection between the substantial self and its
emotional states, as well as strong realism about the world and ourselves
in it. However, Nyāya sees liberation as a form of spiritual and metaphys-
ical independence which transcends our causal, cognitive, and affective
connections to the world. The Naiyāyikas, therefore, have an imma-
nent account of emotions, self, and self-knowledge, but a transcendent
account of liberation. In Advaita Vedānta and Yoga, we see a sharp dis-
tinction between subject and emotions. Emotions are states of the body-
mind complex and are metaphysically distinct from the subject as pure
awareness. And this phenomenological and conceptual confusion of the
subject with its objects is at the root of spiritual bondage. Yet despite the
radical transcendence of the self, both traditions affirm the possibility
of embodied, living liberation. In the case of Advaita Vedānta, this is
possible because (on some views) liberation results from dispelling igno-
rance and attaining direct spiritual knowledge (jñāna). This allows one
to realize that both the body-mind and the world are a mere appearance
and be liberated, while still undergoing those appearances (of embodied
life). In the case of Yoga, liberating insight into the true self comes from
self-mastery and the stilling of mental modifications. This allows one to
recognize the fundamental difference between the self and the transfor-
mations of nature without leaving behind the body-mind complex. In
both cases, we have a transcendent account of relation between self and
emotion and an immanent account of liberation. Finally, we see strongly
immanent views of emotion and liberation in both Mahāyāna Buddhism
and Pratyabhijñā. For one on the bodhisattva path, as articulated by
Śāntideva, the emotions can both impede and facilitate awakening.
120 Matt MacKenzie
Śāntideva deploys a transformative method of dealing with emotions,
turning negative emotions against themselves and turning positive emo-
tions into motivation to pursue the path of radical compassion. Indeed,
he argues that wisdom and compassion, rather than ignorance and the
defilements, can become the driving force of one’s embodied existence.
Furthermore, the bodhisattva’s liberation transcends the defilements and
all conceptual reification but remains in the world, committed to the lib-
eration of all beings. In the world-affirming monism of Pratyabhijñā, the
emotions are the dynamic and creative expression of the self. Through
liberating recognition (pratyabhijñā) of the true nature of self, the emo-
tions and indeed the whole complex of embodied subjectivity become
the immanent expression of liberation itself.
Notes
1. Important recent work on emotions and rasa theory include Heim, Ram-
Prasad, and Tzohar (2021), Chakrabarti, Ram-Prasad, and Tan (2016), and
Pollock (2018).
2. In this section, I will use the term “Buddhist” to refer to the early Pāli Bud-
dhist and Abhidharma views.
3. There are various versions of the twelve-fold chain, but the following is rep-
resentative: “In dependence on the eye and forms, eye-consciousness arises.
The meeting of the three is contact. With contact as condition, feeling [comes
to be]; with feeling as condition, craving; with craving as condition, clinging;
with clinging as condition, existence; with existence as condition, birth; with
birth as condition, aging-and-death, sorrow, lamentation, pain, dejection,
and despair come to be” (Bodhi 2005, 358).
4. In the Bahuvedanīyasuttaṃ (“The Many Types of Feeling Sutta”), we see a
comprehensive typology of feeling ranging from two to one hundred eight,
ranging from bodily sensations to feelings associated with the global charac-
ter of one’s emotional life as affected by one’s background values, commit-
ments, and lifestyle.
5. See Edwin Bryant (2009) for the Sanskrit text, translation, and detailed
commentary.
6. Of course, the Buddhists and Yogins fundamentally disagree about the very
existence of the self. But they agree that a false sense of self is at the root of
suffering and spiritual bondage.
7. Discussions of self-knowledge in this context typically concern either knowledge
of one’s occurrent mental states or knowledge of one’s nature as a subject. This
is in contrast to the type of self-knowledge concerning oneself as a person (Bor-
tolan this volume) or of one’s existential situation (Gómez Ramos this volume).
8. ‘Pramāṇavāda’ here refers to a broad approach to philosophy focusing on
logical, linguistic, and epistemological issues that developed from about the
6th century CE onward. The roots of this approach can be found in earlier
Nyāya and Buddhist thinkers and texts.
9. Here I am using awareness and consciousness interchangeably.
10. One common approach to this question is a form of gradualism. The practi-
tioner of a particular path to liberation may embark on the path in order to
improve her worldly well-being but is subsequently transformed by the path.
She then comes to new self-understanding and a fundamental reevaluation of
her desires, values, identity, and so forth.
11. Of course, the liberating knowledge here is that self has never been embodied
and that body and world are a mere appearance of the nondual brahman.
12. As Jay Garfield (2006) has pointed out, there are similarities between Can-
drakīrti’s view and some contemporary work in theory of mind. In both
views, access to one’s mental life (at this level at least) is mediated through a
conceptual framework, a theory of mind.
13. And, on one mainstream Buddhist view, these events are just the occurrence
of simple, causally efficacious tropes.
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Part II
The Emotions, Self-Knowledge,

and Self-Ignorance
6 Good Enough to Be Myself?
The Fraught Relationship between
Self-Esteem and Self-Knowledge
Anna Bortolan
6.1 Introduction
The aim of this chapter is to explore the way in which self-esteem and
self-knowledge are connected.
Various accounts of self-esteem in psychology and philosophy high-
light the existence of a relationship between the two, relationship which
they tend to conceive as having a specific directionality. More precisely,
self-esteem is often portrayed in a way that suggests that it is dependent
on, or it is a function of, self-knowledge. In other terms, the knowledge
that we have of ourselves—in particular, our self-concept—would shape
our self-esteem. Frequently, these accounts conceive of self-esteem as a
cognitive phenomenon, but in some cases feelings are also recognized as
being central to self-esteem (e.g. Keshen 2017).
Drawing on a phenomenological characterization of self-esteem I
developed in my previous work (Bortolan 2018, 2020), in this chapter
I endeavor to investigate the other direction, so to speak, of the rela-
tionship between self-esteem and self-knowledge, aiming to unearth the
impact that self-esteem can have on the knowledge we have of ourselves.
In particular, I will argue that, due to being a background affective
orientation with a “pre-intentional” (Ratcliffe 2010) structure, self-
esteem has the ability to constrain the range of mental states concerning
our own self that we can entertain. In virtue of this, self-esteem exerts
an influence on the development and endorsement of thoughts, emotions,
and desires that concern aspects of our identity as persons, thus shaping
our self-concept.
This has significant epistemic implications, in so far as self-esteem
can lead us to develop or maintain false beliefs about ourselves. In other
terms, our self-concept tends to be consonant with our level of self-
esteem, and the features of the self that are incompatible with our self-
esteem are those that we struggle to gain knowledge of. Self-esteem that
is very low or very high, I will claim, can hinder self-knowledge.1
In the chapter, I will illustrate and support these points through the
consideration of two examples. First, I will consider the experience of the
DOI: 10.4324/9781003310945-9
126 Anna Bortolan
impostor syndrome or “impostor phenomenon” (Clance and Imes
1978). I will suggest that this is an experience that, at least in certain
cases, is marked by the presence of low self-esteem, and I will show
how this can drive the endorsement of a self-concept containing negative
self-evaluations that are false and unwarranted.
I will then move to consider the experience of pathological narcissism,
in particular what is designated through the diagnostic label of “nar-
cissistic personality disorder” (American Psychiatric Association 2022).
This form of narcissism has been associated with various alterations of
self-knowledge, for example unrealistic and incorrect beliefs concerning
one’s abilities and potential. In line with certain parts of the existing liter-
ature, I will suggest that this type of narcissism can be accompanied by the
experience of unusually high self-esteem, suggesting that this is the driver
of the distortions of self-knowledge that can mark this predicament.
6.2 Some Conceptions of Self-Esteem

and Self-Knowledge
In the Dictionary of Psychology published by the American Psychological
Association, self-esteem is described as follows:
the degree to which the qualities and characteristics contained in

one’s self-concept are perceived to be positive. It reflects a person’s
physical self-image, view of his or her accomplishments and capa-
bilities, and values and perceived success in living up to them, as
well as the ways in which others view and respond to that person.
The more positive the cumulative perception of these qualities and
characteristics, the higher one’s self-esteem. [...]
(VandenBos 2015, 955)
This definition suggests that self-esteem results from the assessment

of one’s self-concept, which we can understand as the set of physical,
psychological, and personal features that one ascribes to oneself. My
self-concept encompasses the characteristics that I take to be true of
myself—for example that I have dark hair, I am generally impatient, and
I believe in the value of accessible education—and my self-esteem is the
product of the evaluation of these characteristics. The more positive the
evaluation, the higher the self-esteem.
Similar characterizations of self-esteem are present in the philosophi-
cal literature. For example, Rawls, in A Theory of Justice, defines self-re-
spect and self-esteem (without distinguishing between them) as follows:
We may define self-respect (or self-esteem) as having two aspects.

First of all, as we noted earlier (§29), it includes a person’s sense
of his own value, his secure conviction that his conception of his
good, his plan of life, is worth carrying out. And second, self-respect
Good Enough to Be Myself? 127
implies a confidence in one’s ability, so far as it is within one’s power,
to fulfill one’s intentions. When we feel that our plans are of little
value, we cannot pursue them with pleasure or take delight in their
execution. Nor plagued by failure and self-doubt can we continue in
our endeavors.
(Rawls 1999, 386)
As observed by Deigh (1983, 226), Rawls’ account links self-esteem with

“what one makes of oneself or does with one’s life”, and, as such, being
an agent who can make certain choices and perform certain actions is a
pre-condition of self-esteem. In order to have self-esteem, in other terms,
one needs to be able to have agency or authorship over one’s life. Such
a life will have a “direction”, namely there will be “aims and ideals”
toward the realization of which it is geared, and, as an aspect of this,
one needs to have values that inform their aims and ideals (Deigh 1983,
227–228). Furthermore, in order to have self-esteem, one has to believe
that one has the capacity to realize their plan of life. So, the conviction
that one is capable of achieving their aims and ideals is another pre-req-
uisite for self-esteem (Ibid, 229).
In addition to these aspects, Rawls also emphasizes that one of the
conditions of self-esteem is “finding our person and deeds appreciated
and confirmed by others who are likewise esteemed and their association
enjoyed” (1999, 386), thus stressing that one’s self-evaluation(s) need to
be sustained by consistent evaluations on the part of other people.
This emphasis on the role of interpersonal experience is shared also
by some psychological accounts. Leary et al. (1995), for instance, have
defended the “sociometer hypothesis”, according to which self-esteem is
an “interpersonal monitor”, that measures how positively we are treated
and regarded by other people. In philosophy too, various authors have
defended the idea that self-esteem, or some of its forms, is essentially
rooted in social dynamics (e.g. Honneth 1992; Salice 2020).
Rawls’ characterization of self-esteem draws attention to how self-es-
teem is related to various aspects of self-knowledge. In particular, within
this perspective, self-esteem appears to depend on what we know about
our life plans, our values, and our ability to live up to them, as well as
our awareness of how we are regarded by others within the communities
of which we are part.
At this point, and before I progress further, it is important to make
explicit the notion of self-knowledge that is my focus in this chapter. Here
I am not concerned with debates regarding the knowledge one has of their
occurrent mental states, and what properties (e.g. immunity to error) such
knowledge might have. Rather, my interest is in the knowledge of the self
as a person, namely the knowledge we have of various aspects of our
personal identity, understood as character, or “characterization” iden-
tity (Schechtman 1996). In other terms, the form of self-knowledge I am
128 Anna Bortolan
concerned with is the knowledge we have of “who” we are as persons,
that is the aspects that make us individuals with distinct histories and
personalities.2 I take this form of self-knowledge to include both factual
beliefs (e.g. the belief that one is 160 cm tall, or that they have been
awarded a degree in 2016) and evaluative beliefs (e.g. the belief that one’s
way of walking is elegant, or that they are a courageous person).
Rawls’ conception of self-esteem has been criticized by Deigh for fail-
ing to consider some of the sources of one’s self-esteem. Deigh (1983)
indeed argues that one’s self-esteem is not essentially dependent on the
endorsement of certain aims or ideals, and on the conviction that one
is capable of living up to them. He challenges the idea that our sense of
worth is necessarily dependent on what we do as the “authors” of our
lives. Instead, Deigh highlights that one’s sense of self-worth may be
anchored in one’s status as a member of a particular social group (e.g.
class or culture) (1983, 240), or it may be based on some features that
are common to human beings as such (e.g. being rational) (Ibid, 241). In
both cases, and contrary to Rawls’ account, one’s self-esteem depends
on features that do not have to do with the choices and actions that one
undertakes as the author of one’s life plan.
However, the dependency of self-esteem on self-knowledge seems to
be underscored also by Deigh’s own characterization. Indeed, also from
this perspective, it is in virtue of knowing certain things about myself
that I can have a certain level of self-esteem: it is still awareness of fea-
tures of myself—my social status, or my status as a human being more
broadly—that feed into my sense of self-worth.
This idea seems to underscore also Gabriele Taylor’s account of self-es-
teem (1985). According to her, “the person who has self-esteem takes a
favourable view of himself, while he who lacks it will think of himself
in unfavourable terms: he is not worth much” (1985, 77–78). The per-
son who has self-esteem, therefore, thinks of themselves as worthy, and
arguably this is rooted in certain beliefs the person has about themselves.
Taylor remarks that self-esteem is connected to the emotion of pride
(1985, 78), as occasions for pride are occasions for increase in one’s
self-esteem. In order to feel pride, we need to conceive of ourselves as
having certain features, or to be in a particular relationship to something
or someone who has those features (cf. Taylor 1985, 17ff.), so knowing
which features can be ascribed, either directly or indirectly, to oneself,
seems to be necessary to both pride and self-esteem.
Overall, these accounts appear to us to be very intuitive: it strikes us
as plausible that our sense of self-worth stems from knowledge of key
aspects of our identity: our values, cares, and concerns; our status and the
way in which we are regarded by others; our abilities and achievements.
In addition, one of the implications of this approach is that changes
to our self-concept will result in changes to our self-esteem, and this
also seems convincing. It is indeed common to experience fluctuations
to one’s sense of self-worth—at least in the context of major life events,
such as getting a job and being awarded an academic grant—and it
makes sense to explain these fluctuations as resulting from getting to
know new things about oneself.
I do not wish to deny the plausibility of this account: in fact, in a
number of cases, what we know about ourselves shapes our experience
of being worthy or unworthy to different degrees. However, I want to
suggest that self-knowledge itself is in the first place modulated by the
experience of self-esteem. More specifically, I claim that the experience
of extremely high or extremely low self-esteem tends to limit the range
of features that can be incorporated into our self-concept, allowing only
for forms of self-knowledge that are consonant with one’s pre-existing
sense of self-worth.
6.3 Self-Esteem as a Background Affective Orientation

In this section, I will outline the alternative conception of self-esteem
I have defended. Before doing so, however, it is helpful to clarify how
such a conception relates to some of the distinctions concerning different
types of self-esteem which have been made in the literature.
One of these distinctions is the one between “trait”, or “enduring”
self-esteem, on the one hand, and “state”, or “episodic” self-esteem on
the other, where the former refers to a stable, long-lasting sense of one’s
worth, and the latter designates an “acute, short lived” experience of it
(Salice 2020, 194).
Another distinction that has been made in this regard is the one
between “core” and “situational” self-esteem (e.g. Govier 1993), with
the former indicating a global experience of the self as worthy (i.e. self-es-
teem as esteem of the self as a whole), and the latter labeling a form of
self-esteem that is relative to particular circumstances or contexts.
Furthermore, in the psychological literature, a difference is also
drawn between “explicit” and “implicit” self-esteem (e.g. Zeigler-Hill
and Jordan 2010), where the former indicates a reflective and conscious
evaluation of oneself, and the latter an automatic and subconscious
self-evaluation.
The experience of self-esteem that is my focus in this chapter is akin
to what has been referred to as “trait” and “core” self-esteem, namely
a sense of self-worth that tends to last over time and to convey a global
evaluation of the self. However, it is not implausible to claim that there
can be forms of “trait” or “enduring” self-esteem that are “situational”
(e.g. I can have a long-lasting sense of self-worth connected to a particular
domain of experience or activity, for instance feeling worthy as a partner,
as a friend, and an academic). My account of self-esteem, I believe, can
be applied also to these forms of experience (although I think that, over
time, experiences of self-worth that are domain-specific tend to lose
130 Anna Bortolan
their boundaries and to “merge” into a more general experience of one-
self as worthy or unworthy to various degrees). I also think that expe-
riences associated with “episodic” or “state” self-esteem would be best
conceived as forms of self-confidence rather than self-esteem proper, but
I will not be able to argue for it in this chapter. For the purpose of this
analysis, it is sufficient to say that my account does not aim to cover
cases of episodic or state self-esteem.3
Finally, the form of self-esteem I am investigating cuts across the
distinction between explicit and implicit self-esteem, in so far as what
I explore is not a cognitive evaluation of the self that results from reflec-
tion, but it is not an unconscious phenomenon either. Indeed, I endorse a
view of self-esteem as a conscious, pre-reflective, and affective experience.
This view has been defended in my previous work (Bortolan 2018,
2020), where I have suggested that self-esteem should be conceived as a
background affective orientation, and, in particular, as an “existential
feeling”. This is a concept that has been coined by philosopher Matthew
Ratcliffe (2005, 2008) and is a development of the notion of “mood” as
conceived within the classical phenomenological tradition, and in par-
ticular in the work of Martin Heidegger (1962).
Moods and existential feelings are a particular kind of affective expe-
rience. First of all, they are conscious or felt states: “it is like something”
to undergo them, even if we are often peripherally, rather than acutely,
aware of them.
Ratcliffe provides a specific account of the phenomenology of existential
feelings, claiming that they are a particular set of bodily feelings (2005,
46): existential feelings are felt in the body, but they are not just feelings
of the body. Indeed, for Ratcliffe, existential feelings typically do not have
an intentional structure; they are not directed at any particular object in
the world. Rather, they are “ways of finding oneself in the world” (2005).
Examples of existential feelings are affects like the sense of “reality”
or “unreality”, the feeling of being “in control” or “overwhelmed”, or
the sense of being “at one with” or detached from the world (2005, 45).
These are feelings that are not directed at anything in particular but
rather shape our way of relating to the plurality of things, people, or
events that we may encounter. Existential feelings determine the kinds
of “significance” or “mattering” that things can have for us (Ratcliffe
2010). This is the case because they are experiences of our “relationship
with the world”, and it is in the context of such relationship that events,
people, and states of affairs can appear to have certain qualities, or to be
salient in certain ways. As Ratcliffe explains (2005, 45):
Whenever one has a specific experience of oneself, another person

or an inanimate object being a certain way, the experience has, as
a background, a more general sense of one’s relationship with the
world. This relationship does not simply consist in an experience
of being an entity that occupies a spatial and temporal location,
alongside a host of other entities. Ways of finding oneself in a world
are presupposed spaces of experiential possibility, which shape the
various ways in which things can be experienced. For example, if
one’s sense of the world is tainted by a “feeling of unreality”, this
will affect how all objects of perception appear. They are distant,
removed, not quite “there”.
Existential feelings modulate the “possibility space” we inhabit, that is

they shape what it is possible for us to experience (Ratcliffe 2005), an idea
which is linked to the attribution to existential feelings of a “pre-inten-
tional” character, by which Ratcliffe means that “they determine what
kinds of intentional state it is possible to have” (Ratcliffe 2010, 604).
I previously suggested that self-esteem displays the key features of
existential feelings (Bortolan 2018, 2020). This is the case because
self-esteem is a felt state that shapes and constrains our experience of
self, others, and the world. Due to limits of space, I will not be able to
argue in favor of this account in this chapter; however, by way of a clar-
ification, it is helpful to outline some of the ideas at the core of my view.
Self-esteem has a distinct phenomenology (Bortolan 2018, 57–59;
2020, 359–360)—it feels like something to have low or high self-
esteem—and this cannot be exhaustively accounted for by attributing to
self-esteem a merely dispositional nature. Certainly self-esteem disposes
us to think and feel in certain ways, but there is also an occurrent dimen-
sion to it. While we only rarely focus our attention on this, our sense of
self-worth always accompanies us.
This experience is valenced in its own right—it feels bad to have low
self-esteem, and good to have high self-esteem4 —but part of the phenom-
enology of self-esteem manifests in the way in which the world appears
to us. When we feel unworthy, our perception of events and situations is
shrouded by this feeling: ordinary tasks may appear unusually difficult
or even impossible to perform, and other people may seem particularly
critical, threatening, or even hostile. On the other hand, when we are
feeling confident in our own value, also challenging circumstances can
appear to be manageable or even exciting.
More broadly, I have argued that self-esteem displays the pre-
intentional character that Ratcliffe attributes to existential feelings:
while it is not itself directed to any particular intentional object, it con-
strains the ways in which we relate to the things, people, and events that
we encounter (Bortolan 2018; 2020).
This means that self-esteem impacts on the range of intentional states—
cognitive, affective, and volitional—that we can entertain: it facilitates
the experience of mental states that are consonant with the global
self-evaluation at the core of one’s self-esteem, while it makes it difficult
to undergo mental states that are in tension with that self-assessment.
132 Anna Bortolan
While this is a feature that can be attributed to self-esteem independently
of its level (i.e. whether it is low or high), these dynamics become more
impactful (and visible) at the extreme ends of the spectrum, namely when
self-esteem is particularly low and when it is particularly high.
It seems plausible that most people typically feel valuable to a certain
extent, namely that they feel worthy without feeling absolutely worthy: we
feel that we have value, while retaining a sense that there could still be more
value to have. Relatedly, we also feel that our worthiness is not unshakeable,
and is, to a degree at least, contingent: even if we do not actively dwell on
this eventuality, being less worthy is still experienced as possible for us.
This level of self-esteem is compatible with a wide range of positive
and negative evaluations concerning characteristics of the self and its
behavior. If my experience of the world is anchored in a sense of self as
valuable but not perfect, thoughts, emotions, or desires that convey an
image of myself as, for example, mistaken, lacking, or culpable in some
ways are not ruled out by my self-esteem. In these cases, if negative fea-
tures become predominant in my self-concept over time, they may feed
back into my self-esteem, lowering it. Similarly, when self-esteem is at
neither extreme of the spectrum and the positive components of one’s
self-concept increase, the felt sense of one’s worth may be strengthened.
However, when the experience of the world is structured around a
sense of self as completely worthless, the possibility space that the person
inhabits is narrower. In this case, an experience of oneself as deprived
of value would make it difficult, if not impossible, to entertain a wide
range of positive self-evaluations. When the sense of self-worth is very
minimal or absent, thoughts, emotions, and desires that clash with such
a radically negative self-assessment might be precluded. For example,
it may be very hard to believe that one has done something good, to be
proud of oneself, or to aspire to succeed in certain endeavors.
Similarly, at the other end of the spectrum, if one’s experience of the
world was rooted in a sense of oneself as uniquely and unshakeably
worthy, the experiential possibilities open to that person would also be
distinctly limited. In this case, what would be severely constrained is
the ability to entertain mental states that are in potential tension with
the positive self-assessment at the core of one’s self-esteem. For instance,
it would be difficult to think of oneself as having certain character flaws,
to feel emotions like shame or guilt, or to wish that one could improve
certain characteristics or performances.
6.4 Self-Knowledge and Self-Esteem in the Impostor Syndrome

Talk of and research concerning the “impostor phenomenon”—also
known as impostor syndrome—originated in the 1970s in the work
of Pauline Clance and Suzanne Imes (1978), who identified a set of
experiences and behaviors common among a group of high-achieving
women they worked with. Despite being successful according to recog-
nized standards in academic and professional contexts, these women
did not “experience an internal sense of success” and tended to deny
or underplay their achievements (Clance and Imes 1978, 241). In fact,
Clance and Imes observed how the women believed that they were not
as capable or talented as suggested by evidence concerning their achieve-
ments, and tended to interpret or explain such achievements in par-
ticular ways. For example, they would conceive of their success as the
product of luck or errors, rather than viewing it as the product of their
own ability. As Clance and Imes reported (1978, 241):
Women professionals in our sample feel overevaluated by col-

leagues and administrators. One woman professor said, “I’m not
good enough to be on the faculty here. Some mistake was made
in the selection process.” Another, the chairperson of her depart-
ment, said, “Obviously I’m in this position because my abilities have
been overestimated.” Another woman with two master’s degrees, a
Ph.D., and numerous publications to her credit considered herself
unqualified to teach remedial college classes in her field.
Clance and Imes also pointed out how the experience of being an
impostor is also typically accompanied by the expectation or fear that
others will recognize that one is indeed a fraud. As they illustrate (1978,
241–242):
One woman stated, “I was convinced that I would be discovered

as a phony when I took my comprehensive doctoral examination.
I thought the final test had come. In one way, I was somewhat
relieved at this prospect because the pretense would finally be over.
I was shocked when my chairman told me that my answers were
excellent and that my paper was one of the best he had seen in his
entire career”.
In her research on the impostor syndrome, Katherine Hawley (2019)

identifies “impostor attitudes” of different kinds. She observes that
some of these attitudes may revolve around a past or future “perfor-
mance or project” whose value is assessed negatively, while others may
question one’s “skill, competence, or talent” (205). However, Hawley
recognizes that these attitudes are typically intertwined, and this
seems to be in line with the illustration of the impostor phenomenon
provided by Clance and Imes. Indeed, in these cases, while impostor
experiences may revolve around specific achievements—e.g. passing an
examination or getting a job—integral to these dynamics is the view
134 Anna Bortolan
that those achievements cannot have resulted from one’s own excellence.
As Hawley explains (2019, 205–206):
Someone’s belief that she lacks talent may explain why she refuses to
infer from her past success to the prospect of future success: the past
success must have been a fluke. And belief in one’s own lack of talent
may prompt doubt about past success. Conversely, of course, doubt-
ing one’s concrete achievements makes it easy to doubt whether one
has any talent. So most people who are prone to impostor think-
ing will have some combination of negative past-directed, future-
directed, and competence-directed attitudes.
Based on these characterizations, we can observe how the impostor syn-
drome appears to involve a disruption of self-knowledge, in so far as,
in this context, one’ self-concept may be distorted in various ways. For
example, one may fail to ascribe to themselves traits that they possess
(e.g. intelligence) or may hold incorrect views about main events and
circumstances in their life (e.g. that obtaining a degree was due to a
mistake or to being lucky).
As highlighted by Hawley (2019), the impostor phenomenon is char-
acterized by the presence of certain “doxastic states”: these are indeed
cases in which someone is “factually mistaken” in their beliefs regard-
ing certain matters, i.e. the quality of what they do and/or the evalua-
tion of their talent, competence, or skill.
Hawley also argues that these beliefs can be either justified or unjus-
tified, given the evidence that is available to the subject, and develops an
exploration of the former set of cases. She draws attention to how the
“external markers of success” (2019, 212) that provide evidence for our
self-assessments are not exhausted by the formal recognition conveyed
by factors such as titles, grades, or promotions. On the contrary, there
are a number of informal, verbal, and non-verbal signs that we con-
stantly need to interpret and that convey an evaluation of what we do
and of our abilities. In some circumstances, such informal evaluations
may be in conflict with, and override, the formal recognition that we
receive. This may be the case, for instance, for women who are success-
ful in professional environments and roles that have traditionally been
dominated by men, and who may experience a range of more or less
subtle aggressions, criticisms, and belittlements that erode or undermine
the formal recognitions of competence and talent they receive.
In line with what is suggested by Hawley, it seems plausible that, at
least in some circumstances, the false beliefs that one holds about oneself
are justified by the overall evidence that is available to them. Hawley com-
prises these cases under what she labels a “broad” concept of impostor
syndrome (2019, 218ff.) and maintains that there are various reasons why
we may want to claim that these are genuine cases of impostor syndrome,
that is that impostor syndrome can occur both when the false beliefs one
holds about oneself are justified and when they are unjustified.
Independently of whether a broad conception of impostor syndrome
is defensible, my focus is on cases in which the false beliefs that are
associated with one’s impostor feelings are overall not justified given the
evidence that is available to the subject.
Drawing on my previous work on the topic (Bortolan 2018), I sug-
gest that the dynamics that characterize this form of impostor syndrome
can be best understood in light of an account of self-esteem as a back-
ground affective orientation. More specifically, I wish to argue that the
disruptions of self-knowledge displayed by those who feel like imposters
are rooted in the constraining role played by existential feelings of low
self-esteem.
Empirical research has shown the existence of a correlation between
low self-esteem and the impostor phenomenon (Chrisman et al. 1995;
Naser et al. 2022), where self-esteem is often measured through the
Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale, which includes various items related to its
felt dimension. For example, among the statements that constitute the
scale are the following: “I feel that I have a number of good qualities”,
“I feel I do not have much to be proud of”, and “I feel that I am a person
of worth, at least on an equal plane with others” (Rosenberg 1965).
My suggestion is that, due to its pre-intentional character, the low
self-esteem experienced by those who feel like impostors significantly
constrains the range of self-directed cognitive and affective states that the
person can undergo (Bortolan 2018). More specifically, in these cases, the
person’s possibility space is structured in accordance with the evaluation
at the core of low self-esteem, namely an evaluation of the self as unwor-
thy. This means that it is difficult to experience events, people, and states
of affairs in ways that are not consonant with one’s background affective
orientation and to entertain corresponding mental states.5
These dynamics can ground the development and maintenance of
the false beliefs which are characteristic of the impostor syndrome. If
one of the feelings which structure my relationship with the world is a
sense of myself as being worthless, it would be radically difficult for me
to experience things as having meanings that are in contrast with that
background affect.6 For example, perceiving a certain performance as
good or outstanding, or viewing a success as the product of excellence
may be very unlikely experiential possibilities for me. As such, when
events that clash with what I feel is possible for me occur, I may be
inclined to see them—and “explain them away”, so to speak—through
evaluations that are consonant with the relevant background affective
orientations. For example, I may interpret achievements as being the
product of luck rather than talent or diminish their value so as not to
conceive of them as achievements at all.
As such, for some of those who suffer from impostor feelings, the
evidence that they are receiving from the world concerning their value
seems “too good” to be integrated into their self-concept and thus needs
to be rewritten or discarded.
136 Anna Bortolan
6.5 Self-Knowledge and Self-Esteem
in Pathological Narcissism
So far, I have argued that the impostor syndrome provides an illustration
of the relationship between self-esteem and self-knowledge that is in line
with my account of self-esteem as a background affective orientation. In
particular, I have suggested that, at least in some cases of the impostor
phenomenon, the experience of low self-esteem is at the origin of specific
distortions of self-knowledge.
I am now going to move to the discussion of what I take to be a mirror
case, namely a case in which high self-esteem grounds alterations of
self-knowledge that are somehow specular to the ones that mark the
impostor phenomenon. This is the case of pathological narcissism, which
is referred to also through the construct of narcissistic personality disorder.
The text revision of the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical
Manual of Mental Disorders (American Psychiatric Association 2022,
760) provides the following description and diagnostic criteria for nar-
cissistic personality disorder:
A pervasive pattern of grandiosity (in fantasy or behavior), need for

admiration, and lack of empathy, beginning by early adulthood and
present in a variety of contexts, as indicated by five (or more) of the
following:
1. Has a grandiose sense of self-importance (e.g., exaggerates

achievements and talents, expects to be recognized as superior
without commensurate achievements).
2. Is preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, bril-
liance, beauty, or ideal love.
3. Believes that he or she is “special” and unique and can only
be understood by, or should associate with, other special or
high-status people (or institutions).
4. Requires excessive admiration.
5. Has a sense of entitlement […].
6. Is interpersonally exploitative […].
7. Lacks empathy […].
8. Is often envious of others or believes that others are envious of
him or her.
9. Shows arrogant, haughty behaviors or attitudes.
The behavioral features and dynamics associated with narcissistic per-

sonality disorder point to the presence of significant alterations of the
person’s self-concept, and its evaluation. The way in which the person
conceives of their characteristics, plans, abilities, and achievements
appears to be unrealistic: one thinks of oneself as having features that
they do not have or conceives of these features as being much more
marked or positive than they really are.
Relatedly, pathological narcissism appears to be marked by alterations
of various cognitive processes, including attention, memory, and story-
telling. In particular, those who experience this condition tend to selec-
tively be attentive to, remember, and report events that are consonant
with positive self-assessments. On the contrary, events that conflict with
such self-assessment tend to go unnoticed, forgotten, or omitted. For
example, Horowitz (2009, 124–125) observes that:
People or things in the environment that might enhance the self-

concept are selectively tuned-up, whereas attempts are made to
ignore sources of information that might lower self-esteem.
As a corollary, errors in recollection of events may be important
phenomena. Bad acts of self may be significantly omitted.
And further:
Because themes of belittlement to the self are inhibited, the relevant

memories may not be well incorporated into a personal narrative.
[…] Instead, fantasies of past or future self-enhancement are selec-
tively facilitated.
Information that is perceived may be valued in unrealistic ways
in order to reduce its damaging components. Lying may occur […].
(Ibid, 127)
It thus seems plausible to claim that alterations of self-knowledge are a

central aspect of narcissistic pathology, and these seem to have an oppo-
site structure to what is the case in the impostor phenomenon. While in
the latter, as we have seen, one may fail to ascribe to oneself features that
they have, or may downplay their value or significance, in pathological
narcissism one may attribute to oneself characteristics that they do not
possess or exaggerate their value and significance.
The role of self-esteem in narcissism, however, is still widely debated
within the literature. A theoretical perspective on the topic that has been
particularly influential stems from the psychoanalytic tradition (e.g.
Kernberg 2004). According to this perspective, while the behavior of
those who suffer from narcissism may suggest that they keep themselves in
high regard, the attitudes and actions of narcissist persons in reality are
underlain by the experience of low or fragile self-esteem. In other terms,
the attention-seeking and self-aggrandizing manifestations associated with
narcissism would be accompanied by a low sense of self-worth, and they
should be seen as ways of attempting to compensate for it. This is also
known as the “mask model” of narcissism (cf. Kuchynka and Bosson 2018).
A similar account has been cashed out by suggesting that, in narcis-
sism, a high level of explicit self-esteem is accompanied by a low level of
implicit self-esteem (cf. Di Pierro et al. 2016), where the former, as pre-
viously summarized, is the conscious evaluation that the subject gives of
138 Anna Bortolan
their own value, and the latter is the unconscious, non-verbalized sense
that they have of it.
While these accounts have been extensively defended, they have also
been challenged on the basis of empirical research suggesting that those
who suffer from pathological narcissism do not experience lower implicit
self-esteem than those who are not considered to suffer from narcissism
(e.g. Vater et al. 2013), and that their (implicit) self-esteem can indeed be
high (cf. Di Pierro et al. 2016).
Whether the mask model should be rejected, and, if not, how exten-
sive is the range of cases that it can be applied to, is a matter the consid-
eration of which would exceed the scope of this chapter. Here, however,
I want to suggest that some cases of pathological narcissism cannot be
captured by this model, and these can be accounted for by drawing on
the phenomenological notion of self-esteem I have adopted.
The forms of narcissism that are my focus here appear to be well
aligned with the characterization of narcissistic personality disorder
provided by the DSM, and which have also been referred to as forms of
“grandiose” narcissism to be differentiated from “vulnerable” narcis-
sism. According to this distinction, on the one hand, narcissistic gran-
diosity is characterized by attitudes and behaviors such as arrogance,
conceit, the tendency to dominate, as well as exhibitionism, fantasies
about perfection, and optimism (Bosson and Weaver 2011; Pincus and
Roche 2011). On the other hand, some markers of narcissistic vulnera-
bility are shame-proneness, helplessness, the tendency to avoid interper-
sonal relations, sense of emptiness, and pessimism (Bosson and Weaver
2011; Pincus and Roche 2011).7
In cases marked by grandiosity, the narcissist person appears to
experience an inflated sense of self-worth. This is exemplified by what
the DSM captures as “grandiose sense of self-importance”, “self-
entitlement”, and “arrogant, haughty behaviours and attitudes”
(American Psychiatric Association 2022, 760). This appears also to be in
line with some recent empirical research, which has suggested that there
is a correlation between inflated explicit self-esteem and high implicit
self-esteem in grandiose narcissism (Di Pierro et al. 2016).8
My suggestion is that the unusually high level of self-esteem expe-
rienced by some people who display grandiose narcissism exerts a
constraining role on the person’s experience of self and world that is
analogous to what happens in certain forms of impostor phenomenon.
In the case of narcissist people too, perceiving certain events and states
of affairs in ways that are in conflict with one’s sense of self-worth is
very difficult, thus making it the case that cognitive and affective states
that are not consonant with one’s inflated self-esteem are unlikely to
be undergone. In some cases of pathological narcissism, in other terms,
one’s possibility space is restricted so as to allow solely or predominantly
for self-focused mental states that do not collide with an evaluation of
the self as absolutely and unshakeably worthy.
As such, when presented with information or situations that challenge
their sense of self-worth, those who experience narcissism may be inclined
to disregard or explain away such evidence, rather than modifying their
self-concept accordingly. When the world provides evidence that one is
not as good as they conceive themselves to be, this evidence is belittled,
ignored, or given alternative interpretations. One’s experienced world
becomes molded by one’s sense of self, a dynamic which is also pointed to
in some first-personal reports concerning narcissism. For example, a per-
son diagnosed with narcissistic personality disorder interviewed by Katie
Heaney observes that:
The world outside for a narcissist looks different, because they see
this world as they have created it. There are imperfections they do not
want to see, so their brain prevents them from seeing them. This per-
son that they fall in love with also has imperfections that they do not
want to see, because they need this person to fit into their world. It’s
a puzzle piece that exactly fits into that spot where they need it to fit.
(Heaney 2019)
Not only the experience of self but also of others and the world can thus
be shaped by the person’s background sense of their worth, an aspect that
becomes particularly visible when we consider the ways in which inter-
personal experience can be altered in the case of grandiose narcissism.9
Those who are in a close relationship with people who display narcissistic
traits indeed report different ways in which they can be disregarded, under-
mined, or even emotionally abused in such relationships.
In this context, in addition to being described as displaying a lack of
empathy, arrogance, and exploitative attitudes (Day et al. 2020), nar-
cissistic people are also attributed manipulative tendencies (Campbell,
Foster and Finkel 2002), and this is a characteristic on which I would
like to briefly focus, as I think it exemplifies some of the key dynamics
concerning existential feelings of high self-esteem I discussed before.
The notion of manipulation can be given various characterizations and
there are some differences in the way in which it is conceived in clinical and
non-clinical contexts (Potter 2006).10 Here I will adopt a general definition,
considering manipulation as an attempt to reach a certain goal through
the adoption of particular attitudes and behaviors, while at the same time
masking one’s own intentions to reach such goals. Lack of transparency
indeed seems integral to manipulation, in that the goals of the person who
seeks to manipulate others usually are kept hidden from the target of the
manipulation during the interaction. In this regard, it could be argued that
it is exactly because the aims of the manipulator remain unknown to those
who are manipulated that the process can be successful.
Manipulation can also be conceived as the attempt to impose one’s
self-narratives on others. We can indeed interpret instances of manip-
ulations as cases in which the person who manipulates has already a
140 Anna Bortolan
story in mind which, in order to be played out, requires the people they
interact with to behave in a particular way. In this context, the manipu-
lative behaviors that are adopted would serve to ensure that others act in
accordance with their role in the manipulator’s story.
Elsewhere, I have argued that the structure of the autobiographical nar-
ratives that we endorse is not only the outcome of a plurality of cognitive
processes but is rather fundamentally shaped by affective dynamics and,
in particular, by existential feelings (Bortolan 2017, 2021).11 This is espe-
cially visible in the case of existential feelings that constrain or narrow our
sense of possibility, as it is the case for the extremely low or extremely high
feelings of self-esteem previously discussed. When one of these feelings is
in place, all emotions, beliefs, and desires which are incompatible with
them are unlikely to be experienced and, as a result, the narratives that
would be centered on these states are unlikely to be produced. The exis-
tential feelings drive the construction of particular stories and make the
narrator unable to integrate within this story the voice of others.
When self-esteem is lacking—as in the particular form of impostor
syndrome discussed above—the difficulty to integrate others’ perspec-
tives into one’s narrative may lead to downplay the validity of their con-
victions, for example when it is claimed that their positive assessments
are based on mistakes or excessive generosity.
In the case of pathological narcissism, a similar difficulty to modify
one’s narratives in light of the evidence provided by others may be present,
and one of the mechanisms through which this may occur is manipulation.
Through this, the person who suffers from narcissism may attempt to influ-
ence events, and other people’s actions and beliefs in ways that enable them
to maintain a narrative that is compatible with their background feeling
of high self-worth. This may involve endorsing unwarranted evaluations
and interpretations of other people’s behaviors, and, at times, the expres-
sion of intense anger. Narcissism has indeed often been associated with
the experience of “self-righteous rage”, through which one can oppose an
extremely negative view of another person to an extremely positive view of
the self, protecting the latter from criticism (cf. Horowitz 2009).
When an existential feeling of extremely high self-esteem is present, the
person may experience themselves as unwaveringly worthy, and all their
interpersonal interactions are shaped by this experiential frame. As such, the
individual who experiences narcissism may not be receptive to the behavior
and the motivations of the people they interact with, rather “projecting”
onto them an image of the other as inadequate, undermining, or threaten-
ing. Every interaction may thus be forced within an interpretative scheme
that, because of its generality and the intensity of the feelings that accom-
pany it, is very difficult to shake or escape. When experiencing absolute and
unshakeable self-worth, it is very difficult to allow for the possibility that
one may be wrong, while others are right, and it is thus unlikely that the
attitudes and actions of others can really make a difference to oneself: no
matter what others do, their attitudes and actions will need to be reinter-
preted in ways that are compatible with one’s grandiose self-concept.
6.6 Conclusions
To sum up, in this chapter, I argued that self-esteem—conceived as a
particular kind of affective background orientation, or existential
feeling—modulates self-knowledge in a significant way.
Considering the experience of impostor syndrome and narcissistic
personality disorder as case studies, I suggested that, when self-esteem is
extremely low or high, the influence it exerts on self-knowledge may be
such that it is very difficult to incorporate into one’s self-concept features
that are not consonant with one’s self-esteem. On the contrary, when self-
esteem is not at either extreme of the spectrum, a wider variety of features
can be included into one’s self-concept, and what we come to know about
ourselves can also in turn influence our pre-existing level of self-esteem.
Acknowledgments
An earlier version of this chapter was discussed at the “Emotional Self-
Knowledge” workshop held at University College Cork in May 2022, and
I am grateful to Matt MacKenzie as a discussant and the other participants
for their helpful comments. My thanks also to Alba Montes Sánchez and
Alessandro Salice for their support throughout this project.
Notes
1. See Bortolan (2021) for an exploration of some of the dynamics that may
impact on the type of affective background orientations that I identify self-
esteem with.
2. In other terms, I focus on what Cassam (2014) has called “substantial”—as
opposed to “trivial”—self-knowledge. I am grateful to Alessandro Salice for
highlighting this point.
3. Episodic self-esteem is the focus of a paper by Salice (2020), to which I also
owe the explicit characterization of my view as a view concerned with self-
esteem as a trait.
4. Similar features to the ones I attribute to self-esteem are associated by
Voigtländer with feelings of self-worth (Vendrell Ferran 2020, 96–98;
Voigtländer 1910). As long as self-esteem is not conceived as a merely cogni-
tive phenomenon, and its pre-intentional structure is recognized, I think that
it can indeed be identified with a sense or feeling of one’s own worth.
5. Ratcliffe himself mentions the feeling “of being a fraud” when considering
various examples of how certain feelings are “ways of finding oneself in the
world” (2005). While I do not rule out the possibility that the feeling of
being an impostor is in itself an existential feeling, here my claim is that: (1)
self-esteem is an existential feeling/background affective orientation, and (2)
various aspects of impostor syndrome can be accounted for as originating in
the experience of low self-esteem.
142 Anna Bortolan
6. There seems to be room for debate as to whether the pre-intentionality of exis-
tential feelings amounts to making certain intentional states possible/impossi-
ble or just very likely/unlikely (cf. Saarinen 2018, 370). I think that adopting
a strictly deterministic approach in this regard is not warranted, and I rather
endorse the “softer” reading of what it means to have a pre-intentional character.
7. It must be noted, however, that various researchers have challenged the idea
that grandiosity and vulnerability identify separate types of narcissism, sug-
gesting instead that they are facets or dimensions of narcissism that occur
across its different manifestations (Pincus and Roche 2011). In this chapter,
I don’t take a position as to whether grandiose and vulnerable narcissism are
distinct kinds of narcissism; however, I assume that grandiosity can be preva-
lent for relatively long periods of time in the experience of some people who
suffer from narcissism, and I suggest that, during these periods, the alterations
of self-concept/self-knowledge experienced by the person can be accounted
for as the effect of an unusually high existential feeling of self-esteem.
8. While some researchers have identified a positive correlation between dimen-
sions of narcissistic grandiosity and self-esteem, it has been claimed that vul-
nerability itself “correlates either negatively or not at all with self-esteem”
(Bosson and Weaver 2011, 268). As mentioned above, my focus here is only
on grandiose narcissism.
9. For a discussion of how the experience of self-worth can shape the relation-
ship with others—and, in particular, how it can influence hostile affective
states—see also Vendrell Ferran’s chapter in this volume (2023).
10. As highlighted by Nancy Potter with regard to the characterization of per-
sons who have received a diagnosis of borderline personality disorder, it is
important to warn against “pejorative and judgmental” uses of the notion of
manipulation in clinical contexts (2006). Here, my consideration of the topic
does not intend to engage in the exploration of questions concerning poten-
tial attributions of responsibility for behaviors that can be seen as manipu-
lative. Rather, my intention is to explore what set of experiences and actions
may be involved in manipulation, and how a philosophical account of the
relationship between self-esteem and self-knowledge might be relevant.
11. Some of the ways in which existential feelings and narratives may interact are
explored by Lopez Cantero (2023, in this volume) specifically with regard to
romantic relationships.
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7 Three Stages of Love, Narrative,
and Self-Understanding
Pilar Lopez-Cantero
The idea that love changes who we are is widely shared and has been
mostly explored from a stance in the middle stage of love (i.e., when
people already love each other). But how do we get there? And what hap-
pens when love ends? In this chapter, I explore how self-understanding
may be shaped in different ways at different stages of love through the
notions of narrative and existential feeling. As I will argue, love gains
narrative momentum at the beginning, which is maintained during the
middle and ultimately extinguished at the end. This momentum is trig-
gered and later sustained by the existential feeling that ‘things make
sense’, which keeps the lovers oriented toward each other.
7.1 Prologue: Preliminary Distinctions

Love, and specifically the chosen, reciprocal love characteristic of roman-
tic relationships and friendships, is a paradigmatic scenario for the rela-
tional shaping of self-understanding.1 From Plato’s conception of love as a
merging of identities to current views on the phenomena, the idea that love
shapes who we are is a foundational principle in the philosophy of love.
Here, I generally subscribe to the view on love offered by Dean Cocking
and Jeanette Kennett (1998). Cocking and Kennett argue that love
changes self-understanding, and that openness to these changes is a nec-
essary condition for a relationship to be a loving one. Love changes the
lover through what they call “interpretation” and “direction”. According
to Cocking and Kennett (1998, 524), the people we love reveal to us
new beliefs about our actions and characters that we eventually interior-
ize—that is the ‘interpretation’ aspect. Also, loving someone ‘directs’ us
toward certain actions which end shaping our self-concept (Cocking and
Kennett 1998, 503–504). Thus, love not only affects self-understanding
directly by providing us with (beliefs conducive to) self-knowledge, but
also indirectly by influencing what we do (which, in turn influences what
we think about ourselves).
With respect to narrative, I will use Peter Goldie’s definition (2012, 2):
a narrative is the representation of a succession of events that unfold
DOI: 10.4324/9781003310945-10
146 Pilar Lopez-Cantero
over time, which results from the selection and interpretation of certain
features of those events and that has emotional import. Narratives may
be told to others or thought through; they do not need to be explicit,
and they can be either about the past, the present or the future. There
is a long-standing discussion in contemporary philosophy on the role
of narratives for self-understanding; from the strong view of requiring
coherent narratives about one’s overarching life story to the complete
rejection of the contribution of narratives to self-understanding. I sub-
scribe here to Goldie’s account of narrativity, which I see as an inter-
mediate position that avoids both extremes, as well as having empirical
backing (McAdams 1995; Dunlop 2015). Namely, according to this
moderate position, creating narratives about ourselves is a (not the only)
route to self-understanding. In other words, people may not formulate
an overarching life story, but often have a number of narratives (besides
from other sources) that may be crucial for their self-understanding.
These self-narratives are formulated through what Goldie calls narrative
thinking. For example, a person may recollect her gender transition: her
childhood feelings about gender, working on getting family support, the
first visit to the gender clinic, the euphoria at seeing herself as she always
wanted. Goldie refers to this as ‘narrative thinking about one’s past’.
One can also formulate narratives about what may happen next. Goldie
describes this latter projection as ‘narrative thinking about one’s future’
through the formulation of branching possibilities; “narrative representa-
tions of possible ways in which events might come to pass” (2012, 77).
Another feature of narrative thinking is that of ‘dramatic irony’.
According to Goldie, in narrativizing about our own past and future we
are able to inhabit both the perspective of the protagonist of the narra-
tive (“internal perspective”) and the perspective of the narrator (“exter-
nal perspective”) (Goldie 2012, 26–30). This means that we are able to
formulate how we felt or will feel about certain events, actions, or emo-
tional experiences as the person who experiences them while acknowl-
edging how we feel about those events as an observer. The external
narrator is not an impartial observer: felt experiences are a fundamental
component of narrative thinking, given the emotional import of nar-
ratives. Thus, the recollection of past narratives is influenced by how
the person feels about them in the present: “[a person]’s memories and
thoughts about his past can be colored by [the person]’s reactive attitude
towards his past” (Goldie 2012, 134). The same can be said about pro-
jections into the future. 2
The notions of narrative and narrative thinking are very useful for
the analysis of love and its effects on self-understanding, given that love
belongs to a category of emotional phenomena that, like grief (Goldie
2012) or resentment (Oatley 2009), unfold over time. Bennett Helm
(2010), who sees love as a pattern of emotional commitments, and other
philosophers of emotion who see love as a syndrome (de Sousa 2015;
Three Stages of Love, Narrative, and Self-Understanding 147
Pismenny and Prinz 2017) or a disposition (Naar 2013) also endorse this
conception of love as a temporal continuum implicitly or explicitly. In
recent times, several authors have drawn specific links between narrative
and love. Karen Jones argues that an individual can only be taken to be
in love at a given moment if that moment is embedded in a love narra-
tive—in her words, an “interpretation-sensitive trajectory” (2008, 274).
This point is also raised by Troy Jollimore (2022), who points out that
romantic relationships are a distinctive narrative genre.
Most notably, Marya Schechtman (2021) identifies three shared fea-
tures between romantic relationships and narratives. Firstly, according
to Schechtman, narratives and romantic relationships are limited wholes
with a beginning, a middle, and an end (2021, 28). Thus, it makes sense
to talk about ‘love narratives’. Secondly, relationships and narratives are
characterized by what she calls “diachronic holism” (2021, 31): there is
a sense in which the present is experienced with relation to the past and
the future (Jollimore 2022, 93–104 also discusses this). Thirdly, when
experiencing love in a romantic relationship and when going through a
narrative, we inhabit several perspectives at the same time: Schechtman
(2021, 34) calls this “mental time travel” between the future, past, and
present; this time travelling occurs both in romantic relationships and
in narratives. Thus, Schechtman incorporates the ability to inhabit
multiple perspectives identified by Goldie and shows that this ability is
exercised during a romantic relationship. Her focus is on the element of
temporality that both narratives and love have. Schechtman (and also
Jollimore and Jones) is mainly interested in the shape of love and how
acknowledging its structure (in this case, its narrative shape) can offer
new insights into the definition of love. Here, my aim is not to defend
the narrative structure love has, or to determine the similarities and dif-
ferences between love narratives and fictional narratives, for example.
Instead, I take this structure for granted to explore how reciprocated
love narratives with a beginning, middle, and end may affect self-under-
standing in specific ways in each of these stages, drawing from insights
on philosophy of emotion and narrative theory.
7.2 The Beginning

The beginning of love, popularly known as ‘falling in love’, has often
been misrepresented by philosophers, who have considered it an irra-
tional and/or unjustified process that should be overcome. I have dis-
puted this view of falling in love elsewhere and argued that this approach
mistakenly identifies irrationality (‘head in the clouds’, being unable to
do anything else) as a feature of the process of falling in love, instead of
acknowledging that this is just a popular assumption that does not stand
up to philosophical scrutiny (Lopez-Cantero 2022). For my purposes
here, it suffices to say that falling in love can take many forms other than
the ‘head in the clouds’ exaggerated caricature portrayed by some of
these philosophers. Although it is an emotionally significant period and
focused attention is directed toward the loved person, this heightening
of emotion and focusing of attention need not be excessive or irrational.
What interests me here is the change in self-understanding at the
beginning of love. We may accept that love changes the lovers’ self-un-
derstandings; but how do we get there? There are three possible answers
to this question. The first option would be to see the beginning of love as
a radical, sudden change to one’s self-understanding. Mary Jean Walker
has an illuminating description of such change:
Take a case in which a person undergoes a sudden religious conver-

sion. This occasions significant alterations to her traits, goals, plans
of action, moral orientation, and self-conception. The conversion
precipitates changes in the convert’s characteristics, and the relations
she takes up toward them. These effect alterations in her approach
to the world and how she organizes her experience. She re-interprets
her past, and her expectations for her future, developing a ‘new nar-
rative’ about herself. Different features of her experience become
salient to her, and her behavior alters in ways that reflect this. As
she enacts her new self-understanding, she constitutes herself as a
different person in the characterization sense, from the point of con-
version onwards.
(Walker 2018, 5)
This could be an accurate description of what has traditionally been

called ‘love at first sight’. Whether we can call this experience a genuine
example of love has been disputed (Maurer 2014). Determining whether
love at first sight is or not genuine love is not relevant here.3 What is
important is that this experience is simply not generalizable. As I said
above, it is important to not confuse tropes about falling in love with
actually universalizable features of the phenomenon. Many (probably
most) people do not fall in love at first sight, and they do not experi-
ence overnight changes in their self-understanding. Instead, they develop
these changes throughout the relationship, through a pattern of emo-
tions, actions, and beliefs that are shared in interaction and mutually
shape the lovers. This means that we may understand the beginning of
love not as a sudden change of one’s self-concept, but as the trigger for
the change that begins to be built over time.
A second option would be to explain falling in love through self-as-
cription, i.e., as the result of the formulation of the belief that one is
falling, or has fallen, in love. The claim that interpreting one’s own
emotional states may determine the nature of the state itself has some
traction in several strands of philosophy (Moran 1988) and is a com-
mon view for feminist philosophers and others discussing politics and
emotion (Scheman 1980; Colombetti 2009; Furtak 2018). With regard
to love, Robert Solomon states that people “sometimes ‘discover’ that
they are in love, but the critical point is that their love is fully realized
only once they recognize that they are in love” (2007, 227, emphasis
mine). Anna Bortolan (2020, 218) makes a direct connection between
self-ascription, narrative, and the determination of our emotional expe-
riences: “by thinking or telling a story about our emotions, we take a
reflective stance toward our experience, and this enables us to exert an
influence on its development”. This is thanks to the interpretative and
emotional components of narrative, given that by reflecting on one’s
emotional experiences one can interpret whether they are and feel good,
appropriate, or fitting. The realization that an emotional experience is
of a certain kind or feels a certain way gives rise to a tendency to act
in ways that reinforce that judgment. Like Jones says, “conceptualizing
one’s experience under the description ‘love’ and believing that response
to be warranted is likely to bring about that one’s experience in fact has
the kind of shape needed to count as love” (2008, 274).
In other words, we may say that through self-ascription a love narra-
tive acquires what Doug McConnell (2016a) calls narrative momentum:
a dramatic force that keeps a narrative going. As long as a narrative
has momentum, McConnell says, “some futures make more sense than
others, and we are inclined to enact our self-narratives so that they
make sense” (2016a, 308). McConnell’s discussion focuses on people
in recovery from drug addiction, with the aim to explain how sufferers
can use re-interpretations of their self-concepts in order to overcome the
momentum of their present self-ascribed narrative of ‘being an addict’.
For example, a sufferer from drug addiction can look at her past his-
tory and re-interpret her current and past usage as a way to overcome a
painful loss, and not as part of a narrative of “self-indulgent disgrace”
(McConnell 2016a, 316). While his example is past-directed, we can
also apply momentum to a future-directed scenario that may be local-
ized in an episode, or part of a process of narrative recognition of one’s
own experience. For example, think of someone who signs up to do a
PhD in philosophy: this decision gives momentum to the self-narrative
of ‘having an academic career in philosophy’. This narrative keeps its
momentum when the person defends their thesis, applies to academic
jobs, gets a research grant, etcetera.4 We could also think further back to
the moment where the person realizes that they want to be an academic
philosopher. They may notice how thrilling their philosophy classes are,
how bored they are when talking with people about other topics, the
annoyance they are creating by using the Socratic method at dinners,
etcetera. By reflecting on these experiences, they may come to the reali-
zation: ‘philosophy is what I want to do’.
The tentative claim here could then be that the self-ascription ‘I am
falling/have fallen in love’ triggers the change of self-understanding that
love entails by giving momentum to a love narrative. However, this gives
rise to the worry that we may have gone a little too far from the folk
conception of what falling in love is. In the effort to temper the tropes of
the beginning of love as a period of irrationality and obsession, we may
have given too much control to the person falling in love, who is seem-
ingly able to bring about their own love narrative through observation
and self-reflection. More importantly, if we limit ourselves to the tenta-
tive claim, we would be missing a very important aspect of the period of
falling in love: its emotional intensity. This does not mean that we need
to give up the tentative claim; only that we need to fill in the emotional
dimension of the experience.
In Section 7.1, I referred to Goldie’s notion of narrative thinking about
the future, and how it consists of contemplating narrative representations
of possible ways in which events might come to pass (2012, 77). We can
imagine the person falling in love formulating some of these branching pos-
sibilities: ‘they will say that they feel the same and we will move in together
immediately’, or ‘they will try to get away but finally love will triumph’,
and so on. This will create a large amount of anticipation. Anticipation
charges experiences emotionally (in the shape not only of hope, but also of
fear and anxiety). David Velleman sees anticipation as a fundamental ele-
ment of narratives. For Velleman, narratives have what he calls “emotional
cadence” (2006, 198); which here we can understand as a sense anticipa-
tion for the payoff of the sort of life projects that correspond with certain
narrative arcs--for example ‘finding the love of your life’, ‘living a great love
story’, ‘finally being happy’ or ‘not being alone anymore’.
Anticipation, however, does not capture the particularly intense and
significant emotional dimension of the experience of falling in love. When
one is falling in love, one experiences feelings of ‘things making sense’,
or ‘things being right’ that are stronger than a mere sense of resolution.
Feeling that ‘things make sense’ is to feel like the world of one’s experience
has acquired a new dimension that is meaningful. This is not an easy con-
cept to understand, so let us go back to the notion of future possibilities.
Branching out is something that we do all the time, both about transcend-
ent and mundane experiences. For example, in a particularly dramatic
moment of our career, we may think about the future, considering differ-
ent narratives of how our lives may go if we make a specific decision. But
also, coming back home on the underground after partying too hard, we
may think about how badly the following day may go with hungover. In
both of these scenarios (transcendent and mundane, respectively) we are
considering future possibilities with respect to existent narratives in our
lives. Falling in love is different from these, because the beginning of love
in fact opens a whole new branch of possibilities; a whole new narrative.
Before falling in love with a specific person, there was no branch of pos-
sibilities to imagine, no possible future narrative of loving that person.
When Goldie talks about imagining branches of possibilities, they have
to do with circumstances that branch from a present that remains rela-
tively consistent. But falling in love is a disruption of that present, precisely
because it reveals a new branch of possibilities that was not there before.
This new branch is existentially charged, that is, it feels like they give one’s
life a dimension that it did not have before.
This kind of emotional experience is what Matthew Ratcliffe has
called ‘existential feelings’. An existential feeling is “a phenomenolog-
ically distinctive group of feelings, which are not specifically focused
and instead constitute an all-enveloping sense of reality and belonging”
(Ratcliffe 2016, 170). Existential feelings have to do with openness to
what is possible, and although they are emotional experiences, they are
not feelings about something. That is, they are pre-intentional affective
background orientations, and as such they shape our motivations, men-
tal states, and actions.5
That description seems to capture well the emotional significance
of the beginning of love. Ratcliffe counts as an existential feeling the
self-report of when “things just don’t feel right” (2008, 68). This is to be
distinguished from a feeling of dissatisfaction of unhappiness: one may
be unhappy momentarily or about a sphere in one’s life, while the feeling
that things are not fine entails a whole way of experiencing the world.
I think it would not be unjustified to say that the feeling of ‘things feel
just right’, or ‘things just make perfect sense’ is its counterpart—and
thus also an existential feeling. The idea of some experiences entailing
the emergence of a whole new branch of possibilities is also captured by
Ratcliffe on a discussion of, precisely, religious conversion:
[A] world that is drained of life… can be shaken up to reveal a dif-

ferent and wider space of possibility, something more, something
greater.
(Ratcliffe 2008, 74)
Ratcliffe also draws a connection between existential feelings and nar-

rative, considering these different aspects of experience that cannot be
disentangled from one another (2016, 170; 179). Thus, in cases where
the feeling itself is not sufficient to individuate an experience, narra-
tive can assist in formulating and establishing what that experience is.
This is what I believe completes the tentative claim above, since now we
have a direct connection between self-ascription and narrative momen-
tum without neglecting the emotional component at the beginning of
love. We arrive then at the final claim of this section that captures how
love affects self-understanding in its initial phase: the beginning of love
creates a whole new branch of future possibilities, and this (a) is expe-
rienced as the existential feeling that ‘things make sense’ (which from
now in I call ‘existential feeling of intelligibility’) and (b) gives narrative
momentum to the love narrative.
Once love acquires narrative momentum, it progressively establishes
itself as an affective background orientation. Love is one of the spaces of
the lovers’ experiences where they feel ‘at home’, belonging and a sense
of reality. Here it is useful to bring in Jussi Saarinen’s (2014) distinction
between two kinds of existential feeling in order to differentiate how we
go from kick-starting the narrative momentum to the maintenance of
narrative momentum during the middle stage of love. Saarinen is con-
cerned with “oceanic feeling”, or the emotional experience of the diffu-
sion of the boundaries of the self in the face of the experience of oneness
(2014, 198), which he considers a type of existential feeling (2014, 197).
I do not apply here his definition of existential feeling, but his taxonomy
only (i.e., I remain agnostic on whether love can be defined in terms
of oneness and diffusion of the boundaries of the self). Saarinen dis-
tinguishes between episodic and permanent existential feeling. Episodic
existential feeling consists in the experience of a shift in existential feel-
ing. Ratcliffe’s example of a religious conversion above is an example of
the sort of shift Saarinen discusses. Then, permanent existential feel-
ings are “stable existential orientations” (Saarinen 2014, 197) which are
more akin to how existential feelings are mostly discussed, that is, in
terms of an affective background orientation. If we take out the epi-
sodic factor, which I already explained cannot be universalized in the
case of love (recall Walker’s conversion case), we can understand the
transitions from the beginning to the middle of love as the transition
between the shift in existential feeling to the establishment an affective
background orientation. Although more needs to be said on whether
love itself is as an existential feeling, enabled or partly constituted by
the existential feeling of intelligibility, it is hardly a controversial claim
to say that love is a fundamental point of orientation in people’s lives
(Wolf 2015, 195; Ratcliffe 2013, 602; Lopez-Cantero and Archer 2020,
522). Here I remain agnostic on that issue and simply claim that the exis-
tential feeling of intelligibility is a component of love that enables love’s
momentum, and hence the lovers’ orientation toward each other.6 Let us
then look at how narrative theory can help us understand how this ori-
entation remains stable throughout the middle stage of love; or in other
words, how momentum is maintained throughout the love narrative.
7.3 The Middle

The middle of love is the stage that dominates the debate on the nature
of love. With a few exceptions, when philosophers ask ‘what is love?’,
they are mostly looking at the period in which people already love each
other, and not at the beginning or the end. When philosophers say that
love changes our self-understanding, they also overwhelmingly refer to
the middle stage. Even the ones I mentioned above who have highlighted
the pattern-like or narrative structure of love are speaking from a stance
of people who love each other in the present (i.e., not people that are
starting to love each other, or losing their love for each other). I will not
offer here a summary of the different theories on the nature of love, or
defend a specific view: as I say at the beginning, I side with the group of
accounts that see love as entailing a change to self-understanding. I take
Cocking and Kennett as model because I consider their view as largely
compatible with most authors in that group.7
I briefly described Cocking and Kennett’s view above, so let us expand
it here with an example of what they mean by interpretation and direc-
tion by looking at an imaginary couple, Emma and Seb. In virtue of
being in love with Seb, Seb’s interests will direct Emma toward certain
actions; for example, going hiking. Emma will go hiking with Seb in
virtue of that being one of Seb’s interests, and that may result in hiking
becoming one of Emma’s hobbies—which in turn may make its way
into her self-concept. Seb may tell Emma that she is very funny, which is
something that she was oblivious to, and Emma may acquire self-under-
standing through Seb’s interpretation: not by incorporating something
completely new in her life, like hiking, but by accessing a re-interpreta-
tion of what was already there. As I said before, Cocking and Kennett
(1998, 506) believe that direction and interpretation are both constitu-
tive and necessary elements of love: they (at least partly) define what love
is and they provide for defeating conditions for any particular candidate
as an instance of love (i.e., if there is no openness to be mutually directed
and interpreted, there is no love). In other words, Seb and Emma doing
this means they love each other, and they do it because they love each
other. However, we do not know why they continue accepting each oth-
er’s direction and interpretation, unless love provides justification for its
own continuation. That love justifies itself is true in a sense, if we bring
back the notions of narrative momentum and existential feeling. Recall
that for McConnell and for Jones, having a certain self-narrative itself
directs oneself toward actions, thoughts, and emotions that will ensure
the persistence of such self-narrative; and that following Ratcliffe,
Bortolan, and Saarinen, momentum is maintained by a (permanent)
existential feeling that keeps the lovers oriented toward the branches
of possibilities that continuate love. Nevertheless, I think here narrative
theory can help offering further justification for the persistence of love.
In Section 7.1 I said that one of my assumptions is that self-under-
standing is constituted by beliefs about ourselves, and that self-under-
standing is a constitutive aim of action, which in turn influences our
beliefs about ourselves. Walker (2012) portrays this idea clearly when
she says that the self-concept
encapsulates our reasons for action, since these reasons are related
to our understanding of our selves and our pasts. Thus, it frames and
guides our decisions about how to act. Our narrative self-conception
thus feeds into behavior [sic] … There are thus causal connections
in both directions between how one’s life goes, and one’s narrative
self-understanding.
(Walker 2012, 65)
What Walker is saying here is that there is a feedback loop between our
self-concept and our actions. Who we think we are influences how we see
the world (including how we see ourselves). Our individual way of seeing
the world (and seeing ourselves) influences what we do. What we do, in
turn, influences what we think about the world and ourselves—it feeds into
our self-concept. Moreover, our self-concept partially determines how we
see the world. According to Walker, “what gets counted as ‘an event’ will
only be determinable within some interpretive context” (2012, 65). That
is, the self-concept influences what kind of things are worth interpreting,
i.e., what kind of things are salient to us. Thus, love becomes a trait of the
self-concept, in the sense “pattern[s] of attention, thought, feeling, moti-
vation and action [are] expressive of a certain trait” (Goldie 2012, 135).
That is, a psychological phenomenon that is expressed in action and thus
influences self-understanding and the other way around.8
In the middle stage of love, lovers have the belief that they are in love,
feel in love, and act according to reasons motivated by love, for example
to benefit each other by promoting each other’s interests. These beliefs,
emotions, and actions, fortified by momentum sustained by an existen-
tial feeling of intelligibility, influence each other’s beliefs and actions in a
feedback loop that in turn contributes to the sustainment of the momen-
tum. Crucially, by becoming a trait of the self-concept, ‘being in love’
influences what we find salient.
It may seem that incorporating the feedback loop and salience to the
discussion does not provide with any new insight that we did not have
already in Cocking and Kennett’s account, and also that narrative is not
doing any work here besides the already explained narrative momen-
tum sustained by the existential feeling of intelligibility. However, by
considering love a trait of the self-concept, we obtain a justification of
love that is outside of itself. This allows us to understand why people
continue accepting each other’s direction and interpretation: doing so is
part of their self-conception. As I explain now by bringing back the main
notions of Goldie’s view from Section 7.1, it is the case that by modifying
our patterns of salience love not only influences us with respect of who
we are, but also in the sense of who we have been and who we will be.
Firstly, love not only influences our current self-understanding, but
can influence our autobiographical narrative thinking about our past.
We may share stories with our partners or close friends about our past:
how we were bullied as children, how we were excellent students or
how we used to party three days a week. We may tell them how they
felt or feel now: they are memories of pain, pride or happiness. But our
partners’ or close friends’ interpretations may change how we see those
stories completely: we may come to see our endurance of bullying as a
sign of strength, for example. Re-interpretation need not always be ben-
eficial, but I leave that aspect aside for the time being (I comment on the
potential negative influence of re-interpretation below). The important
thing is that love can change not only our present self-understanding,
but also the understanding of our own past. This is not only enabled
by the incorporation of the interpretation coming from a partner or
close friends, but also by the changes in the lover brought about by love.
Recall the concept of dramatic irony, where autobiographical narrative
thinking allows us to occupy the perspective of the protagonist and the
narrator. In the example of past bullying, the changes in the narrator in
the present, which are brought by love, may influence their perception
of the protagonist in the past, who goes from being a victim in pain to
a strong and resilient individual. This may be achieved without the need
for the loved person to explicitly re-interpret their past, but in virtue of
them having become more optimistic, better at interpreting their emo-
tions or more prone to delusion, for example (in Section 7.4 I briefly
discuss the risks of delusion in narrative thinking).
Secondly, love influences how we see our present. Because love alters
our patterns of salience, love influences our general outlook toward our-
selves and the world. In the words of Rick Anthony Furtak, love “deter-
mines what comes to light as significant, out of the entirety of everything
that is in principle available for our attention (much of which escapes
our notice altogether)” (2018, 127). Love, Furtak adds, “comprehen-
sively organizes our world of experience that what we are able to know
depends on our affective disposition or attunement [sic], our way of car-
ing” (2018, 128; emphasis in original). I adopt here a qualified version
of that statement, meaning that love at least partly determines what we
come to know about the world and about ourselves.
Again, a narrative is the representation of a succession of events that
unfold over time, which results from the selection and interpretation of
certain features of those events and that has emotional import. Different
people living the same situation may pick up on completely different
aspects to the situation, to the point that they will be in fact interpreting
different events altogether. Let us imagine a person, Ziggy, who is walk-
ing across a street at the same moment that a car crashes into a billboard.
If Ziggy is prompted to explain the accident, he might quote different
causes: the tire, the drunk driver, etcetera. But here, we are already sin-
gling out the car crash itself as an event when asking Ziggy. Remember
that salience determines what gets counted as an event. Imagine that
Ziggy’s friend, Billy, was also there with him, so they are in the same sit-
uation, at the same time. They both see the crash scene unfold and Ziggy
exclaims: “Billy, do you see that?!”; and Billy replies: “Yes, I can’t believe
IKEA has a 50% discount in all stock!”. Although they are both in the
situation and they are both witnessing the accident, the accident is not
salient at all for Billy. He is, instead, oblivious of the unfolding tragedy,
his attention focused on the IKEA billboard above. Ziggy is perplexed:
“But Billy, those people in the car!”; to what Billy replies: “Yeah I’ve
seen it, but you just have no idea how long I’ve waited to be able to afford
a new futon”. In this case, we have two different interpretations of a situ-
ation as two distinct events: Ziggy’s witnessing of a horrible car accident
versus Billy’s joyful realization that he will, at last, be able to afford a
new futon. This example demonstrates the magnitude of the effect that
love can have on us by changing our patterns of salience.
By influencing our patterns of salience, love not only influences how
we interpret events, but also what counts as events when we look at the
world. This influences how we see the world, but also how others see us:
if we are a Billy, others will see us as callously self-centered, which in
turn may end making its way into our self-concept through close rela-
tionships. It also influences how we see our own lives: if love makes us
more self-confident, for example, we may stop finding scathing review-
ers’ comments as part of our recollection of how our day went, given
that we will be unscathed by those comments and, in the same way Billy
is oblivious to the accident, not even register it as an event.
Finally, love influences our future. Narrative thinking about our future
entails considering branching possibilities. Some possibilities will appear
and others not. Let us look at a fictional example: Sonia, who does not
and has never wanted to have children and simply does not think about
that at all. For them, when narrative thinking about their future, the
possibility of having children just does not appear at all. Sonia falls in
love and starts a long-term relationship with Carlos, who wants to have
children. A negotiation ensues where Sonia needs to envision the possi-
bility of being a parent, which did not feature in her narrative thinking.
Other times, a certain possibility may feature in our narrative thinking,
but may feel more or less like belonging to a future that we see as ours.
Let us think of a different person, Lena, who does not and has never
wanted to have children, but sometimes ponders it. Bringing dramatic
irony to the discussion again, Lena’s self-concept as the external nar-
rator in the present influences how she feels as the protagonist of the
future narrative. Since she feels uneasy about parenthood, while nar-
rative thinking about her future and considering the possibility where
she feels happy as a parent versus the possibility where she feels anx-
ious as a parent, the second possibility will feel more like belonging to
her. However, Lena falls in love and starts a long-term relationship with
Daya, and as a result, the first possibility (being a parent) starts feeling
more as belonging to her. This does not mean that Lena will definitely
change her mind, but it is a common scenario which helps to prove my
point here: love can influence which possibilities feature at all in our
future projections and also how these possibilities feel.
Briefly, it should be mentioned here that given the influence that love
can have in our self-understanding, love makes us extremely vulnera-
ble, and can thus be a risky endeavor. Usually, vulnerability within love
is understood in terms of well-being: if the loved person’s interests are
harmed, I am harmed. But given what I have discussed above, vulner-
ability is more acute than that. Direction may lead a lover to take up a
self-destructive habit like alcohol addiction, and interpretation may lead
her to believe that she is not deserving of her high-earning job, for exam-
ple. Love may lead people to feel unwarrantedly ashamed about their
past; to not select episodes of abuse as salient events; or to have a range
of future possibilities that surrender to what the loved person wants for
their own life. From the mundane to life-changing decisions and per-
spectives (having children, getting a vaccine in the midst of a pandemic,
having a specific ideology) love has a huge potential of disruption for
the worse: “though love can be the making of lives, it can also be their
unmaking” (Harcourt 2016, 39).
I do not have the space to fully unpack the dangers of vulnerability,
but it should be noted that it should not be portrayed as a feature of bad
love only. It is just a feature of being in love that can be good as long
as there is what McConnell (2016b, 40) calls “balanced co-authoring”,
which involves, among other measures, “supporting the authorial skill
of others, carefully judging when they are appropriate co-authors, and
judging which content will be helpful”. This is easier said than done,
given that for a start, it is difficult to discern without equivocation
whether co-authoring is balanced or not (see Tsai 2016 on “relationship
exploitation”). Also, certain power relations (for example, with respect
to gender or race) may further complicate, if not completely make impos-
sible, the possibility of balanced co-authoring. This opens the debate on
the value of love itself and the embedding of our love practices in wider
societal narratives, which takes us away from the topic of this chapter. It
is time, then, to look into the next stage: the end of love.
7.4 The End

Philosophers have recently turned their attention to the end of love,
with recent research on break-ups (Lopez-Cantero 2018), divorce (Card
2007; Cowley 2020; Betzler 2022), falling out of love (Lopez-Cantero
and Archer 2020; Cowley 2021), and love after death (Solomon 2004;
Higgins 2013; Norlock 2017; Millar and Lopez-Cantero 2022). But like
these works acknowledge or argue, neither break-ups nor death result
necessarily in the end of love. One may break up with someone due to
external reasons while still loving them, and one may still love one’s
friend after they pass away, for example. The question of what the end
of love entails for self-understanding is acknowledged, but not system-
atically addressed in the current literature. Here, I sketch an answer to
that question. To keep the discussion on topic, I will leave aside the ques-
tions on justification (why love ends) and appropriateness (whether love
should end and/or when), and simply focus on the question of what is
for love to end in the terms of what I have argued so far. I will also leave
aside cases where one of the lovers dies, since as I have said, that may not
bring about the end of love anyway.
Here I am going to distinguish between volitional and non-volitional
end of love. In both cases, love can be experienced as a painful loss, but
it may not. As we will see, my use of the term ‘volitional’ has to be taken
in a qualified sense and not as entailing complete causal control: it serves
to distinguish falling out of love without conscious intervention (non-vo-
litional) and falling out of love as a result of purposefully bringing about
the circumstances so that one may achieve that state (volitional). Love
ends non-volitionally when people fall out of love or friendship with-
out pursuing it. The paradigmatic example here could be a person in a
romantic relationship who one day, after much thinking and evaluating
her emotions, thoughts, and actions, comes to the realization that she is
not in love with her partner anymore. This does not mean that the ending
of love is brought about by self-ascription, i.e., the formulation of the
belief ‘I am not in love’ (in the same sense I said that self-ascription is not
enough by itself to bring about the beginning of love). It is instead the real-
ization that one’s mental states and dispositions have changed. Volitional
love endings, on the other hand, are a pursued end: the person wants
and tries to fall out of love. The paradigmatic cases here are non-chosen
break-ups, where the other party has fallen out of love in the first place.
When one does not choose to end a relationship, one may choose to try
and fall out of love with the person who ended the relationship in order to
be able to move on. It could also be the case that the person has initiated
the break-up for external reasons (for example, having careers in different
countries, wanting to exit an abusive relationship, or disagreement about
having children) and then tries to fall out of love, not wanting to continue
longing for a relationship they have decided to exit. Once the distinction
is clear, let us look at how the account I have set up in this chapter helps
explain how the end of love affects self-understanding.
When someone has undergone non-volitional falling out of love, the
love narrative has lost its momentum. Recall that momentum facilitates
one’s actions, thoughts, and feelings to be in accordance with actions,
thoughts, and feelings that ensure the continuation of the narrative. This
narrative momentum has been extinguished when one arrives at the
point of falling out of love: that is what the end of love is. One may even
wish that this was not the case, but one’s thoughts, feelings, and rea-
sons for action simply do not match thoughts, feelings, and actions that
contribute to the continuation of the narrative. On the other side, we
have people for whom the love narrative still has momentum, but who
want this momentum to get disrupted and aim at this disruption—to
eventually get to the same place where the non-volitional counterpart is.
How can one willingly disrupt the momentum of a narrative that is fun-
damental for one’s self-understanding, such as a love narrative? Again,
the answer to that question requires a look into the phenomenological
character of the process.
In both volitional and non-volitional cases, the end of love can be expe-
rienced as a loss. Although literature, cinema, and popular culture pay
more attention to the person who someone has fallen out of love with
(usually portrayed as a ‘victim’ of heartbreak, so to speak), falling out love
non-volitionally can also be an emotionally distressing process. One may
not want to fall out of love; or may be mortified by the prospect of hurting
someone one cares deeply about (since love and care may come apart; see
Wonderly and Jaworska 2020); or may simply dread the future outside the
love narrative for different reasons. In previous work (Lopez-Cantero and
Archer 2020) I have highlighted how disorienting the process of falling
out of love can be. Here I look at another emotional dimension of the
end of love: the fact that it can be experienced as a grieving process. As I
show next, the existent literature on the connection between narrative and
existential feeling with grief can illuminate the study of the end of love. It
should be noted that I am not claiming that the end of love is analogous
to grief, but that like grief, the end of love may be experienced as a loss,
so they have some common features with grief. Specifically, grief entails a
loss of future possibilities (Ratcliffe, Richardson and Millar forthcoming);
so does the end of love even in cases where there is no bereavement (i.e.,
none of the lovers has died).
As seen in Section 7.3, when one is in the middle stage of the love
narrative one’s future possibilities are entrenched in the love narrative.
The future is where we will go on holiday, how we will face our children
leaving the nest, where in the world will we live. Recall that love affects
one’s life in this way, and that one’s thoughts, feelings, and actions
motivated by this outlook on one’s life are fundamental elements of
one’s self-understanding. This is captured by Ratcliffe, Richardson, and
Millar when discussing grief:
One’s projects, commitments, and expectations were oriented

towards those possibilities, one’s sense of the future shaped by
them. As it becomes clear that they cannot be actualized, there is
a temporally extended process of recognition and reorientation.
Expectations in which one was heavily invested over a long period,
and which shaped one’s life, are experienced as dashed.
(Ratcliffe, Richardson and Millar forthcoming, 11)
For people who have fallen out of love non-vollitionally, their projects,
commitments, and expectations, are not shaped by the love narrative
anymore. This is because there has been a shift in existential feeling:
these people have lost their background affective orientation of being in
love, so future possibilities within the love narrative do not make sense
anymore, or do not feel right. For someone who is still in love, however,
the future still very much makes sense only within the love narrative.
Their problem, however, is that the love narrative cannot exist anymore
(for whichever reason), so they are, in Goldie’s words, “locked into the
past” (2012, 70). When narrative thinking about their future, they can
only see what things would have been had the love narrative continued.
But this is not the case anymore. Unlike the person who has fallen out of
love, in their case there has not been a shift in existential feeling: their
sense of reality is still bound to the love narrative. Because this brings
both emotional distress and disruption of self-understanding (think of
the trope ‘I don’t know who I am without you’), there is a motivation to
bring about their falling out of love volitionally.
Disentangling one’s sense of reality from the love narrative is incredibly
difficult and is compounded by the fact that profound emotional distress
may restrict one’s narrative abilities by disrupting one’s openness to future
possibilities. This is what Ratcliffe (2016) and Bortolan (2017, 2021) have
claimed that happens in experiences of depression. However, in principle
it is not impossible for people to regain this ability by engaging in narra-
tive thinking about one’s past and one’s future. This engagement needs to
engage the will (i.e., one has to purposefully do this thinking), and that is
why I call this other type of love endings volitional. There are two aspects
of volitional love endings that can be illuminated by narrative theory.
First, by revisiting and possibly revising her past through explicit auto-
biographical narrative thinking, one may question facts about the past
love narrative. What parts of one’s self-understanding were acquired or
lost during the love narrative? Are new traits, habits, and preferences one
acquired in a love narrative worth preserving? A person may notice new
aspects of the relationship or re-interpret some events in a way that favors
bringing about her falling out of love. She may realize that her partner
did not pay her as much attention as they should have, or that what she
saw as demonstrations of affection were just ruses to get her to do some-
thing that was convenient for them. This activity is done both through
introspection and in interaction with others, which can be particularly
helpful when emotional distress disrupts clarity and self-trust. As Kevin
Harrelson notes, “your therapist (or your friends) can assist you in uncov-
ering episodes that your self-narratives exclude” (2016, 172). By looking at
her past, she may be able to achieve a new perspective on the relationship
that may contribute to changing her feelings, thoughts, and actions. I am
aware that the idea of revision may give rise to worries about delusion and
truth, and I give a brief response to these worries in Section 7.4—for now,
I continue with the other aspect of volitional love endings.
One of McConnell’s case studies, we may recall, is a person suffering
from drug addiction who re-interprets her own past and thus “set[s] the
foundation for a projection of recovery” (2016a, 316). This projection
requires explicit autobiographical thinking about one’s future: in the
case of love, seeing oneself starting new projects, imagining not missing
the other person, and so on. In other ways, finding a new branch of pos-
sibilities that feel like they correspond to who she wants to be. Bortolan
(2021) has argued that narrative projection may enable a shift in exis-
tential feeling. By imagining oneself having an emotional experience,
one may actually have that emotional experience in the present (2021,
486). That is, the external narrator may come to experience the same
emotions as the protagonist of the future narrative, even if the content
of the narrative does not still feel like a possibility that feels hers in the
present. Bortolan adds that even if the emotions may not be exactly of
the same type, the external narrator may feel similarly valenced emo-
tions to the ones the protagonist feels in her imagined scenario (for
example, the protagonist feels elation, and the narrator feels the urge
to smile [2021, 486]). A pattern of repeating projections over time can,
after “a complex and lengthy process”, result in a shift in existential
feeling (Bortolan 2021, 490).
That shift in existential feeling can enable people’s openness to new
possibilities. Again, this should further clarify why I call this case ‘voli-
tional’, since it requires a conscious exercise of one’s will—even if there
is no guarantee that this narrative work will indeed result in the desired
shift. Eventually, the aim is to arrive at the point where people who fall
out of love without conscious intervention (that is, people experienc-
ing non-volitional love endings) are. In non-volitional cases, the person
may conceive of a future with the other, but this future simply does
not make sense anymore. That is, the person in a non-volitional ending
experiences the counterpart of the existential feeling at the beginning
of love. While for the person falling in love ‘things make sense’, for the
person falling out of love ‘things do not make sense anymore’: the future
within the love narrative has lost intelligibility. Thus, in a non-volitional
ending, there is a shift in existential feeling: one’s sense of reality is not
bound to the love narrative anymore. This shift, which has come upon
oneself and may even be unwelcome, obliterates the momentum of the
love narrative. However, falling out of love in this way may still require
‘recognition and reorientation’ and may still be emotionally distressing
due to not having a new set possibilities that are intelligible; so some
people experiencing non-volitional love endings may also have to engage
their narrative abilities in the sense described. In essence, then, the com-
bination of the exercise of narrative thinking backward and forward
may both allow people to restore their openness to new possibilities and
to give content to these possibilities.
Now, two questions may arise here. The first question is whether
all non-volitional endings are experienced as losses; the answer to
that question is no, they are not. Recall Walker’s example of a sudden
conversion, that is, of an overnight shift in existential feeling and imme-
diate re-orientation toward the new permanent existential feeling, with
instant momentum given to the narrative of ‘being a convert’. I said that
in the context of love, this could not be universalized but could apply
to cases of love at first sight. Equally, it is not implausible that one can
fall out of love suddenly. A betrayal or a discovering that the other per-
son has done something abhorrent, for example, may cause someone to
experience the shift in existential feeling and the disruption of narrative
momentum fast. Immediately falling in love with someone new (what is
known as a ‘re-bound’) or even an exciting new career may come with
its new future possibilities attached, removing the need to do the work
to find these out. Arguably, it could be said that falling out of love is,
more often than not, less painful than being the one someone falls out
of love with—less emotional distress may also entail lesser disruption
of one’s narrative abilities.
The second question is whether all people others fall out of love with
(all ‘victims of heartbreak’) do eventually fall out of love volitionally.
The answer, again, is no. Some people who find themselves at the end
of a love narrative without having fallen out of love do not make any
attempt to get over it. Being in unrequited love may be their new narra-
tive, and this may perdure for the rest of a person’s life. They may simply
fall out of love over time without doing anything, just by following new
habits and living through other events filling the gaps of how the future
will look, by giving momentum to new narratives. Still, the distinction
is useful to differentiate between the two main cases involving narrative
capacities in a way that gives closure to the process of narrative momen-
tum with existential feeling I have described in this chapter, from the
beginning to the end of love.
7.5 Epilogue: Further Considerations

To conclude, I briefly respond to two potential worries with my account.
The first one is that I may be endorsing an account of love that, in virtue
of focusing on self-understanding, is too egoistic and/or individualistic.
This is an objection that Helm (2010, 10–20) directs to multiple accounts
of love, and particularly to Cocking and Kennett’s which I employ as my
model here. Specifically, Helm’s concern is that the lovers are simply recip-
ients of the other’s interpretation and direction (2010, 259). It is not to be
understood from my discussion that I see love as passive. First, because
the direction and interpretation are mutual and a result of interaction over
time; second, because concurrent to their self-narratives the lovers are
creating joint narratives that also make their way to their respective self-
concepts (I remain agnostic to whether this amounts to the achievement of
a ‘single evaluative perspective’, which Helm argues for).
The second worry has to do with the idea that reconstructing our past
or re-imagining our future may lead us to lie to ourselves to the point of
delusion, particularly at the end of the love narrative. One may, for exam-
ple, look back and re-interpret minor frictions as episodes of abuse, or
come to believe that what she thought were episodes of love were in fact
just episodes of emotional dependence. We may want to know that it is
possible for some people to get this wrong, particularly given that memory
is unreliable and that we are highly incentivized to re-interpret our past
in a way that feels better due to the self-regulatory powers of narrative
(Ratcliffe 2016; Bortolan 2021). This discussion on the dangers of revi-
sion should indeed be addressed in more detail, but I offer here a tentative
response from Goldie’s work. Goldie recognizes that in situations that
we cannot comprehend (‘how could he possibly fall out of love when we
were so happy?’, a heartbroken lover may ask) it may be tempting to make
up a fitting story. However, he explains that narratives can be verifiable
in some ways (Goldie 2012, 154), for example, by asking other people
who were there. One can even ‘check oneself’ and have “an external per-
spective of an audience on my external perspective as a narrator” (Goldie
2012, 159). For example, the heartbroken lover may already know about
herself that she tends to blame others for her own shortcomings. When
recollecting a particular argument with her former friend and formulating
the belief as an external narrator that the event was another example of
her friend always attacking her, she can still now question whether this
interpretation is, in fact, an example of her tendency of foregoing blame.
So, the fact that we revise our past should not be understood as a free pass
to re-invent ourselves completely. On that note, however, I should add
that I also agree with Goldie in that “the past ought to be permanently
open to re-assessment” (2012, 160). In fact, I am not opposed to what
Roman Altshuler calls “retroactive self-constitution”: narrating our past
may change not only our interpretations about the past, but also what in
fact those events were (2014, 115). Maybe the latter claim is too strong,
and we can only change our interpretations; or maybe not. In any case, we
shall leave the door open to the possibility of coming out of a relationship
and truthfully being able to say ‘I never really loved you’, regardless of
whether we actually went through all the stages of a love narrative.
It is worth noting that any attempt to discuss love raises at least as
many questions as it answers: on rationality, on shared agency, on the
possibility of true self-knowledge, on the influence of structural factors.
I am aware that more needs to be discussed on the changes in love
throughout time with respect to these and other issues, but here I have
offered a thread on two concepts—narrative momentum and intelligibil-
ity—which hopefully paves the way for further analyses and reveals how
the experience of love is an excellent case to achieve a more complex and
nuanced concept of what self-understanding itself is.
Notes
1. I assume here that self-understanding is shaped relationally, at least in part. I do
not differentiate between romantic love and friendship since I do not find the dis-
tinction of love into ‘types’ useful or accurate—see Helm (2010, 4) and Harcourt
(2016, 39–40) for further backing on this position; and Jollimore (2022, 90–93)
for an argument in favor of differentiating romantic love from friendship.
2. For a skeptical view of the connection between self-knowledge and our pro-
jections into the future, see Uku Tooming and Kengo Miyazono’s chapter in
this volume.
3. Like Jollimore (2022, 122–124), I think that in some case it may be possible
to determine, a posteriori, that one fell in love at first sight in the past.
4. One may say that what keeps the person in the PhD is not the momentum
of the narrative of doing a PhD, but the fact that one has made a long-term
commitment: “One who has decided to do something is thereby committed
to do that thing… If one is subject to a commitment, reason requires one to
act in accordance with that commitment” (Gilbert 2014, 31). I have stated
that narrative is only one dimension of self-understanding or experience, so
the notion of narrative momentum is not incompatible with the notion of
commitments (in fact, it may be that they are related, and the momentum is
preserved insofar one has reasons, or that reasons are provided by the exist-
ence of momentum, for example).
5. For a more detailed summary of the notion of existential feeling, see Anna
Bortolan’s chapter in this volume.
6. My claims here may give rise to a question and a worry. The question is why
using the notion of existential feeling and not other like mood or sentiment;
and the worry is that love clearly having an object means that it cannot
be an existential feeling, given that existential feelings are non-intentional.
Regarding the former, I acknowledge that any view of mood as a background
affective orientation with an existential component may be compatible with
my account here. With respect to the worry about intentionality, I do think
that love is intentional, i.e., there is something or someone that we (fall in)
love, and it would not make sense to say simply “I love” as a state one is in
in the same way it may make sense to say “I am depressed”. On that note, I
only claim here that the existential feeling of intelligibility is a component of
love that first triggers and then maintains the momentum of love. One can
feel that “things make sense” without that feeling being about anything in
particular, and it is this feeling that triggers and keeps the momentum of the
love narrative. In any case, it would be worth having a discussion on whether
love is itself an existential feeling, and how that relates to the claim I am
making here and to the common assumption that love has intentionality.
7. This is even the case for authors who have explicitly criticized Cocking and
Kennett’s view, specifically Helm (2010, 259). Although Helm considers
Cocking and Kennett’s view insufficient to explain what love is, I consider
that interpreting each other’s character and directing each other’s actions is
a component of what Helm considers love is: a pattern of emotions that has
the other as a focus and results in the shaping of a single evaluative perspec-
tive (2010, 260). If love is based in shared agency, it would be difficult to
argue that such shared agency does not incorporate these elements. Cocking
and Kennett’s view can be seen then as the basic foundation for a more com-
plex view of love, such as one that incorporates shared agency as a higher
order constitutive elements of love.
8. Here ‘trait’ is not to be interpreted as ‘character trait’, which comes with
unnecessary baggage. The notion of trait I use is compatible with the pos-
sibility of love being a mutual pattern of concern or a disposition, and very
close to the concept of practical identity: “descriptions[s] under which you
value yourself and find your life worth living and your actions worth under-
taking” (Korsgaard 1996, 101). Jones (2008, 271) sees ‘being in love’ as a
“practical-identity property” of persons that is embedded in a narrative; I am
very sympathetic to her view but here I use ‘trait’ with the aim of using the
most possibly neutral term.
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8 Transitional Boredom
On Boredom and Self-Knowledge
Antonio Gómez Ramos
8.1 Introduction
In his Arcades Project, Walter Benjamin retells a story about what
he calls “the epidemic expansion of boredom in the 1840s in France”
(Benjamin 1983, 165). A famous Parisian psychiatrist is consulted by
a new patient. His complains are about “the malaise of the time”—
he feels no desire for life, he is bored. “You lack nothing, the doctor
answers, all you need is some distraction. You should go any evening
to M. Debureau’s show, and life will look very differently to you”. The
patient replies: “Monsieur, I am Debureau”.
The story is interesting for our inquiry into boredom and self-knowl-
edge in at least three respects. For one thing, by referring to the alleged
boredom epidemic in France, it points at the historicity or, in other
words, at the social conditioning of boredom. This extremely subjective
and isolating mood is presented as a product of social conditions, of how
collective life is shaped through history. It can become “epidemic” at a
certain time, as in the beginnings of modern capitalism in the 19th cen-
tury, in Benjamin’s account. Secondly, the person who feels boredom does
know about herself in a way to which others have no access and cannot
imagine, but this self-knowledge or self-certainty implies no self-trans-
parency and is by no means satisfactory. At least, she, or Mr. Debureau
in this case, feels the need to consult a psychiatrist about it. Thirdly and
lastly, entertainment, distraction, can be a disguise for boredom and an
escape from it, but those who really know what entertainment is about
are the most affected by boredom and feel constrained by it.
Moreover, the story points at the difficulties in defining boredom.
Debureau cannot really explain what happens to him, and the doctor
has not much to say either: a lack of desire whose remedy is distraction.
The remedy might be inadequate, but it might also be that there is noth-
ing wrong with Debureau at all. At the same time, boredom can affect
anyone; particularly, such is Benjamin’s point, anyone in modern soci-
ety, with its capitalism, its individualism, and its disenchanted world.
The story also hints that the bored person, Debureau, unhappy as he is,
DOI: 10.4324/9781003310945-11
Transitional Boredom 169
knows more than the common people who are unconsciously caught in
entertainment, he knows even more than the psychiatrist. But he is left
alone to himself and must undertake something with his knowledge and
his loneliness. Benjamin doesn’t go that far in this passage, but it might
be implied that there is a positive side in the mood of boredom, some-
thing having to do with knowledge about oneself and about the world.
In short, boredom has something to do not only with pain, with a lack
of desire, but also with self-knowledge and with the social environment,
as the story ironically shows. However, the relations between these ele-
ments seem confusing, blurred. Boredom, while it can constrain person-
ality, can also make a person stand out over the standards of her fellow
human beings. Under these circumstances, can boredom be a source of
self-knowledge, or does it rather hinder one’s access to oneself? Is it a
purely negative mood or does it have something positive in itself? As we
shall see in this chapter, it can be both, depending on the kind of boredom
or, rather, on the level of boredom a person is experiencing; and every
level can also have negative and positive consequences for self-knowl-
edge. We’ll have to explore, then, both evaluations of boredom. But first,
we should try to clarify what is this mood we are talking about.
It is certainly not easy to define boredom. As a state of mind, as a
mood, it can be similar to melancholy, to depression, to anxiety, to nau-
sea. But it is usually considered more trivial than those affective phe-
nomena. It lacks the charm of melancholy, it is not recognized as an
illness, like depression or even anxiety. Anyone can get bored at some
point. Moreover, it cannot be placed unambiguously on either the sub-
ject- or the object-pole of experience; we cannot say clearly whether, for
instance, a book is boring, or it is boring for me. Maybe, as the saying
goes, there are not boring things, but bored people. It is also difficult
to correlate the feeling of boredom with any specific physiological pro-
cesses in the body. Only the biliousness associated with disgust might be
found in some sorts of boredom (Toohey 2012 loc. 1596).
The phenomenology of boredom, finally, is diverse, and the situations
and states of mind, or rather moods, that we associate with boredom can
be very different. You can get bored when you must stand in a queue for
a long time, or when you must wait too long at a train station, but that is
different from getting bored at a party where you don’t know any one and
nothing interesting happens, which is again different from when you are
doing a repetitive, mechanical task. Or you can be bored like Oblomov,
the protagonist of Goncharov’s novel with the same title. This is a man
who is not able to undertake anything in life, who lacks the energy and
resolution for working and for loving, who spends his whole life on an
armchair. In the 19th century, Oblomov became the literary archetype
of boredom, but his is a different kind of boredom than waiting for the
bus to come. However, someone could object with a piece like Waiting
for Godot, which is a mixture of both situations, Oblomov’s wasted life
170 Antonio Gómez Ramos
and the trivial waiting for the train. There is a common thread to them
both, and a good deal of contemporary literature has worked on it. This
commonality is also the reason why we can ask philosophically about
boredom in general and its potentialities for self-knowledge.
In view of this diversity in the phenomenology of boredom, we should
first try to establish a typology for the sake of clarity. There have been
many proposals for that, which seems inevitable, given how undefined the
concept of boredom is. Milan Kundera, for instance, lists three types: “pas-
sive boredom: the girl dancing and yawning; active boredom: kite-lovers;
and rebellious boredom: young people burning cars and smashing shop
windows” (Kundera 1998, 15). This classification is not very useful here,
since it focuses on the effects of boredom or, rather, on the reactions the
subject adopts to her feeling bored, not on the mood itself. That these reac-
tions are a direct effect of boredom is evident only in the case of yawning;
you must perform some psychological inferences if you state that someone
devotes herself to a hobby or smashes shop windows because she is bored.
Anyway, all these reactions come after the bored subject has reestablished
a relation with herself and with the world. I shall discuss below how all
three might be considered failures of the subject in coping with her bore-
dom and, therefore, failures of self-knowledge.
Another typology, proposed by Martin Doehlemann (1991, 64), con-
siders more closely the feeling of boredom itself.
1 Situational boredom (Situative Langeweile), as when one is waiting

for the bus or listening to a lecture.
2 Boredom of satiety, as when one gets too much of something. This
too much can bring to the “daily monotony, the penetrating omni-
presence of banalities and monotony”.
3 Existential boredom, which he defines as the “gnawing feelings of
a deadened interior, an idling of the soul and the world’s poverty of
meaning or lack of content” (1999, 65).
4 Creative boredom, the “mother of the muses”, as Goethe said.
When someone creates something new out of a boring situation, as
it is supposed to be the case for artists or scientists.
Doehlemann specifies that these are ideal types. All of them can combine
with each other, and one of them predominates. Nevertheless, on closer
inspection, I would say that they are of a different kind, or that they
happen at different levels. Creative boredom is rather a sort of happy
reaction to a situation of boredom, and I shall discuss it as such below.
The boredom of satiety can be very similar to existential boredom, or it
can merely be the consequence of having too much of the same stimulus,
as when a bored person watches repeatedly the same kind of TV pro-
grams or plays the same game; but these stimuli were sought as a remedy
to a previous boredom. To that extent, this boredom of satiety is derivate
from a previous mood or situation.
I would propose then that, in this inquiry about self-knowledge and bore-
dom, we consider existential and situational boredom. The latter seems to
be a more casual one, it normally comes to its end—the train eventually
arrives. It can be experienced by humans and by animals too, as the dog
in the flat waiting to be walked. The former is much more serious and can
negatively affect a whole life, as it is the case with the already mentioned
Oblomov, or with Dino, the protagonist of Alberto Moravia’s novel La
noia (translated into English as The Empty Canvas, or Boredom).
Some authors have disputed that there is such a thing as existential
boredom. Peter Toohey, for instance, argues that it is neither an emotion,
nor a feeling. Defined by him as a “powerful sense of emptiness, isola-
tion and disgust in which the individual feels a persistent lack or interest
in and difficulty with concentrating” (Toohey 2012, loc. 1723), it is only
a concept for something general, constructed with many other feelings
(chronic boredom, depression, frustration, disgust, apathy, and so on).
Toohey explicitly takes a naturalistic approach to emotions, which is
consistent with his denying that there is a cultural history of boredom,
and that boredom emerges in Modernity adopting the form of some-
thing similar to existential boredom.
Nevertheless, if we are to inquire on the possibility of self-knowl-
edge in boredom, I think it is more fruitful to stick to the notion of
some general, existential boredom and to consider it in its relation to
the situational one. As we shall see, most authors dealing with bore-
dom use eventually this same pair, though with different denomina-
tions. In his lectures on The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics,
Heidegger speaks of a superficial and a profound boredom (Heidegger
1995). Kracauer (1995), in a journalistic article not less insightful than
Heidegger’s lectures, speaks of a vulgar and a legitimate or radical bore-
dom. Flaubert, or rather his characters Bouvard and Pecuchet, distin-
guished a common boredom (ennui commun) and a modern boredom
(ennui moderne). Roughly, these classifications coincide, the vulgar or
common boredom being like the situational, something every person can
occasionally be exposed to in all historical times. It is, as Kracauer puts
it, something “which neither kills people nor awakens them to a new
life, but merely expresses a dissatisfaction that would immediately dis-
appear if an occupation more pleasant […] became available” (Kracauer
1995, 331). The profound boredom that pervades a whole subjectivity
and, in the extreme case, a whole existence, is rather a modern phenom-
enon, as Bouvard and Pecuchet note ironically, whereas Kierkegaard,
Heidegger, Kracauer, Benjamin, and others state it very seriously. At the
same time, for Heidegger and, in different ways, for Benjamin and other
authors we’ll be encountering below, this profound, not vulgar boredom
can also be the opportunity for authenticity, for truth. They propose to
look at the positive side of boredom.
In the end, the elaboration of the relation between existential and sit-
uational boredom is what makes boredom specifically human. Rather
than two different types of boredom, they represent levels at which a
person is forced to relate to temporality and to her own subjectivity, and
she can fail or succeed in doing so. In this sense, my claim in this chapter
will be that an analysis of such elaboration offers, too, the possibility
to discuss whether this mood of boredom constitutes an experience of
self-knowledge or rather reveals itself as a failure of subjectivity.
I will examine first the arguments by the authors that have focused on
the positive aspects of boredom and have stressed the truth and knowl-
edge that can be gained from the experience of boredom (1. Embrace your
boredom. The positive side). Then, I will turn to the negative side of it, that
is, to those critics of boredom who see in it a form of alienation and ano-
nymity, mostly provoked by the conditions of modern society (2. Social
alienation and boredom. The negative view). Finally, after assessing both
arguments, I will try to take advantage of both sides and focus on the
question of reflectivity, whether boredom is a reflective phenomenon or
not (3. In favor of a transitional boredom). My final suggestion will be
that boredom, undefinable as it is, should be considered a transitional
mood which can offer a limited self-revelation for the individual. It is not
only a state of alienation and but also self-loss. It can also open a space for
self-reflection and self-knowledge, although it does not bring any substan-
tial knowledge that can be articulated in a proposition. In going through
these three steps, I’ll be highlighting those aspects of boredom that are
important for the question of self-knowledge, particularly temporality,
reflectivity, and the sort of selfhood implied in being bored.
Though I will proceed analytically, the many mentions to the moder-
nity of boredom I have made so far forbid us to completely neglect a
historical approach. A perspective from cultural history ought not to
be set aside when dealing with emotions, and I’ll be trying to keep it
in sight whenever is necessary. But for the systematic research we are
carrying out in this volume, I am going to focus on the possibilities of
self-knowledge that boredom can open, and how the historical shaping
of the emotion of boredom can influence such possibilities and the self-
reflectivity of the bored person.
8.2 Embrace Your Boredom. The Positive View on

Boredom, and a Question about Reflectivity
In the surge of boredom studies over the last decades, a good amount of
literature has made its way vindicating the positive significance of bore-
dom for human life. “Learn to endure boredom” seems to be a frequent
advice that can be found, not only in much of recent self-help literature,
but also in a list of philosophers and artist advocating the virtues of
boredom. The list goes back to Pascal and can be filled with Nietzsche,
Kierkegaard, Heidegger, and Benjamin himself, each of them for dif-
ferent reasons. A survey of this list could find two kinds of arguments
why boredom ought to be valued positively. The first one is based on its
potential for creativity. The second is rather a moral one and has to do
with some sort of truth about the world and about oneself that can (only)
be encountered in boredom.
The argument for creativity is an easy one, it is eventually the ground
for the creative boredom Doehlemann proposed above. Benjamin himself
offered it in a much-quoted passage from his essay The Storyteller,
where he famously wrote that “Boredom is the dream bird (Traumvogel)
that hatches the egg of experience. A rustling in the leaves drives her
away. Her besting places—the activities that are intimately associated
with boredom—are already extinct in the cities and are declining in the
country as well” (Benjamin 1992, 86). The critical point in Benjamin is
that Modernity leaves less and less places for this dream bird to hatch its
eggs. In a similar tone, Nietzsche wrote that “boredom is the unpleasant
calm that precedes creative acts, creatives spirits endure it, while lesser
natures flee from it” (Nietzsche 1910, 79); in other passages, he criticizes
modern individuals for their incapacity to endure boredom. Coming
from a very different tradition, Bertrand Russell could argue that “bore-
dom has been one of the great motive powers throughout the historical
epoch” (Russell 1932, 57), and that “a generation that cannot endure
boredom will be a generation of little men”.
More recently, the best-selling German Korean philosopher Byung
Chul Han has criticized contemporary generations, inhabitants of the
neoliberal world, for their incapacity for boredom, which robs them of
creativity (Han 2010). Eventually, in attunement with Han’s arguments
and borrowing both from folks-psychology and some oriental wisdom,
it appears to be fashionable among firms and corporations to have
their employees spend some empty time on meditation and on doing
nothing—a strategy of boredom that is expected to improve their pro-
ductivity and capacity for innovation.
Setting aside the question of whether Benjamin’s dream bird and
Nietzsche’s unpleasant calm before the storm are the same as the planned
empty time in contemporary firms, the question is whether this produc-
tive, transitory boredom before creativity is somehow related to the pro-
found or existential boredom that, according to some critics, causes pain
to modern people and leaves life void of meaning. Indeed, Benjamin’s and
Nietzsche’s descriptions look more like the melancholy usually attributed
to the genius, or to artists in general. These also are said to have gone
through a non-productive, even painful time out of which their creations
emerge. However, profound boredom can be identified precisely when
someone is unable to endure the empty time and the unpleasant calm
and create something out of it. By the way, empirical evidence rather sug-
gests that real boredom, such as in a repetitive mechanical labor, rarely
unleashes creativity in those who are doing it (Danckert & Eastwood
2020, 110). Nonetheless, I would not discard the argument about creativ-
ity via boredom, not least because creativity, to the extent that it implies
the self-expression of the creative person, can also be seen as a mode of
self-knowledge. But, for some, and previously to a potential creativity,
deep boredom has a more direct relation to moral and epistemic virtues,
to the possibility of (self-)knowledge that is hidden in boredom. This
makes the second argument for the positivity or boredom.
A poet, Joseph Brodsky, can guide us into this second argument. His
speech “In praise of Boredom”, held in 1989 at Harvard, was kind of
a landmark and is frequently quoted in publications from the so-called
Boredom Studies: “When hit by boredom, go for it. Let yourself be
crushed by it, submerge, hit bottom” (Brodsky 1995, 108). Brodsky’s
argument is that boredom “represents pure, undiluted time in all its
repetitive, redundant, monotonous splendor”. This repetitive time is
infinite, and its infinity, as experienced in boredom, teaches you “your
utter insignificance. You are finite, times tells you in a vice of boredom”,
and “the more you learn about your size, the more humble and more
compassionate you become to your likes”. Besides, finitude and hum-
bleness are linked with sensitivity and the capacity for having emotions
like “joy, fears, compassion” (109). In short, boredom—a fate that we
cannot avoid, as Brodsky emphasizes to his listener—has above all a
formative value in that it shows the self its own finitude and cultivates
in it a sensitivity that has a moral effect (compassion) as well as a richer
experience of life and of oneself. There is no self-deception in boredom,
and this is the beginning of self-knowledge.
In referring to time, to the presence of pure time in boredom, Brodsky
was retaking the main motive Heidegger introduced in his long and
dense lectures on the Grundbegriffe der Metaphysik sixty years earlier,
translated in English as The Fundamental Concepts of Metaphysics
(Heidegger 1995). For the German-speaker, it comes as something
natural to associate boredom with time—the German word for boredom,
Langeweile, means literally “long time”, or “long while”.1 It expresses the
feeling of an unbearably long and empty time, opposite to the short time
(Kurzweil) of distraction and entertainment. It is in profound boredom,
Heidegger wrote, when the Dasein is “nullified by the temporal horizon”
and the “revelation of the essence of time” occurs.
Heidegger distinguishes first a superficial boredom, as when attending
a lecture or waiting for the train. It is obviously a situational boredom,
and we react to it, says Heidegger, by looking at a watch, which is very
indicative of how time is entangled with boredom. There can be many
pastimes to situational boredom, but they lead, suggests Heidegger, to
a first kind of profound boredom: we spend the time at a party with
friends, everything is pleasant, is distracting, we do not look at the
watch, but when we are back home, we feel empty. We realize it was only
pastime. Profound boredom proper comes at a deeper level, when it is
not just that one gets bored, but that getting bored becomes impersonal:
“Es ist einem langweilig”, “it is boring”, and this “it”—as Svendsen
suggests—is boredom itself. “Boredom bores”, which makes for a very
Heideggerian expression. This is existential boredom, the real profound
boredom that “drifting here and there in the abysses of our existence
like a muffling fog, removes all things and men and oneself along with it
into a remarkable indifference. This boredom reveals being as a whole”
(Heidegger 1995, 110).
Leaving aside Heidegger’s metaphors, his arguments run as follows.
We are normally asleep in our everyday pastimes, and this sleep con-
ceals the true possibilities we have. Actual life—and especially modern
life—is a life “fleeing from the fundamental”. But in profound boredom,
Dasein is thrown back to itself. When we are profoundly bored, “we
now have been compelled to listen, being compelled in the sense of that
compelling force which everything properly authentic about Dasein pos-
sesses, and which accordingly is related to Dasein’s innermost freedom”
(Heidegger 1984, p.136).
Summarily, I would understand Heidegger’s thesis as that, in bore-
dom, the self, not having anything to do, being stripped of her everyday
personality, is brought to a naked encounter with itself and, as Svendsen
puts it, “the self that is there is thrown to its own devices” (Svendsen
2008, loc. 1934). In profound boredom, you are purely yourself, not
someone lost in the pastimes that make up your everyday life. And this
pure yourself is pure time and pure being. Your “innermost freedom”.
The idea that in boredom the self is confronted with itself can be found in
many other authors arguing for the moral virtues of this mood. Nietzsche,
too, would write that “he who completely entrenches himself against
boredom also entrenches himself against himself” (Nietzsche 1988, 641).
Heidegger develops this point systematically, insisting that it is a matter
of resolution if one is ready to “awaken boredom” and to endure it; reso-
lution to give boredom room to affect one, not fleeing in distraction, thus
reaching authenticity and freedom. It is implied that not everybody can do
it; not, in any case, the masses that inhabit modern society.2 Only a few
ones can, although the possibility remains open to all. It is striking that
Heidegger assigns to profound boredom the same function that he assigned
predominantly to anxiety in his main writings. Surely both can overlap at
some point; but boredom is stripped of the tragedy-like character of anxi-
ety, and it is a much more common experience. Somehow, boredom is even
more real, because, whereas in anxiety Dasein is confronted with noth-
ingness, in boredom it is being as a whole and pure time what is revealed.
Now, despite these emphatical pleas for the capacity for enduring bore-
dom and for its virtues as an opportunity of self-encounter, it remains
unclear what kind of self the Dasein comes to encounter in the pres-
ence of boredom, in other words, what kind of self-knowledge and self-
understanding boredom brings. Brodsky talks about humbleness and
compassion, and Heidegger, about temporality, authenticity, and free-
dom. Is this a knowledge about every self, or about the self who is pres-
ently experiencing that boredom? There is also the question of whether
boredom is just an opportunity for self-encounter along with other pos-
sible candidates like anguish or even joy, or whether it is a necessary
stage in the path of self-knowledge, a proof the subject must necessarily
endure. Both questions are related to each other. Which self-knowledge
is achieved in boredom—or which part of the self is revealed in this
experience? And how unavoidable is the experience?
There is at least one compelling reason for discarding the idea that bore-
dom is a necessary stage on the path to self-knowledge. The earliest and
still paradigmatic models of self-examination, as we find them in classical
ancient doctrines, never refer to any sort of mood like boredom. The sen-
tence gnothi seauton, nosce te ipsum, “Know thyself”, that was repeat-
edly asserted as the beginning of life-wisdom, did not presuppose the state
of inner emptiness, nor of the dull, undiluted time that usually describes
boredom today. For Socrates, Plato, and the Stoics, you don’t have to get
bored to know yourself and to give an account of your own life; it was
rather a matter of thinking, meditation, maybe loneliness—although it
is disputable that the Ancients were ever alone. The philosopher and the
wise person sought to live in conversation with fellow philosophers.
This brings us to the question of the historicity of boredom and the
generally admitted statement that this is a typically modern feeling, a
product of Romanticism (Svendsen 2008), or of capitalism (Benjamin,
Adorno, others). On this view, boredom is an unintended result of the
modern organization of life, of social life and working time. As such, it
should be considered the more democratic successor to medieval accidia
and to Renaissance and Early Modern melancholy and ennui. To be
clear—this thesis of the modernity of boredom does not imply that
human beings did not experience something like boredom in premodern
times. Surely, they also had to go through periods of empty time devoid
of any stimuli, periods of waiting, they also had to perform repetitive,
mechanical tasks. But it was more the sort of what we have called “situa-
tional boredom”. Living in a world that was not secularized yet, that was
still “enchanted” or “not disenchanted”, it was much easier for people
to find meaning in nature and in rituals of everyday life (Dalle Pezze &
Salzani 2009, 8), so that their situational boredom did not evolve into
the sort of chronic and profound boredom that has been such a frequent
issue in modern philosophy and literature. Boredom was not an issue
in the ancient world, with the exception of Seneca, who deals with it in
his dialogue On the tranquility of the mind. The fact that the English
word “boring” is a neologism coined in the 18th century, as well as some
words opposite but associated to it, like “interesting” and “thrilling”, is
evidence enough that this was a new experience inherent to Modernity
for which new words were needed.3 No doubt, a cultural history of
boredom requires a broader elaboration that lies beyond the scope of
this chapter and has been already carried out by others (Svendsen 2008;
Dalle Pezze & Salzani 2009; Toohey 2012), but, for the purposes of
my argument here, it suffices to notice that the Ancients didn’t give
much thought to this kind of experience and, even if they felt it, it never
occurred to them that it might be a path toward self-knowledge.
Thus, this cultural history perspective suggests not only that the emo-
tions change over time, but also that the access to one’s own self is varia-
ble. Perhaps, too, that the self that is revealed in every emotion might be
of a different kind. Apparently, the Ancients didn’t get bored, or at least
didn’t talk about it (Seneca is the exception); and they had an elaborate
doctrine about self-examination and giving an account of one’s own acts.
Moderns, at least since the Romantics—with the precedent of Pascal4 —
do talk about boredom. They both criticize it as a form of self-alienation
or self-concealment and can also praise it as a source of truth and an
opportunity to self-encounter. For Heidegger, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, or
Brodsky, the self can properly attain self-awareness when it is experienc-
ing the emptiness of the world and of its own life, when it feels the infinity
of time, or, in other accounts, the emptiness and infinity that define bore-
dom. If pressed with the question about the kind or part of the self they are
meaning, they would probably answer, for all their admiration to ancient
Greece, that they don’t mean the same as Socrates and Aristotle. Nor do
they hint at the self-certainty of the Cartesian “I” either. Heidegger is par-
ticularly emphatic on this point about Descartes. And, surely, it wouldn’t
be the modern individual, which is precisely the kind of egocentric self
which they see caught in pastime and trying to flee boredom. It would
rather be a self that does not feel in control of the world nor of its own life
and thoughts—but it is alone with itself and with its own limits.
In other words, the historicity of boredom points to the variations in
the self that is revealed or even realized through self-awareness, and to
the kind or reflectivity that is at stake when boredom enters the scene.
But the question of reflectivity is not an obvious one. Is boredom a reflec-
tive emotion, a feeling the subject can reflect on while she is feeling it?
Svendsen (2008) and, along with him, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, or
Brodsky say that it is. As a source of self-knowledge, as a possible path to
self-awareness, boredom can be a highly reflective emotion. Some exam-
ples from literature seem to confirm it. Oblomov is very aware of his lack
of energy and desire. In La noia, the mentioned novel by Alberto Moravia,
the protagonist, Dino, tells his entire life story and gives an account of
it as inescapable boredom, in a fine exercise of existentialist reflectivity.
Heidegger, on the contrary, was reluctant to the notion of reflectivity,
because he associated reflection with a dialectical self-consciousness that
is something secondary to the more primordial conception of the self
as Dasein. As we have seen, according to Heidegger, what the Dasein
discovers in profound boredom is not it-self, but “being as a whole and
pure time”. Instead of the self-mirroring of reflectivity, the Dasein comes
to an insight into the pure Being to which it belongs. Indeed, there is
self-awareness, but the emphasis lies on “awareness”, not in the “self”.
In a way, boredom dissolves the self, rather than confirming it.
There is, however, a different approach to this loss of the self in bore-
dom and to the absence of reflectivity. On this approach, we come to the
negative side of boredom, as it is highlighted by many authors, especially
those coming from critical theory. If reflective self-knowledge entails a
capacity to give an account of one’s own feelings and mental states, the
numbing effects of boredom rather suggest that there is no reflectivity in
it. Thus, Elizabeth Goodstein has convincingly argued that the peculiar-
ity of boredom is that it is a non-reflective awareness (Goodstein 2004), or
that the experience of boredom is a non-reflective experience. This comes
because boredom is mute: a person can be bored without knowing it, and
if she knows it and is able to pronounce the sentence “I am bored”, she
lacks the language to articulate and express this experience. “The inter-
nal dynamic of boredom encloses the foreclosure of reflection of which it
is a symptom” (Goodstein 2004, 419). The modern subject, being unable
to articulate her experiences, to reflect on them—a point that Heidegger,
Benjamin, and many critics of Modernity would endorse—is also unable
to articulate her own boredom. Even more, boredom, which she defines
as an “experience without qualities”, can be understood as the incapacity
to elaborate one’s experience, to find meaning in it (Goodstein 2004).
It is this incapacity what alienates the subject and blocks any possibil-
ity of self-knowledge. Boredom, then, is non-reflective. But, contrary to
Heidegger, this non-reflectivity is seen as a negative feature. This differ-
ence is probably due to the fact that they are dealing with different kinds
of boredom or, perhaps, different stages in the experience of boredom. I’ll
come back to this issue in Section 8.3 of this chapter.
As a matter of fact, this incapacity for articulating one’s own feeling
of boredom makes a good case for Edward Harcourt’s argument in this
volume questioning the privilege of self-knowledge over other-knowledge
(see Chapter 3). At a certain point, boredom blocks the possibility of
introspection, and it must be a second person that tells one: “You are
bored” for one to realize it. Surely, this other-knowledge can be inade-
quate, as in the case of Debureau’s psychiatrist, who can recognize bore-
dom in his patient, though he does not know how to treat it properly. But
it is a major effect of boredom that it hinders the profoundly bored person
from having access to herself, so that she doesn’t know what is wrong
with her life and is dependent on what others know and say about her.
We have now reached the point where we can turn to the negative
sides of boredom. Let us see the arguments of these critics.
8.3 Social Alienation and Boredom. The Negative View
A negative view on boredom is, certainly, more widespread than the
positive one I have sketched in Section 8.2. For the common wisdom,
boredom is unpleasant and is unwelcomed by the subject affected by it.
Schopenhauer might have stated that boredom is the only alternative to
suffering (2010, 338); however, in any case, it is still a form of suffering.
A person who is bored cannot help feeling that her life is being wasted. To
this, a critical observer would add that a deeply bored person has failed to
realize her own subjectivity. Boredom is not only the source of all evils as
Kierkegaard once said but also is an evil in itself (Kierkegaard 1987, 285).
However, critics rarely stop at the individual when they search for
the moral responsibility for boredom and its effects. Indeed, a religious
thinker like Pascal still focused on the individual. He wrote that we
are bored because we are “not hungry for spiritual matters”; by nature,
humans cannot tolerate “to be in a state of complete tranquility, without
passions, without business, without diversion, without effort” (Pascal
1995, 515).5 The gloom and sadness that come from this natural inca-
pacity can only be cured through religion. Boredom, as negative as it
can get, would then be a personal matter. But, for most modern authors,
the social environment that determines the conditions of life has a lot
to answer for the boredom of the individuals that inhabit it. Boredom is
not just an inner state of mind, but a characteristic of the world in which
such a mind lives, and since that world is socially produced, social crit-
icism is the proper stance here. Individuals suffering from boredom just
happen to live in societies that have created the conditions for it. Modern
societies are of this kind. At least, no other society in the Western history
has thematized boredom with such intensity. I have already mentioned
how Flaubert’s heroes, Bouvard and Pecuchet, simply used “modern
boredom” to refer to profound boredom.6
Historians and cultural critics have identified a variety of reasons
for the cultural change that apparently turned boredom into an “epi-
demic” mood among modern individuals. There are, first, reasons hav-
ing to do with political economy and the subsequent organization of
everyday life. Authors from critical theory with a Marxist background
have explored this line of thought. The repetitive, alienating work in the
modern factory is boring because it robs the worker of her subjectivity,
as the young Marx showed; and leisure time is less free time and more
a “complement to alienating labor” (Adorno 1953, 330): in free time,
there is the same absence of self-determination as in the production pro-
cess. The upper classes of the 19th and early 20th centuries, with plenty
of free time and liberated from work, were not better off. A society that
exhaustively organizes time, working time as much as leisure time, can
only be grounded on the mood of time par excellence, namely, bore-
dom. That boredom is also a matter of social class, that it is unequally
distributed and that, despite social and technological transformations,
it still matters today, is an issue for sociological studies that lies beyond
the scope of this chapter.7 For our purpose now, it suffices to say that the
socio-economic organization of working and leisure time in Modernity
produces forms of alienation and anonymity whose mood is boredom,
and that such boredom, as a form of alienation, cannot be reflected on
by the subject suffering from it. As in Heidegger, the self is diluted in
this lack of reflection, but instead of discovering the “whole of being”,
the alienated individual lives unwarily, unhappy without knowing why.
An alternative explanation for the cultural change of Modernity
leading to boredom tries to focus on a deeper level than political econ-
omy. For Svendsen (2008), since the 18th century, modern societies strip
all meaning from the world and disengage the individual from tradi-
tions and conventions. The individual is then left alone with the task
and responsibility of organizing her own authentic, original self with a
meaningful life. That was the Romantic project, but the chances of get-
ting bored by (not) fulfilling this task are very high. Not for nothing was
boredom a discovery by the romantics. The psychoanalyst Adam Phillips
has defined boredom as the feeling of an empty subject in an empty
world (Phillips 1993, 73); which is to say that the point of departure in
Modernity is a world void of meaning, in which a subject with no other
original quality than her own selfhood or self-reference is charged with
the task of constructing her own personality and her own interesting
life. Stripped of premodern conventions and guides of life, the individual
doesn’t know where to address her desire, and so desire wanes: lack of
desire is a typical characteristic of boredom. Confronted with this vacu-
ity, an anxiety for meaning inevitably sparks, provoking the relentless
production of supposedly meaningful trivialities that are aimed to fill
the emptiness of boredom. So that, as Svendsen put it:
The more strongly individual life becomes the center of focus, the
stronger the insistence on meaning amongst the trivialities of every-
day life will become. Because man, a couple of centuries ago, began
to see himself as an individual being that must realize himself, every-
day life now appears to be a prison. Boredom is not connected with
actual needs but with desire.
(Svendsen 2008, loc. 345)
Thus, on the one hand, boredom is a mood created by the conditions of

modern life, that is, by work alienation, leisure, bureaucracy. At a deeper
level, it is the consequence of the disenchantment of the world and its loss
of meaning for the individual. On the other hand, that very modern life
imposes the task of self-creation, of constructing an original own subjec-
tivity out of that disenchantment. The easy strategy to apparently fulfill
the task is to forget boredom, to cover it with entertainment—as the
psychiatrist advises Debureau to do—the many trivialities of everyday
life are supposed to be a remedy for the loss of meaning of the world, and
for the subsequent boredom. The more modern a society becomes, the
more forms of entertainment it has to offer for its inhabitants. But such
trivialities, as Debureau himself knows, are eventually not less boring.
The mechanics of boredom is very simple. Boredom begins when
there are no stimuli able to draw the attention of the subject—that is
situational boredom. The first remedy is to create new stimuli, by offer-
ing some novelty. Sometimes, it suffices to reinforce a present stimulus,
for instance, “to turn the music louder”, and boredom disappears for
a while. But the repeated stimulus, the infinite succession of novelties
eventually becomes boring too, and one gets from situational boredom
to what Doehlemann was typifying as “satiety boredom”, which can
then easily evolve into profound or existential boredom. At least, to that
first level of profound boredom that Heidegger could identify after a
pleasant party with friends and superficial chatting that, back at home,
leaves us with a feeling of emptiness. Even our entertainment society
in 21st century, with video games and cellular phones always at one’s
disposal, where it is already technically impossible to get bored, threat-
ens to create a world of profoundly bored individuals.
Whatever the ultimate causes of modern boredom, capitalist economy
or cultural individualism,8 all critics agree that modern society, from the
19th century on, forces individuals into a mood of boredom while, at the
same time, it hinders the realization of their subjectivity. This mood is also
different from the kind of similar feelings that might be prevalent in pre-
vious historical periods. Thus, Goodstein has pointed out that “the rhet-
oric of melancholy comprised a Romantic longing for the reunification of
the world—a longing often overt in Benjamin and still palpable under the
veneer of renunciation in Adorno’s writings—”(Goodstein 2004, 440), but
the rhetoric of boredom is defined by the inexorable disenchantment of the
world. That is why boredom is different from melancholy, which is still full
of hope. In boredom, on the contrary, she concludes, in the hollow emp-
tiness of the self and the absence of meaning, “in the boredom that is so
ubiquitous in modern society, the melancholic hopefulness of Weltschmerz
has been burned out by nihilistic resignation” (Goodstein 2004, 440).
We can now leave the path of cultural critique. My point was to under-
score how the negative perspective on boredom highlights the alienation
of the self and the difficulties for individual self-knowledge and self-real-
ization. The general diagnosis is that these bored modern individuals are
alienated and have a very low degree of reflection about their own situation.
At this point, nevertheless, we can only conclude that the judgments
and evaluations on boredom seem to be full of contradictions. Being
bored is the opportunity for self-revelation and self-knowledge, and it
is a form of alienation in which the self lacks any understanding of itself
and resigns itself to a world devoid of meaning. It is reflective, in that it
allows self-knowledge, and it is unreflective, in that the subject is not able
to elaborate her own experience. It is a blessing that we should embrace,
it is a curse on human beings, particularly on modern human beings.
I would argue, however, that these differences in judgment are not real
contradictions; they rather point at different levels in boredom, and they
are inevitable given the undefinability of this mood. The mood called
boredom is applied to the traveler waiting at the airport for her delayed
flight to start, to the worker in a factory, to a rentier like Oblomov,
to a provincial, frustrated woman like Emma Bovary, to unemployed
young people in modern cities (who may eventually rebel by smashing
shops windows, as in Kundera’s rebellious boredom), to a superficial
person wasting her life in parties and trivial entertainment, to the pia-
nist playing the same wonderful Mozart piece for the seventh time this
week, to the artist in the unpleasant calm before creation… Some of
these boredoms are closer to the situational one; when the situation gets
chronic, boredom can become profound. But still, they are all forms
of boredom, and dependent on the author considering them, they all
can be redemptive or alienating. Most literature on boredom works on
this protean character of boredom and its lack of definition, which was
already hinted at in the story of M. Debureau. In the rest of the chapter,
I will discuss how these differences and levels of boredom can be useful
regarding the possibility of self-knowledge in boredom.
8.4 In Favor of a Transitional Boredom

On closer inspection, those who praise boredom and those who curse it
are not on opposite sides. They approach boredom from different angles,
varying from a descriptive to a normative one. The cultural critic making
a diagnosis of boredom as the “malaise of Modernity” is describing with
rather a sociologist eye what she sees as a frequent mood in modern indi-
viduals and is taking notice of how this form of suffering called boredom
prevents them from having a more flourishing life, from realizing their sub-
jectivity. The philosophers arguing for the virtues of boredom are making
a norm, a prescription, out of this description. They say: most of you are
bored, now you must take advantage of your boredom and profit from
it for your own sake. Boredom is your fate as human beings, but it has
something revealing for you. Embrace your boredom. Now, the “descrip-
tive approach” of the cultural critic also entails a normative component on
which her criticism can be grounded: the bored modern individual, because
of her alienation, cannot be reflective enough and fails in realizing her sub-
jectivity. In that sense, the cultural critic doesn’t diverge from the moral
philosopher. The latter goes from description to the norm. The former
can offer her description, a critical description, because she has previously
embedded the norm in it. But both are concerned with freedom and with
the realization of every one’s own subjectivity, a realization which implies
self-knowledge and self-awareness. Whether this self-realization requires
boredom, and precisely some kind of reflective boredom, remains an open
question. My claim will be that the plasticity of the notion of boredom
allows us to approach that question at different levels.
The issue of the reflectivity of boredom, for starters, cannot be decided
in one sentence. Do we know it when we are bored? We always know
it in situational boredom. When we must wait, we consciously look at
the watch (that in Heidegger’s times), or (nowadays) we grab the smart-
phone. As for profound or existential boredom, it is more difficult to
decide about reflectivity.
Do we know it when we are profoundly bored? According to
Goodstein, most modern people do not know, though they have a feel-
ing of unease and unhappiness. In the worst case, a person does not
know that she is bored even though she is fleeing boredom all the time.
She can say: “I am having fun. There are lots of interesting things and
entertainments in my life. And I love my job”. A thoughtful observer
might note that those interesting things are meaningless, that this per-
son is just anxious for novelties, for breaking news, superficial social
life and, especially in our days, that she spends most of her time with
her smartphone, or on social networks, where she gets a momentary
satisfaction that quickly requires a further stimulus—another message,
another input from Instagram or the like, and so on. For the observer,
this person is bored, deeply bored, but she covers her boredom with
all this entertainment; in some cases, with workaholism. She is uncon-
sciously following the advice of Debureau’s psychiatrist. If the observer
is a moralist, she would say that this person is fleeing from herself and
has no self-knowledge. It is a non-reflective boredom, and it remains like
that. Unless, at some point, she comes to feel the discomforting boredom
of satiety, and that is again an opportunity for self-reflection.
Or we might know that we are bored and are able to reflect on our
boredom. I mentioned above the case of Dino in Moravia’s novel. A
painter who offers a very well-articulated reflection of his entire life as
boredom. With a touch of political criticism, by the way, since Dino is
presented as a victim of his privileged social position. Dino can analyze
his boredom, can lucidly explain the many wrongs and mishaps of his
life as a product of his boredom, he is aware of his moral flaws. But is
this reflection on boredom still boredom? Is he still a bored subject? He
remains very pessimistic, he cures not; but if his feeling is boredom,
it is not the one as for the unreflecting person. Has he achieved some
self-knowledge? To the extent that he can produce a discourse about
himself and about his feelings, he has. He knows much about the mood
he is feeling, he faithfully describes it.
However, the ultimate cause of his boredom and unhappiness escapes
Dino. He does not know himself. A critic could even object to him that
through his careful explanations about his boredom and his misconduct he
is fleeing from himself too, that his self-reflection is sophisticated entertain-
ment. He is not avoiding boredom but rather prolonging it, playing with it.
He is not unlike the patient obsessively telling the therapist about her prob-
lems, only to avoid confronting them—she remains too self-centered and
that blocks the possibility of real self-knowledge. In the case of the bored
person reflecting about her boredom, the reflection can get into a vicious
circle, instead of making way to a liberation. It seems that this hyper-re-
flectivity is inherent to the dynamic of boredom, which is such that it can
reproduce itself again at every new level at which it is reflected.
This is probably the reason why those who advocate boredom, like
Brodsky and Heidegger, did not prescribe reflection on one’s boredom
but simply to “go for it, hit the bottom of it”, and thus to achieve a new
insight into the world (what Heidegger calls the “whole of being”), into
oneself and one’s own limitation and temporality. But, as we saw above,
it is not clear what kind of self is revealed at “the bottom of boredom”.
And, again, a critic might observe that having—and showing—too
much joy in embracing boredom and in the emptiness of time can turn
to an entertainment too, a pastime and a way of masking oneself instead
of reaching authenticity and the “innermost freedom”.
I have thus sketched three extreme positions regarding our attitudes
toward boredom. There is first the unreflective person who is not aware of
her boredom. Then, the hyperreflective person who cannot get free of her
boredom despite her many insights into it. Finally, the one who welcomes
and embraces boredom but risks falling back into self-deception again. It
doesn’t mean that boredom is the inescapable fate of human life. On the
contrary, each of the three positions offers an escape. The escapes func-
tion like what Alba Montes Sánchez and Alessandro Salice call emotional
mechanisms (see Chapter 9 in this volume). Each of the three positions
or levels has available an emotional mechanism by which the subject can
overcome her painful emotions, transmuting them into a different kind of
emotion, a more tolerable one. Distraction, reflection, embracing are pos-
sibilities that are always at one’s disposal, and that can be made use of;
but they can be failing mechanisms too, since each of them can turn into
the evil of boredom again whenever these escapes become a permanent
refuge. The mechanisms work only when they are activated “for a while”,
transitionally, because staying on them for too long opens the door to
boredom again—from distraction, to satiety, from reflection to a vicious
circle, from embracing, to disgust and self-deception.
All philosophers of boredom I have mentioned imply that we are
always situated between one of these three positions. Boredom encoun-
ters us from the outer world as empty time and absence of meaning, as a
monotony that we perceive as absurdity. This can occur either in a very
concrete situation—like waiting at an airport, or over a long period of
one’s life—like in unemployment, or in the lack of affective relations.
Once we are in such state, once we are minimally aware of our boredom,
“it opens up a space for self-reflection” (Svendsen 2008, loc. 1300). One
must decide what to do with oneself and the empty time. To evade it with
some immediate distraction is not a good idea. Debureau was certainly
wiser than the psychiatrist. This does not condemn distractions. They
belong to life as well. It doesn’t have to be video games. As Toohey (2012
loc. 2192) put it, “music, aerobic exercise and social interaction” are
antidotes against boredom, and they belong to life as much as boredom
itself. After reflection, any of them is a way to postpone boredom and,
sometimes, to know more about oneself. Or one can linger in reflection
and try to understand one’s boredom; maybe by embracing it, by not
escaping in any kind of distractions.
In cases of situational boredom—as in having to wait—embracing
boredom, accepting the empty hours at the airport while waiting, instead
of going for some easy distraction can be very sound for the psyche. In
the long term, to allow oneself to be bored is probably a preemptive
remedy against satiety and profound boredom. There are some peda-
gogical virtues in allowing individuals, especially children, to be bored
(Toohey 2012, loc. 2249). Situational boredom can also be morally
edifying, in the sense that Brodsky was arguing for: you learn humble-
ness, the infinity of time, the limitedness of oneself. But it does not bring
a substantial self-knowledge as such.
Profound boredom is a different thing. As we have been seeing, it is a
much more blurred notion, going from chronic boredom to existential
boredom. It can coincide with alienation and with a complete absence
of self-reflection and examination of one’s own life, as social critics have
attributed to modern individuals. It can develop into a sort of obsessive,
circular, isolating self-reflection, as it is the case for Dino or in a good
amount of existentialist literature. But it can also reveal something.
If one goes along with Heidegger, this something would be the hollow-
ness of the self and the indifference of all things. This is knowledge, but
not ultimate knowledge. And there are some dangers in dwelling just on
this point. It suffices to look at the consequences of Heidegger’s philoso-
phy, ranging from political extremism to nihilism to the search by some
interpreters of a kinship with Eastern philosophy. Matt Mackenzie’s
chapter in this volume shows that Eastern philosophy is much richer
and more complex than what some readings of Heidegger might find
in it. Political extremism, on the other hand, can be seen as the answer
Heidegger (and many of his contemporaries) chose to what he saw as
the vacuity and boringness inherent to Modernity; it has certainly been
related to boredom, also and especially in our postindustrial societies
(Van Tilburg & Igout 2017). Curiously enough, in discourses where all
these consequences are present, the issue of boredom disappears, though
not always the uneasiness that causes it.
The lesson is that one can take profound boredom seriously, though,
without going that far. These long periods of emptiness of time, of
“blank condensation of psychic life” (Phillips, 87), are part and parcel
of life and make up chapters in each one’s self-narrative. The knowledge
that they bring is very modest: one’s own limitation, that one is not
the center of the world, that “one may not be leading a charmed life”
(Phillips 1993, 87). But such periods, the mood of boredom in general,
open up the space for knowledge than can be attained in other moods,
or in creativity and agency. To this extent, boredom is not as much a
source of knowledge as the possible opening of a space where self-knowl-
edge starts. Which means that, although the threat of an empty time, of
having to wait, is always there, boredom—situational or existential—is
a gateway to self-knowledge a long as it is a transitional state.
Notes
1. It is worth mentioning that Langeweile, like “boredom” in English, was
coined in the 18th century, at the beginning of Modernity (Dalle Pezze &
Salzani 2009, 23).
2. Heidegger follows Kierkegaard, for whom “Those who bore others are plebe-
ians, the crowd; those who bore themselves are the chosen ones, the nobility”
(see Svendsen 2008, loc. 834). Also Kracauer differentiates a vulgar boredom
from a legitimate one that only the few can endure (Kracauer 1995).
3. The same goes for the German “Langeweile” and of the new senses acquired
by “ennui” in French or “aburrimiento” in Spanish around 1800. For a phil-
ological history of the new concept in different languages, see Dalle Pezze &
Salzani (2009), pp. 8ff.
4. I leave aside accidia and melancholy, that is, medieval and early moderns,
which are moods akin to boredom and determine modalities of accessing or
of blocking the access to one self—the Christian one, the Renaissance one.
See Dalle Pezze & Salzani (2009).
5. And he concludes: “Then he feels his nothingness, his abandonment, his
inadequacy, his dependence, his helplessness, his emptiness. At once from the
depth of his soul arises boredom, gloom, sadness, grief, vexation, despair.”
6. Surely, Baudelaire is the main author thematizing boredom in the 19th cen-
tury, and Benjamin refers explicitly to him but I am not going into this chap-
ter of cultural history.
7. For the social and political implications of boredom, see van den Berg &
O’Neill (2017).
8. It goes without saying that both are related. Which one is more radical or
predominant is not the issue here.
References
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Benjamin, W. (1983). Das Passagen-Werk. Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.
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London: Fontana.
Brodsky, J. (1995). “In praise of Boredom”, in On Grief and Reason, New York:
Harper.
Dalle Pezze, B. & Salzani, C. (2009). Essays on Boredom and Modernity.
Amsterdam; New York: Rodopi.
Danckert, J. & Eastwood, J. (2020). Out of my Skull. The Psychology of
Boredom. Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP.
Doehlemann, M. (1991). Langeweile? Deutung eines verbreiteten Phänomens.
Frankfurt: Suhrkamp.
Goodstein, E. (2004). Experience without Qualities. Boredom and Modernity.
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dom”, in Journal of Global and Historical Anthropology 78, 1–8.
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response to boredom”, European Journal of Social Psychology 46, 687–699.
9 Envy, Racial Hatred,
and Self-Deception
Alessandro Salice and Alba Montes Sánchez
9.1 Introduction
Envy is an unpleasant and heavily stigmatized emotion. Numerous
authors have remarked on the general reluctance people have to acknowl-
edge feeling it and on this emotion’s tendency to “mask” as resentment.
One of the greatest obstacles to knowing envy seems therefore to be envy
itself. But how does this self-deceptive masking take place and which con-
sequences does it have, beyond obstructing self-knowledge? These are the
main questions that we address in this chapter. To do so, we have chosen
to focus on an important but underexplored domain: the socio-political
domain and, more concretely, the link between envy and racial—or, more
broadly, xenophobic—hatred. Protasi (2021) has recently highlighted
some evidence in support of this link, but she also notes that very few
theorists have devoted any attention to it, and its nature remains opaque
and under-investigated. Part of the reason for this might precisely be that
self-deception plays a crucial role in masking this link, as we will argue.
But what exactly is the role of self-deception here?
By way of an answer to these questions, in what follows we will
defend three claims. First, in our view, the link between envy and racial
hatred can be accounted for in terms of an emotional mechanism (EM),
as described by Salice and Salmela (2022). The way we understand
them, EMs are processes whereby an emotion that is threatening to the
subject (in a sense to be specified below) is transmuted into another.
Second, typical of all EMs and, in particular, of the one linking envy
with hatred, is self-deception of the emoting subject. Third, this element
of self-deception has hindered a full appreciation of the role of envy as a
political emotion in generating racial hatred.
Admittedly, the domain where we focus our investigation is extremely
complex and involves many sensitive issues. Before we set out to defend
the above claims, we therefore want to establish a few caveats. First and
foremost, we do not want to reduce racism (or other forms of identi-
ty-based discrimination) to hatred—we understand racism as a complex
social phenomenon, including structural racism, implicit biases, and so
DOI: 10.4324/9781003310945-12
Envy, Racial Hatred, and Self-Deception 189
on. Many of the most insidious elements of racism have little to do with
hatred and are not necessarily instigated by hatred. Our claims, therefore,
are limited to some of the emotional components of some racist attitudes
exhibited by individuals and groups. However, within this framework,
we do contend that, in certain cases, racism is fuelled by hatred. Second,
in linking envy with hatred, we are not claiming that envy is the sole
contributing factor to (racial) hatred. Envy and hatred are two different
affective attitudes that involve different evaluations of their intentional
objects, and it is perfectly possible for individuals and groups to come
to hate others without envy or other emotions intervening as mediat-
ing factors. But we do maintain that, in the cases that we analyse here,
envy is one contributing factor (among others) that ignites racial hatred
and sometimes fosters acts of racism. Third, we operate with a broad
understanding of racial hatred by characterizing an episode of hatred as
“racial” when the target of hatred is evaluated as evil primarily based
on their social or group’s identity—regardless of whether this identity
is further specified as ethnic, cultural, religious, biological (“racial” in a
narrower sense), etc. To put this differently, it suffices for an instance of
hatred to qualify as racial, in the sense at stake in this chapter, that the
other is hated primarily because of their social identity.1
The arguments in this chapter proceed as follows. In Section 9.2, we
start with reviewing some evidence about the link between envy and
racial or xenophobic hatred. In Sections 9.3 and 9.4, we dwell upon the
premises of our arguments by summarizing the account of envy devel-
oped by Salice and Montes Sánchez (2019) and the theory of EMs devel-
oped by Salice and Salmela (2022). These two accounts are brought to
bear on the issue at stake in Section 9.5, which cashes out the envy-racial
hatred link in terms of two possible EMs. Section 9.6 elaborates on the
psychologically vicious form of self-deception that is typically involved
in these two EMs.
9.2 Evidence about the Link between Envy

and Racial Hatred
On a first approach, it might seem counterintuitive to claim that there is
an important link between envy and racist attitudes, or that envy might
be a significant ingredient of such attitudes. After all, racism implies con-
sidering oneself superior to another racial group, while envy implies feel-
ing disadvantaged or inferior to someone else (a rival), who has something
you lack and covet. This apparent contradiction might be part of the rea-
son why the role of envy is relatively underexplored in the context of rac-
ism (see Protasi 2021, ch. 5 for an overview). However, the contradiction
is only apparent: the two attitudes are not incompatible and the examples
that follow evidence that envy for a despised group is not uncommon. A
plausible explanation for the compatibility of the two emotions is that the
190 Alessandro Salice and Alba Montes Sánchez
feeling of inferiority in envy is highly localized and relative to a specific
good, quality, or advantage that is envied: it doesn’t involve a generalized
sense of inferiority, and it can be made compatible with seeing the envied
as inferior in other domains, as the following examples of envy linked to
racist attitudes or identity-based discrimination show.
The first example, and perhaps the most familiar one to most read-
ers, might be the case of antisemitism. It has been pointed out that envy
was an undercurrent of a lot of the anti-Jewish propaganda in Germany
in the 1930s and that it fuelled the Jewish genocide (Staub 1989, Glick
2002). Our second example doesn’t concern racism, but another form of
identity-based hatred, which however shows a degree of similarity with
racism: misogyny. Martha Nussbaum (2018) has defended the idea that
one of the factors at play in the recent backlashes against feminism is
precisely envy: the envy of those who consider themselves entitled to their
privilege and see affirmative action initiatives as offering undue advan-
tages to women. Finally, Sara Protasi (2021) offers two examples of envy
in the context of racism. Both examples are particularly relevant to our
chapter, which is why we dwell a bit longer on them. First, she analyses a
scene in Spike Lee’s film Do the Right Thing, where two characters, Pino
and Mookie, are having a heated conversation. They are both around
the same age and they work as delivery boys at a pizzeria, but while
Pino is the Italian-American son of the owner, Mookie is their African-
American employee. Pino is openly racist against African-Americans, but
despite this, Mookie succeeds in making Pino admit that his favourite
basketball player, his favourite actor and his favourite rock star are all
African-American. “You know—Mookie tells Pino—, I think deep down
inside you wish you were Black”. In Protasi’s interpretation of the scene,
this is an example where a group believed inferior is still envied for their
talents for sports and art. Envy is therefore shown to be compatible with
racist attitudes that depict the other as inferior in almost all respects.
Interestingly, Protasi’s attention and analytic efforts go to a different case
though: racism against Asians and Asian-Americans in the US. This case
is different in that envy is not just presented as an emotion that can occa-
sionally be compatible with racist attitudes of contempt or hatred, but as
something much more central. While Protasi doesn’t claim this explic-
itly, her analysis can be interpreted as presenting envy as the underlying
emotion that fuels and drives racist attitudes towards this minority. This
can be seen in the sort of stereotypes and dehumanizing metaphors that
are applied to Asians: they are presented as hard-working, smart (in a
specific and limited sense) and academically and financially successful,
all of them positive and enviable qualities. However, those qualities are
invested with a negative spin through dehumanizing technical metaphors
that present Asians as robots, cogs in a huge machine, and so on. All of
them are vilifying explanations of success that evidence one of the typical
characteristics of envy: hostility towards the rival(s).
According to the evidence presented, envy is often a part of racist
attitudes and can fuel them. However, envy is rarely associated with the
racist emotional repertoire, which stereotypically includes hatred, anger,
pride, or contempt, but not envy. One of the main reasons for this, in
our view, is that the context of racism intensifies the social pressure to
mask envy, thus heightening the psychological pressure to transform it
via EMs (i.e., via self-deception). But before we can move on to explain-
ing how this happens, we owe the reader an account of envy.
9.3 What Is Envy?2

Most philosophical accounts of envy start by comparing it with and dis-
tinguishing it from a similar emotion: jealousy. According to the most
widespread view, both emotions are unpleasant and they involve a relation
between an emoting subject and another person (a rival) mediated by a
good that the emoter values. The difference between them is that, while
jealousy is about protecting the good you enjoy from a rival that threatens
it, envy is about coveting the good possessed by the rival. This distinction
doesn’t mirror language use in English, where speakers often use both
terms interchangeably or, rather, tend to say they are “jealous” when they
mean “envious”, partly due to the moral condemnation that envy has been
the object of for so many centuries. The distinction, however, is phenome-
nologically sound and analytically useful, and therefore we conform to it.
Going deeper into the intentional structure of envy (how it presents and
evaluates the objects it targets), let us start by remarking that it belongs to
the class of the self-conscious emotions, i.e., emotions that are intention-
ally directed at (they are of or about) the self of the emoter. In other words,
in envy, just like in other self-conscious emotions such as shame or pride,
one evaluates oneself. However, the intentional structure of envy is more
complex than the structure of individual shame, for example, since envy
necessarily involves a comparison with another person: the rival. Shame
doesn’t necessarily involve a comparison, simply a sense of one’s own
insufficiency or degradation. But in envy the feeling of inferiority is always
explicitly comparative, it is relative to a rival in relation to a specific good
(which can be an object, but also an ability, a talent, a character trait, a
state of affairs, etc.). How does this feeling of inferiority come about?
To begin with, envy involves a feeling of impotence or powerlessness
caused by a frustrated desire for the good. This feeling can be more or
less intense: one can feel absolutely powerless to obtain the good now or
in the future, or one can feel that there is a temporary and more or less
easily removable obstacle blocking one’s access to the good. This feeling
can also be more or less justified: sometimes, the subject is right that
they will never be able to achieve the good (the fact that your colleague
just took over the Einstein Chair of Physics in Princeton means that that
possibility is now precluded to you), sometimes they are not (the right
effort and dedication might, in principle, allow access to the good). Be
this as it may, envy is characterized by a feeling of (more or less tempo-
rary) powerlessness and frustration.
However, more is needed for envy, since all we have said so far could also
apply to any unfulfilled desire, and envy is more than unfulfilled desire.
Crucially, envy also involves social comparison. Enviers compare them-
selves to a rival that they perceive as similar to themselves. Indeed, there
is plenty of empirical evidence showing that envy thrives in the short dis-
tances (Ben-Ze’ev 1992, Miceli and Castelfranchi 2007, Boyce et al. 2010):
people envy their colleagues who earn a slightly higher salary, but they
tend not to envy the company’s CEO, who earns ten or even one hundred
times more than them. This is because envy requires seeing yourself as
comparable to the rival in a way that allows for “in-your-shoes” perspec-
tive-taking: enviers typically can imagine themselves in the shoes of the
rival and feel that if only the world were a little bit different, it could have
been them who enjoyed the good (Ben-Ze’ev 1992, Protasi 2021). This, in
turn, generates a self-assessment as wrongly disadvantaged or inferior: “if
someone so similar to me deserved the good, I should have deserved it too,
there is no good reason why the rival should be more than me”. Therefore
envy involves a sense of relative unfairness. To be clear, we don’t think that
envy involves a concern for justice in general. The background concern
in envy is relative to the individual and highly localized, it is a concern
for one’s own (perceived) inequality vis-à-vis the rival, for one’s own infe-
rior position, not for equality and social justice in general. This feeling of
unwarranted disadvantage vis-à-vis another is what grounds the hostility
towards the rival that we take to be characteristic of envy.
Now, whether envy always involves hostility towards the rival is a
debated point in the literature, and a number of authors have claimed
that not all envy does (most recently Protasi 2021). We, however, believe
that so-called benign envy is a combination of desire for a good plus
admiration towards the good’s owner. Our main reason for this is that
we see the self-conscious character of envy, the feeling of inferiority it
entails, as leading to a more or less intense hostility towards the rival.
We have argued in detail for this view elsewhere (Salice and Montes
Sánchez 2019) and rehearsing our arguments here would take us too
far from our current topic. For the purposes of this chapter, we think
it is enough to assume that “benign” envy (if it is indeed envy) is very
unlikely to play any role in fuelling racial hatred. We therefore will pro-
ceed on the assumption that envy in the cases at hand is always hostile.
Stressing the self-conscious nature of envy in this context is important
for at least two reasons. First, it explains why people resist acknowl-
edging envy, since this emotion constitutes an implicit acknowledge-
ment of an inferiority vis-à-vis the rival. Such an acknowledgement is
not merely unpleasant, like the frustration of an unfulfilled desire, it is
also self-threatening—an aspect that plays a large role later on in our
argument. Second, as stated above, the label “self-conscious” highlights
the fact that, while envy touches on our sense of self in being an emotion
of self-evaluation, it also does so in a peculiar way: envy is what in past
work we have called a “hetero-induced” self-conscious emotion, i.e., an
emotion characterized by a self-evaluation induced by relevant others.
To put this differently, envy presupposes a specific relation with others;
it presupposes a “sense of us”: the others are perceived as members of a
group to which one also belongs and, therefore, as a part of what psy-
chologists call our “social self” (Brewer and Gardner 1996). As such,
envy is enabled by the subject’s identification with a group, which is
the psychological process that leads one to understand oneself as group
member (i.e., to acquire a social self, see Turner 1982).
In our view, there are two ways in which group-identification gen-
erally figures in envy. First, group identification can provide a basis
for comparison by making certain similarities salient. Recall that envy
entails seeing oneself as comparable to the rival in a certain respect;
but what different people interpret as a legitimate basis for compari-
son can vary wildly, depending on how individuals perceive themselves
and the situation. This is why envy requires perceived—not objective—
similarity. Here, we contend that one of the factors that can foster a sense
of being similar or comparable to someone else is group identification.
For example, a mediocre actress in a local theatre company, who how-
ever regards acting as an important part of her identity, is very unlikely
to be envious of someone like Meryl Streep, who nowadays is widely
considered to be the greatest living actress and one of the best in history.
Therefore, objective similarity (being an actress) does not necessarily
trigger envy. But now imagine that the most successful living actress
was the amateur’s sister. In this case, envy is much more likely to arise,
precisely because of group identification. If the amateur group-identifies
with her sister as a member of the same family, this can serve as the basis
for a strong perceived similarity that allows for social comparison and
“in-your-shoes” perspective taking, therefore leading to envy.3
While this first role of group identification for envy might be dispen-
sable (the subject could follow other routes to assign salience to similari-
ties), we contend that there is a second way in which group identification
figures in envy, which is not only structurally more important, but also
more relevant to our present purposes. In our view, group identification
fixes the background good that most (and perhaps all) enviers aspire to:
recognition by an in-group. The idea here is that, over and above the
ostensible or superficial good that enviers focus on, what they aspire to
is recognition. How do we reach this conclusion, when envy seems to be
able to attach to so many different objects? Of course, on a superficial
level, envy can be about variable goods that catch the subject’s atten-
tion (material objects, character’s traits, etc.). However, not all objects
attract everyone’s attention to the same extent: one individual will envy
her sister’s talent for acting, another, their colleagues’ promotion, a third
one, his neighbour’s Ferrari, and so on. This raises the question of what,
then, explains the subject’s preoccupation with one particular good. And
one plausible explanation is that the good exemplifies particular values
that the subject cares about and that make the good appealing. In the case
of envy, we contend that these are values that secure social status, i.e.,
social recognition by an in-group (in the sense of “esteem recognition”4).
Now, importantly, the rival may well be perceived as an out-group
member, but the goods this rival possesses are valued by the envier’s refer-
ence group and they confer esteem and status within this in-group. Think
again about our initial examples of envy in the context of racism, espe-
cially the conversation between Pino and Mookie. While Pino explicitly
conceives of African-Americans as members of a racial out-group, the ath-
letic prowess and musical talent he envies them for are esteemed by Pino’s
reference in-group (both by Italian Americans and by American society
at large). Thus, these qualities make their possessors deserving of esteem
by the in-group that Pino cares about. This is why Pino can envy African-
Americans for them. In sum, on a deeper level, the ultimate good at stake
in envy is esteem: the esteem of one’s in-group (the group that recognizes
those values and their possessors as worthy of esteem). As we will see in
Section 9.4, this is precisely the situation at stake in the envy-racism link:
the envier frames the rival as an out-group member, but they both struggle
for the recognition of a common, overarching, referential in-group.5
Let us take stock. In our view, envy is the unpleasant feeling of infe-
riority vis-à-vis a rival that the envier perceives as comparable to them-
selves, in relation to a good that secures social esteem by the envier’s
in-group. Together with the moral condemnation traditionally attached
to envy, the feeling of inferiority it entails makes it into a difficult emo-
tion to acknowledge and generates a certain psychological pressure to
mask or repress it. It follows that, in the context of racism, when envy is
felt towards the racialized group or any of its members, acknowledging
this emotion must become even more difficult, since this would amount
to recognizing that one perceives oneself as inferior in some sense, as
less deserving of esteem than those one explicitly classifies as lesser than
one. Therefore, we contend, racist enviers are under great psychological
pressure to mask their envy. But how does this masking happen? In order
to explain this, it is now time to turn our attention to EMs.
9.4 Emotional Mechanisms6

Let us start with a general characterization of emotional mechanisms
(EMs). At a first approximation, EMs are coping strategies that the sub-
ject sets in motion to overcome painful emotions.7 More precisely, EMs
have been qualified in a previous paper as “personal (but often uncon-
scious), distinctively patterned, mental processes whereby an emotion of
kind K is transmuted into an emotion of a different kind E” (Salice and
Salmela 2022). To illustrate this characterization, we will now review
two EMs in some detail. While there are a multitude of EMs, the reason
why we specifically dwell on these two particular EMs is that they are
the most significant ones for the envy-hatred link. In the first step, we
introduce the two EMs and, in a second step, we explain the shared fea-
tures that allow subsumption of these processes under the psychological
category of EM.
EM1: in t person P envies rival R, meaning that P desires a good

G possessed by R. P’s emotion of envy is subsequently (in t’) trans-
muted into resentment at R with an appraisal of R’s disvalue.8
For instance, in desiring your neighbour’s brand-new Ferrari, you also

envy your neighbour in t. To cope with the sense of impotence and
inferiority the emotion of envy confronts you with, and which we have
described in Section 9.3, you set in motion an EM the outcome of which
is the transformation of envy into resentment in t′: the neighbour is an
unjust person that deserves blame.9
EM2 person P reacts in t with resentment at a wrongdoing per-

formed by person R against P. P’s emotion of resentment towards R
is subsequently (in t’) transmuted into hatred towards R (or group G
of which R is a member).
Imagine that, in t, you respond with resentment towards a wrongdoing

your neighbour is inflicting on you (say: they keep you awake because of
the loud noise of their party). Imagine also that, despite repeated expres-
sions of resentment towards your neighbour, they still enjoy their par-
ties ignoring your complaint. To cope with the sense of impotence that
the emotion of inefficacious resentment confronts you with, you set in
motion an EM, the outcome of which is the transformation of resent-
ment into hatred in t′: now, the neighbour is not merely an unjust person
that deserves blame, but an evil individual that deserves hatred.
What makes these two different processes members of the same psy-
chological category? There are four features that they have in common
and that justify their subsumption under the same category.
The first is “emotional dissonance”. Here, emotional dissonance points
to the distress that a hedonically negative emotion (like envy or anger)
causes in a subject either when the expressions of the emotion and/or the
actions performed according to the relevant action tendencies remain
inefficacious, or when the emotion can neither be expressed nor acted
upon (accordingly, “emotional dissonance” is used here with a different
meaning than the one it is usually associated with in the sociological
literature on emotional labour, see Hochschild 1983). This psychological
distress is grounded in the threat that the emotion represents to the self
of the emoter, i.e., in the negative sense of self that they elicit. EM1 and
EM2 display emotional dissonance: not only is envy a socially stigma-
tized emotion, which ought not be felt and, by extension, expressed.
Also, envy, according to our account, is constitutively infused by a sense
of impotence and powerlessness, which blocks the subject from acting
in the pursuit of the good. This impotence is a self-threat: it contributes
to a negative sense of self causing psychological distress. Similarly, the
resentment felt by the subject in EM2 is acted upon (contrary to envy in
EM1), but it is inefficacious through and through: your neighbour does
not revise their behaviour in light of your expression of anger or in light
of the punishment you have performed based on anger. The emotion
of resentment bestows upon you the entitlement to be recognized by
the other, but the other is precisely frustrating that entitlement, which
makes you feel impotent.
A second condition that all EMs fulfil is revision in evaluation.
Following a view that, in its general form and despite the many differ-
ences in the details, can be considered orthodoxy in the theory of emo-
tions, we consider emotions to be evaluative attitudes: they present the
world and, in particular, their intentional objects as imbued with values.
Emotional dissonance motivates the subject to revise the evaluation under
which their (initial) emotions have put the relevant intentional objects.
As EM1 unfolds, the rival is no longer perceived as someone who enjoys
an advantage over you for no good reason, for they are evaluated in t′ as
outright unjust by invoking an impersonal or objective understanding of
justice. Note that how exactly the subject comes to this evaluation is, to
a large extent, irrelevant for the purposes of this chapter: you could for
instance confabulate that your neighbour didn’t pay their taxes in order
to be able to afford their Ferrari or that they run a fishy business, etc.
What is important, though, is the fact that some level of confabulation
must be involved for the evaluation to be revised. This points to two
important elements of any EM. First, re-evaluation is not based on the
acquisition of new (previously ignored) relevant information by the sub-
ject.10 The subject, to a certain extent, is deluding themselves (and this is
a point we will come back to in the last section). Second, re-evaluation,
to have any prospect of succeeding in liberating the subject from the
negative emotion, must be at least partly unconscious: for if the process
of re-evaluation was fully transparent to the subject, the subject would
know that they are exploiting a delusional cognitive process to escape
the original emotion and they would thereby thwart that very escape
(note: we write “unconscious”, but not “subpersonal”—by activating
their cognitive capacities the subject should be able to become conscious
of what is going on in the EM; the point being that, more often than
not, the subject is not motivated to activate those capacities—or per-
haps better: they are motivated not to activate them). Something similar
also occurs in EM2: the unjust individual is holistically re-evaluated as
evil. It is re-evaluated in such a way under the condition that repeated
expression of resentment or repeated punishing actions (motivated by
resentment) did not correct the offensive behaviour of the rival.
Based on this re-evaluation, and this is the third feature shared by
all EMs, the subject emotes differently. To put it another way, we have
a change in emotional response: the new evaluation elicits an emotion,
which does not pose a self-threat to the subject any longer. This should
be relatively obvious in the case of EM1 given that resentment is accom-
panied by a sense of entitlement that puts the subject in a superior posi-
tion vis-à-vis the rival. But why does the same hold for EM1? In which
sense does hating someone instead of being angry at them release the
subject from the self-threat posed by inefficacious resentment? In previ-
ous work, one of us has advanced two possible answers to this question.
First, hatred boosts and consolidates the subject’s sense of moral superi-
ority vis-à-vis its target (the target has not simply done something wrong
against the subject, as it is signalled by resentment—the target is evil):
hating, here, gives meaning to the self. Second, hatred does not have to
be satisfied by actions performed by the hater; any harm occurring to
the target (regardless who has inflicted it, how this has been inflicted,
and so on) has the power to satisfy the hater (see Salice 2021). Finally,
and relatedly, resentment treats the other as a responsible moral sub-
ject and demands the other’s response to the offence they committed
against you. By repeatedly ignoring your demand for a response (i.e.,
your resentment), the other refuses to recognize you as a subject with
legitimate demands that require a response, which places you in a posi-
tion of inferiority. Hatred, which treats the other as evil and incapable
of a moral response, does not demand uptake, restoring the hater to
a position of superiority. Admittedly, hatred is a socially stigmatized
emotion that might generate distress and bad conscience in the emoter,
but we contend that, when compared to the self-threat of inefficacious
resentment and when collectivized as we explain below, it still leaves the
emoter better off in terms of self-image.11
Concluding, all EMs have in common that the outcome emotion entails
a disposition to be collectivized. But what grounds this disposition?
Remember that EMs’ reappraisal is not based on any new information
about the emotions’ intentional objects. Reappraisal in an EM therefore
is a form of delusive evaluation. It then follows that the reappraisal is
fragile because constantly controverted by the evidence that the subject
has available (the very same evidence that prompted the initial emotion,
that is). One way to stabilize the reappraisal and, by extension, the emo-
tional reaction that is based on it, therefore is to share the emotion with
others. In so doing, the subject gains the sense that their reappraisal is
intersubjectively validated, which in turn solidifies the outcome emotion.
For instance, the subject might aggregate with other neighbours who,
say, resent the owner of the Ferrari (perhaps because of envy that they,
too, feel; but perhaps also for other legitimate reasons!) or who hate the
party-organizer.
Armed with this clarification of the notion of EM, it is now time to
turn to the link between envy and racial hatred. This is the topic of
Section 9.5.
9.5 How Envy is Transmuted into Racial Hatred:

An Emotional Mechanism Account
We submit that envy can lead to racial hatred in at least two ways: this
is by triggering either a single-step or a multi-step EM. As the multi-step
process basically is a combination of EM1 and EM2 as described above,
it is perhaps more germane to proceed by addressing that process first.
By contrast, the single-step describes an altogether different EM.
The first segment of the multi-step process consists in the transforma-
tion of envy into resentment along the lines described above in relation
to EM1. The subject envies their rival and the (many) superficial goods
that the rival purportedly possesses (according to the envier) reveal to
the subject that the rival enjoys a high level of recognition from the ref-
erence group. However, we submit that two elements play a particularly
relevant role in the situation that generates racial hatred. First, whereas
in discussing EM1 above we mainly focused on the superficial good of
envy, this high level of recognition is what is predominantly at stake in
the mechanisms that lead envy to racial hatred. For it is this high level of
recognition (over and beyond the possession of superficial goods) that,
we maintain, the subject also covets. Second, and crucially, the form of
envy at stake here is such that the other, the rival, is already conceived of
as an out-group member. The envier not only covets recognition by the
in-group but also frames explicitly the rival as an outsider (in relation to
the envier’s narrower affiliation) while implicitly conceiving of them as a
member of a larger reference in-group (see endnote 5).
For the purpose of illustration, imagine that two candidates apply for
social housing in State X, which notoriously suffers from a persistent
housing crisis. One of the two applicants is an indigent citizen of State X
and the other is, say, a refugee from a war zone. Both have lived in the
same temporary accommodation and know (of) each other. The refugee,
but not the citizen, is granted social housing. This prompts envy in the
citizen. This form of envy, we contend, is as much about the superficial
good (housing) as it is about the comparably higher recognition that the
refugee has been accorded. In addition, the situation in which this form
of envy emerges is clearly marked by an in-group/out-group differentia-
tion: the refugee is understood as a member of an out-group (and, as we
will see, this will play a crucial role in the transformation of envy into
racial hatred).
If the subject cannot bear the level of emotional dissonance generated
by their envy, they come under great pressure to discard the emotion. To
do so, they unconsciously engage in revising the original appraisal of the
emotion’s intentional object. One of envy’s intentional objects is the rival
and this EM focuses on re-evaluating the rival of envy.12 Remember that,
in envy, the rival is perceived as culpable of contravening the subject’s
personal sense of fairness—this evaluation is revised as a consequence
of emotional dissonance: the other is evaluated as offensive or unjust
straight ahead. More precisely, they are now perceived to have acquired
the superficial goods (and, by extension, the deep good: esteem recogni-
tion) in an unjust or unlawful manner.13 Based on this new evaluation of
the other as offensive, the subject experiences resentment, which rapidly
becomes unbearable. Now, of course, depending on the circumstances,
the process could stop here without degenerating into racial hatred. For
instance, the subject might overcome their emotional predicament, rest
satisfied with blaming the unjust nature of the process and of the persons
involved, and forget about the entire affair.
However, the process could also take a more troubling turn whereby
resentment is transformed into hatred. There are at least three elements
here that, we think, can exacerbate resentment and lead to racial hatred.
First, the rival is interpreted by the subject as attracting a high level of
recognition from the reference group, not only once, but in a constant,
persistent, and publicly visible manner, e.g., not only the refugee has
received social housing, they have also received health insurance and
other forms of social assistance. (But note that there is no need for the
rival to be actually receiving these goods: the media—both digital and
analogue—are infested by fake news about refugees and immigrants
receiving social subsidies that don’t exist; the stories are false, but some
will believe them and perceive refugees as more fortunate than them-
selves, which is all envy requires). The diachronic dimension of this pro-
cess is crucial, for the subject’s resentment is reignited time and again,
which adds to their general sense of frustration.
Second, this resentment remains inefficacious all the way through. To
understand such inefficacy, let us start with the idea that, while the trans-
formation of envy into resentment is frictionless when it relies on the idea
that the rival has acquired superficial goods in an unjust manner (as this
happens in EM1 described in Section 9.4), it is not equally frictionless
to blame the subject for something that they, strictly speaking, are not
first-personally responsible for. Esteem recognition is something that is
accorded to the rival by a reference group—but it is not something that
the rival generated directly by means of their actions. Thus, blaming the
rival for having acquired superficial goods (their car, house, etc.) in an
unjust manner leaves out of the equation what is most important to the
subject: the esteem recognition that the rival enjoys and that the envier
primarily covets. So, the subject’s resentment will motivate actions and
expressions that have the purpose of reprimanding the rival for the rec-
ognition they are perceived to unduly receive. However, this resentment is
unwarranted or irrational: the rival cannot be blamed for something they
quite obviously have not—and more importantly: could not have—done
themselves. The point, we think, is important not so much because of
the charge of irrationality itself (irrationality, we assume, plays little-to-
no role in the psychology of the envious subject, see Sartre 1954), but
because it shows that the demand bestowed by the subject’s resentment
on to the rival to rectify their conduct simply cannot be met. To go back
to the example: any punishing strategy of the indigent citizen target-
ing actions of the refugee would be immediately self-defeating because
it misses the target: somebody else (say, the City Council) has assigned
accommodation to the refugee and, thereby, accorded higher esteem rec-
ognition to them. Somebody else has enacted the sort of administrative
processes, which made possible attribution of higher esteem to that appli-
cant. The refugee is not responsible for any of that and, therefore, cannot
respond to the subject according to what it is demanded of them (after
all, everything proceeded according to the law). This makes resentment
intrinsically inefficacious because intrinsically irrational.14
The subject, therefore, now finds themselves in a new predicament.
For inefficacious resentment is causing a new tide of emotional disso-
nance. The same coping strategy is then enacted and a new reappraisal
occurs: the frustration generated by the lack of response to one’s resent-
ment is then dispensed with by attributing an evil nature to the rival and
by tracing back that evil nature to ethnic traits. Sure, the refugee was
not responsible for the decision of the City Council about social housing,
because this was an action that they literally did not execute. However,
the refugee did act in that instance, as well as in all other instances
reaffirming recognition: what the rival did (from the perspective of the
subject) was to maliciously deceive the system and it is precisely in virtue
of this deception that the reference group has been misled into attribut-
ing a higher level of recognition to them (as documented by the many
goods the refugee has acquired, in the eyes of the envier). It should be
clear that this new evaluation goes over and beyond a simple attribution
of an unfair or unjust action to the rival. The hypothesis that a new
evaluation has occurred here (which amounts to an attribution of a mali-
cious and evil nature and not merely of an unjust deed) is highlighted by
three additional elements: (1) the temporal extension under which the
rival’s conduct is considered, (2) the narrative of deceit and fraudulence
adopted in explaining that conduct, and (3) the perceived resistance of
the rival to rectifying their conduct. The rival acted maliciously because
they are malicious: it is their very nature to act this way.
Let us now come to the third feature of the process leading from
envy to racial hatred. When the mechanism that changes resentment
into hatred operates between two individuals at an individual level (as
we have tacitly assumed in describing EM2 in Section 9.4), the hatred
is directed at the individual’s nature (Salice 2021). For example, if your
noisy neighbour consistently ignores you and things become unbeara-
ble, you might come to hate this person (Salice and Salmela 2022). But
things are different for racial hatred: the transformation of resentment
into racial (rather than individual) hatred requires the presence of a
third, additional element: in-group/out-group demarcation. As we have
seen, this distinction is present all the way through the process insofar
as envy already occurs against the background of that demarcation: the
rival is already perceived as member of a group and, therefore, as car-
rying social, racial, or ethnic traits. For hatred to qualify here as racial
hatred, the perception of these traits must be exacerbated: in fact, they
must be taken by the subject as the very reasons for hating the rival
(see Szanto 2020). The element that assigns salience to such traits, we
maintain, is that, from the perspective of the subject, the rival’s recogni-
tion (perceived by the subject as undue recognition) must be something
that they share (or again: are perceived to share) with other individuals,
which are members of the same group. So, it is not only this one indi-
vidual who supposedly enjoys a higher level of recognition (relatively
to the subject), a plurality (majority or entirety) of the members of the
group to which the rival belongs do also enjoy similar higher level of
recognition. When this condition is fulfilled, then the evil nature that
is attributed to the rival acquires ethnic or racial contours. The rival
has acted maliciously because this is what “these people” do: it’s their
nature.15 They all (and the rival as a member of them) have acted mali-
ciously and deceived the reference group. In fact, there need be nothing
specific about this very individual that flags them as evil—as an individ-
ual taken per se, there is nothing that appears malicious or evil in them.
But this, from the perspective of the subject, is unveiled as a travesty,
for this individual bears an evil nature in virtue of being member of
that ethnic group. Their true nature, i.e., their ethnic nature, is evil and
therefore deserves to be hated.
Hatred’s replacement of resentment in the second segment of the pro-
cess thus liberates the subject from emotional dissonance.
We now move our attention to the single-step process. Here, envy
directly transmutes into hatred without passing through resentment, or
so we claim. We encounter the same initial conditions that we found
in the previous process: a concern for recognition and an out-group/
in-group demarcation. The subject envies their rival, who is classified
as an outsider, and the (many) superficial goods are testimony to the
rival’s higher level of recognition from the reference group. Envy, again,
causes emotional dissonance: the emotion cannot be acted upon because
(among other reasons) doing so would reveal the subject’s feeling of infe-
riority. The subject therefore is under pressure to get rid of the emotion
by reappraising the intentional object, but the subject reappraises the
rival not indirectly or mediately as evil (by passing through the charge of
being unjust, as in the previous scenario). Instead they do so directly or
immediately. But how can that happen?
The higher recognition purportedly enjoyed by the rival is perceived
as a direct diminution of the recognition enjoyed by the subject. The
other, that is, is perceived to be stealing from the subject the attention of
the reference group. Now, why does the rival do that? The reappraisal
is captured by the answer to that question: the rival is not any longer
somebody who infringes my personal sense of fairness (and they are also
not an unjust individual, as the previous process provisionally described
them), rather the rival is somebody who is a selfish-evil individual who
precludes my access to the deep good (recognition from the reference
group) and the envier is an innocent victim of their wickedness (Salmela
and Capelos 2021). Here, too, the mechanism could stop at individual
hatred, but the same condition we have identified while discussing the
previous EM could turn individual hatred to racial hatred in this case
as well. The other is perceived with ethnic/racial traits from the onset of
envy, but the selfish-evil nature of the rival is traced back to those traits
if other members belonging to the same group of the rival are seen to
enjoy a comparably higher level of recognition. If this condition is ful-
filled, we contend, individual hatred turns into racial hatred: “all these
individuals are stealing recognition from me and they commit that evil
action because this is what they are—evil people”. As a consequence,
the other is hated in virtue of their ethnic traits. (Even though, from the
perspective of the subject, this individual might behave in ways that do
not attract reprimand, they have inherited all the malicious traits of the
group insofar as they are members of that group and it is in light of this
ethnic evil nature that they deserve to be hated).
Just as for the multi-step process, so here too the rival is not eval-
uated as superior anymore and the subject is not evaluated as infe-
rior anymore (despite the fact that their sense of inferiority remains
there, lurking in the background). Also, in the two processes we have
described, racial hatred tends to be collectivized, which explains why
racial hatred generally is a social, collective, and political affair, rather
than the attitude of a single individual (Salmela & von Scheve 2017).
The disposition to collectivization is partly explained by the fact that
the evaluations supporting racial hatred are delusional and at constant
risk to be controverted by evidence: sharing this emotion with others
reinforces the delusional evaluation by giving the impression to the
subject that their evaluations are intersubjectively validated.16 This
form of hatred is highly contagious: it has the power of aggregating
individuals by generating a sense of belonging that overcomes the per-
sonal idiosyncrasies of the members, bypasses rational considerations
about the true raison d’être of the racist community, and shields the
community from acquiring any kind of information that contradicts its
blind, dumb, and raw hostility.
9.6 Self-Deception in the Envy-Racism EM

Our emotions indicate the values we attach importance to. It is because
we attach importance to certain values (and not to others) that some
events, facts, entities, persons, etc. in the world (but not others) instigate
an emotional response in us. Another way of putting this is that emo-
tions reveal our concerns or order of preferences, i.e., how we rank val-
ue-properties, which is what Max Scheler calls the “order of love [ordo
amoris]”. One could even go further by arguing that the order of love is
what makes an individual person the individual person she is (in a thick,
moral, sense). As Scheler puts it: “Whoever has the ordo amoris of a
man, has the man himself. He has him as a moral subject—just as what
crystal form is to crystal itself. He sees into this man as far as one can
see into a man. Behind the empirical multifold and complexity, he sees
the ever simply proceeding basic contours of the man in front of himself,
and this, rather than knowledge or will, deserves to be called the core of
man as a spiritual being” (Scheler 1986: 348, our transl.; more recently,
similar ideas have been developed by Bennett Helm, see his 2010 and his
contribution to this volume).17
It then appears to follow that emotions offer important insights to the
subject for understanding who they are in a thick sense. Reflecting upon
one’s emotions opens up a pathway to what has also been called “substan-
tial” (in contrast to “trivial”) self-knowledge (Cassam 2015). However, it
is possible to emote in a way which does not respond to the fundamental
values we attach importance to. EMs, in fact, show us that sometimes
emotions rely on delusional evaluations that the subject indulges in not to
emotionally respond to what truly matters to them but precisely to avoid
the negative emotions that respond to what matters to them.
One can infer from this view that EMs create a barrier in the path
towards self-knowledge. They do so because they lead the subject to
self-deception. Based on the outcome emotion, the subject appears to
have certain concerns that they actually don’t have, e.g., the subject
thinks to be moved by a concern for justice in EM1, but that (as a matter
of fact) is not the case. And, if it is true that our concerns or preferences
identify who we are in a thick sense, then the subject undergoing an
EM thinks to be somebody who they actually are not. What the subject
cares about in EMs is their own inferiority, and this remains hidden and
unacknowledged. Also, the subject thinks to be in a position of moral
superiority towards the rival, whereas (as a matter of fact) they are not.
Now, not all forms of self-deception are psychologically vicious—a large
segment of contemporary psychology highlights the importance and,
sometimes, the necessity for human well-being of certain self-delusions
(Bortolotti 2018). However, we do want to claim that the self-delusions
involved in EMs in general, but, most importantly, in the envy-hatred
EM are psychologically vicious.
This claim is supported by the idea that EMs are immature coping strat-
egies: the subject creates the conditions for deceiving themselves that do not
otherwise afford maturation or psychological development. For instance,
a certain level of over-confidence might be psychologically justified: you
need that overconfidence to accept challenges in life that you would not
have otherwise accepted and that might result in important achievements
(the risk might be worth taking). And if overconfidence leads to important
mistakes in life, it is possible to learn from them and recalibrate one’s
level of self-confidence (see Bortolan’s chapter in this book for cognate
considerations). However, EMs do not afford the subject opportunities
for psychological growth: the subject’s attachments to and concerns for
values, that is, their order of preferences that steers their negative emotions
to begin with remains untouched in the EM and, also, the false sense of
superiority instated by the outcome emotion only covers up the original
sense of inferiority, which remains present, even if only in the background.
The subject, therefore, opts for ignoring important aspects of their iden-
tity that are responsible for the negative emotions in the first place and, in
so doing, precludes the possibility for ameliorating their situation.
In sum, the kind of hatred we have described in this chapter is pre-
cisely that: a petty and immature attitude the subject adopts to escape a
sense of inferiority that is often triggered by misplaced attachments and
concerns and, therefore, by a confused, if not perverted, “order of love”.
9.7 Conclusion
Time to recap. Envy is an unpleasant and hostile emotion involving feel-
ing of inferiority vis-à-vis a rival, who possesses a coveted good. Envy
can be moved by a multitude of different goods: these are superficial
goods—goods that often presuppose a deeper or background good,
which is recognition by a reference group. Some interracial conflicts
involve a fight for recognition and feeling envy is an acknowledgement
of inferiority in this respect. This fact cannot be tolerated by the racist,
who is under great psychological pressure to trigger EMs that transform
envy into non-self-threatening emotions and, especially, into hatred.
Under certain given conditions, this hatred acquires the contour of racial
hatred. However, EMs in general, and the emotional itinerary from envy
to racial hatred in particular, are self-deceptive strategies: in ignoring
their preferences and concerns, i.e., in ignoring fundamental aspects of
their identity, subjects foreclose to themselves the possibility to maturate
and, therefore, to face their negative self-focused emotions and the impli-
cations they have on their selves.
Acknowledgements
We are thankful to Antonio Gómez Ramos, Mikko Salmela, and Charlie
Kurth for reading and commenting upon a previous draft of this chapter,
as well as to Thomas Brudholm for insightful discussions on this topic. We
have presented this chapter at workshops in Linköping, Cork, Graz, and
Sendai: we are grateful to the participants for their important feedback.
Notes
1. Note that not all instances of hatred target the other qua member of a group
(i.e., the other qua bearer of a social identity): individual hatred (hating the
other qua individual person) certainly has a place in human psychology, or
so has claimed one of us (Salice 2021). We are grateful to Mikko Salmela for
his remarks on our understanding of racial hatred.
2. This section draws on the views presented by Salice and Montes Sánchez
(2019).
3. Of course, in such a scenario, group identification might lead the ama-
teur actress to feel group-based pride of her sister instead. We believe both
responses are possible and can be fitting. Whether the amateur feels one or
the other emotion will depend on factors such as how competitive the relation
between the two sisters is, among others. Our point here is simply to illustrate
how group identification can provide grounds for comparison even when the
distance between two individuals is large and, sometimes, abysmal.
4. Axel Honneth (2005) distinguishes between three kinds of recognition: love,
respect, and esteem. Love is bestowed intimately and doesn’t seem to require
reasons. Respect is due to all persons by virtue of their being persons. Esteem
depends on the qualities one has and how well one instantiates them; it
admits of degrees and it is comparative. Therefore, we contend, esteem is the
kind of recognition at stake in envy (on esteem, see also Salice 2020).
5. The idea of the rival being member of an out-group and at the same time
member of a (referential) in-group might sound inconsistent only if one
assumes that there is one (one single) form of group-identification, but this is
not the case: one can identify with a group in various ways. These identifica-
tions have various strengths and different functional profiles and it is possible
for subject to understand another as an implicit in-group and as an explicit
out-group member, when the identification at stake is different, see Salice and
Montes Sánchez 2019 for further elaborations on this point.
6. This section draws from Salice and Salmela (2022).
7. For other strategies to overcome painful emotions, see the chapter by Ven-
drell Ferran in this volume.
8. A few comments about terminology are in order. First, in the litera-
ture, EM1 is sometimes known under the label of “Ressentiment” (see
Nietzsche 1961, Scheler 1961, Aeschbach 2017). It goes without saying
that Ressentiment and resentment are different phenomena (although
both phenomena are of an affective nature): Ressentiment is a mecha-
nism, resentment an emotion. Second, we adopt a roughly Strawsonian
view of resentment, whereby resentment is a moral emotion that pre-
sents its target as a responsible agent exhibiting ill-will towards you, and
simultaneously you as a moral subject who legitimately can make moral
demands on other moral subjects: both you and the target of your resent-
ment are fellow members of the moral community. Third, we consider
resentment as a specific form of anger, i.e., as moral anger (however, note
the relevant term used in Salice and Salmela 2022 for this mechanism was
“anger” tout court).
9. The EM could also unfold differently: envy could lead to commiseration for
the rival based on the re-evaluation of the good: the fox that envies the crow
for feeding on grapes reevaluates the grapes as sour and transforms the emo-
tion of envy into commiseration for the crow who has to feed on sour grapes.
10. It exceeds the purpose of this chapter to elaborate on this point more exten-
sively. However, we want to note that this idea, which has been argued for
in Salice and Salmela (2022), might be too strong. Perhaps, subjects that
undergo EMs do not entirely lack new information for their emotional
re-evaluation. Rather, they selectively ignore or emphasize the importance
of newly acquired information so as to make it conducive to their emotional
re-evaluation, thereby falling prey to a confirmation bias in an epistemically
vicious way. (We are thankful to Charlie Kurth for pushing us on this point.)
11. Thanks to Thomas Brudholm for pressing us on this issue.
12. However, the subject could also engage in re-evaluating envy’s other inten-
tional object: the good, which might lead to the sour-grapes scenario, as we
have seen.
13. Why blaming the rival and not, say, the City Council that assigned accommo-
dation to the rival? The answer to this question is that this alternative way
of discharging the negativity of envy is, of course, possible. Taking this route
might block envy to debouch in racial hatred, but it goes with its own epistemic
and moral vices. Furthermore, we presume that, if institutions are perceived by
the subject to represent their social identity in some salient sense (e.g., if the
subject politically supports the City’s Mayor), then the subject’s inclination will
be to scapegoat the rival, rather than criticizing their institutions.
14. Of course, it merely is a peculiarity of our example that the reference group
is providing the rival not only with the superficial good (housing), but also
with the deep good (esteem recognition). Nothing in our account hinges on
that, though. To elaborate on one of Protasi’s examples, the Asian-American
citizen, who has acquired wealth (superficial goods) thanks to his or her hard
working, is blamed by the racist for the esteem recognition that they, in the
racist’s eyes, unjustly receive by the reference group (perhaps in addition of
being blamed for having acquired wealth, too, in a fraudulent manner).
15. Holocaust Studies provide ample evidence for this claim. In his discussion of
antisemite propaganda in Nazism, Steizenger reports that, despite the differ-
ences in their accounts, various ideologues concurred in attributing an evil
nature to the Jews: they “could only ‘exploit and graze’ what nature gave or
what others achieved, making them literally ‘parasites,’ destroying their envi-
ronment and robbing other people, leaving being dead deserts” (Steizinger
2021: 102), they “were always driven by selfish, material, superficial, and libid-
inous interests” (Steizinger 2021:104), just like the “sack crab” who “bores
through the posterior of the pocket crab, gradually growing into the latter,
sucking out of its last life strength […], the Jew penetrates into society through
the open wounds in the body of the people, feeding off their racial and creative
strength until their decline” (Rosenberg quoted in Steizinger 2021: 104). These
quotes also align with the idea according to which the rival acts in disguise:
they infiltrate (almost as parasites) the reference group of the envious subject
and, by acting maliciously, are able to secure goods and resources of that group
(including the esteem-recognition grounded in those goods) for themselves.
16. Of course, this is only part of the reason. Another element that might sup-
port the disposition to collectivization is loneliness and, especially, that lone-
liness felt by people in a position of societal inferiority (as some research
in psychology and criminology shows, see, e.g., Kruglanski et al. 2014,
Doosje et al. 2016, Lösel et al. 2018): this loneliness could instigate the
desire of sharing experiences, which is acted upon by affiliating themselves
with groups that, with their ideologies, facilitate the emotional mechanisms
described in this section.
17. We do not think that either personal identity or one’s own sense of self is
exclusively a matter of what one values; other dimensions are essential too.
But, like many others, including Scheler, we do believe that the values that
one holds and is guided by are a very important part of who one is (a claim
we cannot defend at length here). This is all we need for the purposes of our
argument: if concerns for values are one among other important parts of who
one is, deceiving oneself about one’s concerns counts as self-deception and
obstructs self-knowledge.
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10 Hostile Affective States and
Their Self-Deceptive Styles
Envy and Hate
Íngrid Vendrell Ferran
10.1 Introduction
Though the link between hostility and self-deception is not causal, it is a
commonplace that people experiencing hostile affective states (hereafter
HASs) such as envy, jealousy, anger, resentment, hate, and Ressentiment
tend to deceive themselves about what they are experiencing.1 More pre-
cisely, a negative self-evaluation is transformed into another, less nega-
tive one to the self so that the subject’s positive sense of self is preserved.
In current literature, authors working on “emotions of aggression” such
as Landweer (2020) and on “emotional mechanisms” such as Salice and
Salmela (2022) (see also Montes Sánchez and Salice 2023) have exam-
ined the processes of transformation of a negative emotion into another,
more acceptable one and, though employing different conceptual tools,
they have shed light on how HASs might lead to self-deception. In this
vein, Landweer claims that the transformation or re-interpretation of
one emotion into another is socially embedded and takes place within a
normative framework which sanctions emotions of aggression. Having
internalized such normative reasons, the subject of an HAS regards her
own mental state as inappropriate so that a transformation and/or re-in-
terpretation occurs. For instance, a subject might transform her envy
into the less stigmatized emotions of resentment and/or indignation to
cope with a situation of frustration. Drawing on Elster (1999), Salice,
and Salmela argue that when a given emotion such as envy, shame,
or anger generates hedonically unpleasant feelings of inferiority and/
or impotence in the subject, it sets in motion unconscious and distinc-
tively patterned mental processes so that the emotion is transmuted into
another which does not imply a negative sense of self. As they argue,
since the prior emotion is usually socially condemned or the subject feels
that she is powerless to change the situation, the subject cannot express
the emotion, so a modification of the appraisal at the basis of the emo-
tion takes place and the original emotion is discarded and replaced by
another one. In this respect, emotional mechanisms are—as Salice and
Salmela put it—“coping mechanisms”.
DOI: 10.4324/9781003310945-13
210 Íngrid Vendrell Ferran
In this chapter, I am interested in another aspect in which a painful
self-evaluation might lead the subject to deceive herself in order to pre-
serve a positive sense of self. While the accounts mentioned above explain
how a negative self-evaluation elicits a self-deceptive transformation of
one HAS into another affective state, my focus here is on how the nega-
tive self-evaluation motivates a self-deceptive upliftment of the sense of
self so that the HAS in question is more bearable, independently of a
possible transformation of this HAS into another emotion. In particular,
I am interested in how the negative self-evaluation sets in train a set of
self-deceptive maneuvers to cope with the negative self-evaluation, in turn
generating an unreal and fictitious positive sense of self without necessar-
ily transforming the HAS in question into another state. In other words,
instead of examining how a negative self-evaluation makes me transform
my envy into indignation or my envy into hate (an issue investigated by
the authors mentioned above), my focus is on how the negative self-eval-
uation experienced in envy motivates the envier to generate an upliftment
of her own self, for instance by claiming that the rival does not deserve
the good, without transforming her envy into something else. This issue
has been explored in relation to Ressentiment (e.g., Aeschbach 2017;
Rodax et al. 2021; Salmela and Capelos 2021). As illustrated by Aesop’s
fable of the fox and the grapes, the person in the grip of Ressentiment
devaluates the object that she cannot achieve in order to compensate for
her feeling of powerlessness. In these analyses, the subject is described as
attempting to compensate for feelings of powerlessness with an uplift-
ment of the sense of self. Yet here my aim is to provide an account which
can be applied to HASs other than Ressentiment.
To develop my account, I will interpret the negative self-evaluation
involved in several HASs as a diminution in the subject’s “feeling of self-
worth”.2 The introduction of this concept is important in two respects.
On the one hand, while speaking of a negative self-evaluation could be
interpreted in cognitive terms, i.e., as a judgment made by the subject
about her own mental state, the term “feeling of self-worth” underscores
its affective nature. Therefore, here the negative self-evaluation has to be
understood as an affective apprehension of the subject’s own value: the
subject feels diminished in worth. On the other hand, feelings of self-
worth refer to a specific class of affective phenomena. As such, they have
to be distinguished from the emotions. While emotions are responses to
certain evaluative properties of the environment (e.g., fear is a response
to a danger), feelings of self-worth are a form of apprehending the value
of one’s own self. Note that as I use it, the concept of “feelings of self-
worth” encompasses a wide array of episodic and occurrent feelings
in which the subject senses a positive or a negative fluctuation in one’s
own value. While positive fluctuations involve feelings of being superior,
empowered, being at an advantage and feeling favored, etc., negative feel-
ings of self-worth involve feeling inferior, feeling powerless, feeling at a
Hostile Affective States and Their Self-Deceptive Styles 211
disadvantage, feeling disfavored, and so on. Thus, a negative feeling of
self-worth indicates a diminution in the subject’s episodic self-esteem and
is responsible for the negative hedonic valence of several HASs and in par-
ticular of HASs leading to self-deception independently of the subject’s
dispositional self-esteem which is an enduring feature of her character.3
The idea that it is a feeling of self-worth that motivates self-deception
has strong implications for the model of self-deception endorsed in this
chapter. According to the standard view, self-deception is an intentional
and doxastic state. In this vein, Davidson (1986) argued that, operating
behind the self-deceiver’s back, there is an intention to deceive herself so
that a false belief is maintained in spite of there being evidence for the
opposite belief. As a result, a tension emerges that is typical of self-de-
ception: the subject maintains the false belief despite knowing that the
opposite belief is true. In contrast, non-intentionalist accounts argue
that, rather than resulting from the subject’s intention to deceive herself,
the self-deception arises from emotions and/or desires (e.g., Lazar 1998;
Mele 2000) and non-doxastic accounts explain self-deception as involv-
ing a tension between elements other than beliefs (e.g., Gendler 2007).
Given that in my model, the self-deception experienced by the subject of
an HAS is motivated by a negative feeling of self-worth so that a positive
feeling of self-worth is generated, the model endorsed here is non-inten-
tional and non-doxastic in nature. Yet, unlike the circulating non-inten-
tionalist accounts, in the proposed model, what motivates the subject
of an HAS to deceive herself is neither an emotion nor a desire but a
negative feeling of self-worth. In turn, the tension arises here between
this negative but real feeling of self-worth and the positive but fictitious
feeling of self-worth elicited by the subject to compensate for it.4
Section 10.2 begins by exploring the main arguments that explain why
several HASs involve a feeling of diminution in the subject’s own value
(Section 10.2). Next, it offers an analysis of how the negative feeling
of self-worth motivates self-deception. While in extrinsically motivated
self-deception (EMSD), the subject feels diminished in worth after nega-
tively evaluating her own HASs, in intrinsically motivated self-deception
(IMSD), the negative feelings of self-worth are constituent elements of
the hostile affective state in question (Section 10.3). Cases of IMSD are
particularly intriguing because in them the motivation for self-deception
is inherent to the hostile affective state, independently of external rea-
sons. I coin the expression “self-deceptive style” to capture the distinctive
form in which each hostile affective state intrinsically motivates changes
in the architecture of the mind (e.g., perception, imagining, memory,
judgment) in order to generate an upliftment of the self (Section 10.4).
To show the descriptive and explanatory function of this concept,
a comparative analysis of the self-deceptive styles of envy and hate is
provided (Section 10.5). The conclusion summarizes the main findings
and explores directions for further research (Section 10.6).
10.2 Hostile Affective States and Negative Feelings
of Self-Worth: The Social, the Phenomenal,
and the Modal Arguments
This section focuses on a particular aspect of HASs which in my view is
crucial to explain its link with self-deception, namely that they usually
exhibit a negative hedonic valence and are experienced as painful. In
several HASs, the subject experiences a diminution in her own value.
In what follows, taking different lines of reasoning found in current
research, I elaborate three arguments that explain why several HASs
entail negative feelings of self-worth.
10.2.1 (A1) The Social Argument

According to the social argument, HASs have a negative hedonic valence
by virtue of being socially sanctioned states (Landweer 2020; Salice and
Salmela 2022). This argument goes as follows:
P1: HASs involve overt or covert aggression toward the target.
The aggression can adopt several real and/or symbolic forms. For instance,
it is real when the subject takes steps toward physically annihilating, dam-
aging, or destroying the target. It is symbolic when the subject harms the
target’s reputation, discredits her work in front of others, etc. Note that
insofar as aggression involves the tendency to damage and inflict harm, it
has to be distinguished from mere aversion. Though aggressive states are
also aversive, not all forms of aversion involve aggression. For instance,
fear is a form of aversion toward what represents a danger to our integrity
and the integrity of what we care about (see Kolnai 2004 and 2007), but
this emotion is not usually considered aggressive. The person who fears
reacts only with fight when flight is not possible.
P2: Aggression is usually socially condemned.
There are several societal norms which condemn aggression to protect

the integrity and stability of a society and its members.
C: Therefore, there are social reasons for a subject experiencing a hostile

affective state to evaluate it negatively, experiencing, as a result, a
diminution in her own value.
The social reasons for the negative self-evaluation can be normative and/
or prudential. Such reasons are normative when the subject evaluates
the HAS negatively because it flouts a social norm. They are prudential
when the negative self-evaluation aims at avoiding social exclusion.
Note that the social argument does not necessarily imply that the
HAS in question is intrinsically painful. Rather, the HAS acquires a
negative hedonic valence after an evaluation has taken place whereby the
subject regards it as socially unacceptable. The misogynist who experi-
ences contempt toward women, the xenophobe who hates foreigners,
and the victim of crime who hates her aggressor might find these HASs
to be pleasant experiences (for the case of hate, see Hampton 1988;
Pfänder 1913/1916). However, as the social argument states, she might
feel diminished in worth after she evaluates the HAS in question to be
socially unacceptable.
10.2.2 (A2) The Phenomenal Argument

According to the phenomenal argument, HASs have a negative hedonic
valence by virtue of being constituted by painful feelings of being dimin-
ished in worth (Salice and Salmela 2022, also Elster 1999).
P1: HASs are constituted by painful feelings of being diminished in worth.
According to this premise, feelings of a diminution in self-worth are

constitutive elements of certain HASs. The painful feelings of being
diminished in worth usually mentioned in the literature are feelings of
inferiority and/or impotence. However, in my view, negative feelings of
self-worth also include feeling at a disadvantage, feeling disfavored, and
so on. Note that while not all HASs are constituted by such feelings of
being diminished in worth (consider the cases of contempt and hatred
mentioned above), the kinds of HASs at stake in this argument are cases
such as envy, jealousy, and Ressentiment5, which have negative feelings
of inferiority, powerlessness, being at a disadvantage, being disfavored,
and so on, as their main ingredients.6
P2: Feelings of diminution in self-worth exhibit negative phenomenal

properties.
Feelings of being diminished in worth such as feeling inferior, power-

less, being at a disadvantage, and being disfavored are painful experi-
ences. They exhibit negative phenomenal properties and are by nature
unpleasant.7
C: Therefore, those HASs which have feelings of being diminished in

worth as constituent moments are necessarily unpleasant.
HASs have a negative hedonic valence by virtue of entailing negative

feelings of self-worth which are constituted by unpleasant phenomenal
properties.
The phenomenal argument works only for a particular kind of HAS:
the subgroup of HASs which have the feeling of diminution in one’s own
value as a constituent element. These HASs are intrinsically hedonically
negative (independently of the fact that the subject can also evaluate
them negatively on the basis of social norms).
10.2.3 (A3) The Modal Argument

HASs might exhibit a negative hedonic valence by virtue of the subject’s
bad prospects to overcome them (Salice and Salmela 2022). This argu-
ment runs as follows:
P1: HASs entail unpleasant feelings of a diminution in one’s own value.
This premise states that HASs involve negative feelings of self-worth.

Though the literature mentions here feelings of inferiority and/or power-
lessness, again we should understand the full range of feelings of diminu-
tion in one’s own value. Note that this premise does not specify why HASs
entail such feelings: it can be the case that the HAS acquires these feelings
after the subject evaluates it negatively, drawing on social considerations
(as in A1), and/or these feelings are constituents of the HAS itself (as in A2).
P2: The subject of an HAS evaluates her possibilities of overcoming the

unpleasant feelings of diminution in self-worth as being bad.
There are several reasons that might lead her to evaluate the options to
change as bad. It might be the case that she lacks the resources or that
a change is not possible for external reasons (e.g., a change is excluded
because the community in which she lives makes it impossible).
C: Therefore, a HAS is hedonically negative by virtue of the subject’s

bad prospects to overcome the unpleasant feelings of being dimin-
ished in worth.
According to this argument, the subject experiences a feeling of being

diminished in worth after realizing her lack of options to overcome the
HAS in question. Though it can be the case that the feeling of self-worth
is experienced as having a negative hedonic valence either because it is
intrinsically painful or because it is painful after we have evaluated it
as infringing social norms, the point of the modal argument is that it
explains the negative charge of a HAS in terms of the subject’s evalua-
tion of her options to overcome it.
These arguments are not mutually exclusive. In fact, a subject experi-
encing, for instance, envy might have an intrinsic explanation and two
extrinsic explanations of why she feels diminished in worth. To begin,
her envy is hedonically negative because it entails painful feelings of dim-
inution in one’s own value (e.g., inferiority, powerlessness) as ingredients.
The evaluation of her own envy as being socially condemned can also
elicit feelings of being diminished in worth (e.g., she might feel morally
inferior) and the prospects to overcome it might evoke in her more feel-
ings of being diminished in worth (e.g., she might feel at a disadvantage).
10.3 Negative Feelings of Self-Worth and Self-Deception:

Extrinsic and Intrinsic Motivations
This chapter takes negative feelings of self-worth to be crucial in explaining
why the subject who experiences a HAS tends to deceive herself by means
of generating an upliftment of her own value. Since feelings of diminution
in one’s own value are extremely unpleasant and painful, the subject who
is unable to overcome them by positive means tries to compensate for this
painful experience by setting in motion a series of self-deceptive processes
regarding herself. Yet, though my focus here is on how negative feelings of
self-worth can motivate self-deception, I take these feelings to be a neces-
sary though not sufficient condition for a HAS to lead us to deceive our-
selves. Indeed, one can experience a diminution in one’s own value and
not deceive oneself. An envious person might be aware of her envy and
how painful it is without deceiving herself about it. In this respect, other
elements such as having a bad character, lacking maturity or emotional
resources might also play a role in leading a subject to self-deception.
To explain the motivational power of negative feelings of self-worth,
a distinction needs to be made between extrinsically and intrinsically
motivated self-deception. In the arguments I presented above, in HASs,
feelings of self-worth are at play in two distinct forms. The feeling of
being diminished in worth can be acquired after the subject adopts a
stance toward her own HAS. This possibility is at work in the scenarios
spelled out in the social (A1) and the modal arguments (A3). According
to these arguments, she experiences a diminution in self-worth after neg-
atively evaluating her HAS. In this respect, the feelings of being dimin-
ished in worth are “extrinsic” to the HAS in question. By contrast, in the
scenario at stake in the phenomenal argument (A2), the feeling of being
diminished in worth is a constitutive part of the HAS in question. They
are “intrinsic” to it. In this respect, the negative feeling of self-worth can
motivate the self-deception extrinsically or intrinsically.
10.3.1 (EMSD) Extrinsically Motivated Self-Deception

When the feeling of diminution in one’s own value is experienced
after a negative evaluation of one’s own HAS, we have a case of
EMSD. The self-deception is extrinsic because the HAS in question
is not necessarily painful but also acquires a painful hedonic valence
after the subject’s evaluation. The subject judges her own HAS as
reproachable (for moral and prudential reasons) and this judgment
casts a bad light on herself (for instance, showing that she is unable
to cope with situations in which she is not in a privileged position
and/or is herself evil, because it discloses her bad character, because
it shows that she is motivated by the wrong reasons, etc.). It can also
be the case that the subject evaluates her HAS negatively after judging
the options to overcome it as bad. As a result, she feels diminished in
worth. This feeling might motivate her to deceive herself about what
she is experiencing.
Take as an example a person feeling contempt. This person might be
extrinsically motivated to deceive herself and interpret her contempt
in terms of indignation after evaluating her contempt to be socially
unacceptable.
10.3.2 (IMSD) Intrinsically Motivated Self-Deception

When the feeling of diminution in self-worth is constitutive of the HAS,
the subject can be intrinsically motivated to deceive herself. All HASs
which have feelings of diminution in self-worth as constituents, such
as envy, Ressentiment, and jealousy, are extremely unpleasant, inde-
pendently of the stance that the subject takes toward them. Thus, by
virtue of being the kind of HASs that they are, they entail a tendency
to deceive oneself about what one is experiencing. The self-deceptive
processes which serve to cope with a situation of frustration and pain
are intrinsically activated without the intervention of extrinsic factors
(which might be given or not).
Consider envy. The envier tries to compensate for feelings of inferi-
ority and powerlessness by claiming that the rival does not deserve the
good and generate in this way a positive sense of self. In this case the
self-deception is intrinsically motivated. However, note that the envier
can also be extrinsically motivated to deceive herself if she realizes that
envy is socially condemned and/or that she cannot overcome her inferi-
ority, powerlessness, and so on.
The distinction between EMSD and IMSD suggests that feelings of
diminution in one’s own value can motivate self-deception in distinct
ways. Cases of IMSD are particularly intriguing because they suggest
that the tendency to deceive oneself can be constitutive of some HASs,
independently of external reasons. Indeed, while experiencing a HAS
which is not intrinsically unpleasant can lead to self-deception for
extrinsic reasons, a subject who experiences a HAS of the kind that
entails feelings of diminution in one’s own value will be intrinsically
motivated to compensate such hedonically negative feelings, generating
an unreal uplifting of the self.
10.4 Intrinsically Motivated Self-Deception and the Upliftment
of Self-Worth: What is a Self-Deceptive Style?
This section examines in more detail how the negative feelings of self-
worth constitutive of HASs can intrinsically motivate a series of self-de-
ceptive maneuvers leading to an upliftment of the subject’s own value.
More precisely, my aim is to explore how the negative feeling of self-worth
changes the architecture of the subject’s mind so that a positive but artifi-
cial feeling of self-worth might arise. I take here as my point of departure
the idea that like other affective states, the feelings of self-worth are also
able to exert a systematic influence on other mental states. Like emotions,
feelings of self-worth select specific features of the environment, provide
them with salience, guide our attention, make specific memories stand
out, elicit imaginings, alter perception and belief, and so on.8 Emotions
and feelings of self-worth affect our mind outside the subject’s control.
In both cases, this happens unintentionally. Though we might be aware
of this influence, it is not uncommon that these changes happen “behind
our back”. Insofar as they are able to alter the architecture of our mind,
they can also shape our apprehension of reality, lead to a biased view of
the world and on certain occasions motivate self-deception.
My thought here is that the negative feeling of self-worth intrinsic to
a HAS might change the architecture of the subject’s mind by means of
a series of self-deceptive maneuvers concerning specific mental states. To
begin, the negative feeling of self-worth intrinsic to HASs might motivate
us to deceive ourselves about what we perceive, by making some objects
more salient than others, by changing the way in which we perceive
them or by discarding them from our perceptual horizon (1). It can also
motivate us to imagine (2) and to remember (3) certain objects rather
than others. It also leads us to deceive ourselves about our judgments
about the target, one’s own subject, the situation, etc. (4). It can lead to
an alteration of our inner awareness by means of numbing, repressing,
making salient, etc. some affective states over others (5). It can also lead
us to alter our apprehension of values, for instance, by deploying an
object of its value (6). It might influence what we prefer (7). It can also
lead to changes in our desires (8). Though this list is not exhaustive, it
provides a picture of how the negative feeling of self-worth can exert its
influence on the self-deceiver’s mind.
Yet, interestingly, these changes motivated by negative feelings of self-
worth take different shapes depending on the HAS we are experiencing.
That is, though self-deception is motivated by the feeling of diminution
in one’s own value inherent to a HAS, the specific HAS we are experienc-
ing will determine the distinctive manner in which we deceive ourselves.
Indeed, while the envier deceives herself about what she is experiencing
and interprets it in terms of feelings of injustice but is simultaneously
aware of the value of the rival and the coveted good, the person in the
grip of Ressentiment deceives herself not only about what she is expe-
riencing but also about the target’s value who is denuded of her worth.
In both cases, negative feelings of self-worth motivate self-deception but
the self-deception itself takes a different form. In other words, not all
HASs lead us to deceive ourselves in the same way. Rather, each HAS
distorts and changes our mind following a distinctive pattern. To capture
this distinctive and unique pattern of deceiving oneself, here I coin the
expression “self-deceptive style”. The term is not just descriptive; but it
also has an explanatory function, i.e., it enables us to distinguish between
distinctive patterns of self-deception associated with each HAS.
To speak about “styles” in the context of our mental states requires
some clarification. The notion of “style” has been employed with several
different meanings, and given that I use it for affective states in particular,
some clarificatory remarks are in order. As Huemer argues (2016, 195),
“style is attributed to entities of very different ontological categories” such
as persons, collectives, epochs, and psychological entities. Moreover, as he
notes, what these categories have in common is that they are related to the
performance of actions as a way to perform an action, as the subject of the
action, or as the object result of it (Ibid.). While in current literature, some
authors such as Cassam (2019) employ the concept of “style” to refer to
ways of thinking, I do not see anything odd in applying this concept to the
particular way in which a HAS leads to self-deception. By employing the
notion of “style”, I take psychological entities such as HASs to be bearers
of style. In addition, and to be precise, when I argue that these affective
states have a style, I refer not only to the subject or the result of self-
deception, but rather to the way in which the self-deception is performed.
That is, HASs have ways of performing the self-deception by means of
changing, modifying, biasing other mental states such as perceptions,
imaginings, emotions, and beliefs so that the illusion of an upliftment of
self-worth takes place. Self-deceptive styles are ways of perceiving, imag-
ining, emoting, believing, etc., in which self-deception is performed when
we are in a specific HAS.
Note that as psychological entities, affective states belong to a subject
and subjects might be themselves bearers of style which influences how
they perform the self-deception. For instance, some people are more sib-
ylline than others and will tend to lie without remorse, others are more
prone to fantasize, while others have a low self-esteem, etc. Yet here
my focus is on the self-deceptive styles associated with particular HASs
and not on the style of the subjects to which this affective state belongs
(though the latter might give the former a particular shape). Therefore,
though the subject as a bearer of style can be responsible for individual
variations, these will not be examined here.
With the concept of self-deceptive style, my aim is to offer a micro-anal-
ysis of the particular ways in which each HAS might lead to us deceiv-
ing ourselves through an upliftment of the sense of self. Rather than
being interested in how one hostile emotion transforms into another
(this is what Salice and Salmela’s notion of emotional mechanism tries to
explain), my focus is on how the subject of a HAS changes the architech-
ture of her mind and tries to compensate for the painful feelings of being
diminished in worth by generating an upliftment of her own value but
without transmuting this HAS into another one. Section 10.5 explores
the descriptive and explanatory power of the concept of self-deceptive
style by offering a comparative analysis of envy and hate.
10.5 The Self-Deceptive Styles of Envy

and Hate: A Comparison
10.5.1 Envy’s Self-Deceptive Style

Though some authors have argued that envy can be benign, here I will
focus on malicious envy as a form of hostility toward the rival who pos-
sess the coveted good (e.g., possessions, achievements, talents, and the
other’s being). In the literature, this envy has been described as encom-
passing “feelings of inferiority” (Ben-ze’ev 1992, 552 and 556; Miceli
and Castelfranchi 2007, 252; Protasi 2016, 537), “feelings of disem-
powerment”, or “powerlessness” regarding the envier’s possibilities to
overcome her inferiority (Fussi 2019; Salice and Montes Sánchez 2019;
Scheler 2010), “feelings of helplessness and hopefulness” which make the
envier feel depressed regarding the vision of obtaining the good (Miceli
and Castelfranchi 2007, 457), and “feelings of disadvantage” in which
the subject feels the possibilities to obtain the good as unlikely (Vendrell
Ferran 2022). All these feelings are feelings of being diminished in worth
which lead the envier to experience an episodic diminution in her episodic
self-esteem and a degradation of her occurrent self-value. Note that this
claim should not be conflated with the much stronger claim put forward by
Taylor (2006) according to which envy always involves low dispositional
self-esteem. In fact, given that people with high dispositional self-esteem
(see Vrabel, Zeigler-Hill, and Southard 2018, 103) might nonetheless be
envious and experience episodes in which they feel diminished in worth,
envy is not only experienced by people with low dispositional self-esteem.
In order to get rid of such feelings, a series of self-deceptive mecha-
nisms can be set in motion behind the envier’s back. The link between
envy and self-deception has been noted in the literature. However, there
remains an open question as to how to interpret the self-deception more
precisely. While Miceli and Castelfranchi (2007, 459) argue that the
envier’s “talent to disguise” consists in illegitimately persuading herself
that her hostility is based on an injustice suffered, for Taylor (2006, 49)
what envy protects is the appearance of an esteem-worthy self which she
and others can respect. In my view, however, what the envier aims at
protecting is her own positive sense of self, i.e., her sense of self-worth.
She does so by setting in motion a series of self-deceptive maneuvers
which follow the pattern of envy’s own self-deceptive style.
Envy’s self-deceptive style can be characterized as follows. To begin,
envy leads to a narrowing of our perception to the good and the rival
(1) which can be a source of pain for the envier (motivating her to either
achieve the good or disguise her pain). Moreover, envy is linked to upward
counterfactual imaginings (2) in which the envier has obtained the good
(Smith 2000, 179). These imaginings are also a source of pain because
she realizes that there is a disparity between reality and desire (they might
motivate the envier to obtain the good, but when the good is unobtaina-
ble, the imaginings increase the envier’s pain). It also involves imaginings
about how to obtain the good, how the rival loses it, or how to inflict
pain on the other. In addition, envy involves memories (3) about moments
which could have led the envier to obtain the good, causing him regret,
for instance, because she could have made better decisions, etc. Regarding
her judgments (4), the envier believes that she and not the other is the
one who deserves the good. In this respect, envy involves counterfactual
thinking: “It could have been me” (Ben-ze’ev 1992; Crusius and Lange
2021; Protasi 2021, 70–83). Because envy is unpleasant, it might moti-
vate a change of the belief about the emotion we are experiencing so that
envy is disguised as indignation or a feeling of injustice.9 Yet, despite the
envier’s attempts, she is unable to numb her feelings of being diminished
in worth: given that she cannot divert her attention from the good and
the rival, the comparison with the other keeps her in a situation of felt
inferiority, powerlessness, etc. (5). Interestingly, the envier’s apprehension
of value remains unmodified (6). She is able to apprehend the value of the
good and of the rival and she apprehends herself as diminished in worth.
Despite claiming that the rival does not deserve the good, or that the
good is worthless, and despite claiming that she is not feeling devalued,
the apprehension of these values is not distorted. The envier’s preferences
also remain unchanged (7). She prefers the good possessed by the rival
over other goods. Finally, the desire to achieve the good and/or to be in
the rival’s place remains unchanged (8).
As a result, in envy, the feeling of being diminished in worth leads
the envier to unintentionally change, distort, alter, and modify her own
imaginings, memories, and beliefs, so that she deceives herself about
the possibilities of her obtaining the good, about who deserves the
good, and about the emotion she is experiencing. These might lead her
to believe that she “can” or at least “could have” obtained the good
(independently of whether this is true or not). In so doing, her feeling
of self-worth is uplifted. Yet, despite these changes, the envier continues
to experience her envy as painful and her value as diminished. Indeed,
intrinsic to envy are not only these tendencies that lead to an upliftment
of self-worth, but also tendencies which go in the opposite direction.
As we have seen, envy involves a narrowing of perception; it generates
counterfactual imagining and regretful memories that remind the envier
that she could have obtained the good; envy elicits the counterfactual
thought that the envier deserves the good. Moreover, given that she still
apprehends the good as valuable, the rival as better positioned, herself
as inferior and powerless, etc., and given that she still prefers and desires
the good possessed by the rival over other goods, envy is not totally
deceptive and but also remains a source of pain. These changes lead the
envier to experience herself as diminished in worth and this cannot be
compensated for by the fictitious upliftment of self-value provided by
changes in imaginings, memories, and judgments. In sum, envy’s self-
deceptive style is configured by intrinsically motivated changes at the
level of imaginings, memories, and judgments, while inner awareness,
apprehension of values, desires, and preferences exacerbate the envier’s
feeling of being diminished in worth.
10.5.2 Hate’s Self-Deceptive Style

Although hate, like envy, might come in different forms (Hampton 1988;
Sternberg and Sternberg 2008; Vendrell Ferran 2021), my focus here is on
a specific form of hate which is in my view able to intrinsically motivate
self-deception. In this respect, “ideological hate”, exemplified above by the
xenophobe whose hatred toward foreigners is motivated by internalized
prejudices circulating in her environment (Szanto 2020; Sartre 1976, 20;
Sánchez and Salice 2023), does not intrinsically motivate self-deception.
The ideological hater does not feel inferior, at a disadvantage, powerless
or helpless, and hopeless regarding her target. Rather, the opposite is
the case. Therefore, there is no intrinsic feeling of being diminished in
worth which can motivate her to deceive herself. For similar reasons,
cases of “normative hate” in which we hate what breaks societal norms
(e.g., hatred of criminals) might also involve an upliftment of the self
and as such cannot intrinsically motivate self-deception. Finally, cases of
“retributive hate” (Brudholm 2010; Murphy 2016; Salice 2020a), which
is experienced as a response to someone who has damaged us, might
also be intrinsically pleasant and involve an upliftment of the self. In
fact, it has even been considered therapeutic (Miller 2007).10 In sum, in
ideological, normative, and retributive hate, when the subject deceives
herself, she does so for external considerations because these forms of
hate do not entail as constituent moments negative feelings of self-worth.
These forms of hate do not necessarily feel bad and can even be enjoyed
(Hampton 1988; Pfänder 1913; Shand 1914; Steinbock 2019).
In my view, the form of hate which can intrinsically motivate self-
deception is what I call “malicious hate”. Unlike ideological and nor-
mative hate, the targets of which can be anyone who belongs to a hated
general category (e.g., foreigners, criminals), the object of malicious hate
is irreplaceable. Moreover, unlike retributive hate, in malicious hate, the
attribution of evilness to the target is indeterminate, i.e., it is not clear to
others why the subject regards the target as evil. Usually, malicious hate
has envy, jealousy, and other nasty affective states as its sources. This is,
for instance, the kind of hate experienced by someone who hates another
who is intellectually, socially, etc., better placed than her. Importantly,
in contrast to the aforementioned forms of hatred, malicious hate entails
as constituent moments strong feelings of diminution in one’s worth.
When we claim to hate another because she is morally better than us,
more beautiful, more intelligent, etc., this hate involves feelings of being
diminished in worth. These feelings are probably inherited from the
envy, jealousy, etc., that fuel this hate. Thus, malicious hate can intrin-
sically motivate self-deception in order to cope with negative feelings of
self-worth and generate an upliftment of the self.
In particular, the self-deceptive style of malicious hate can be
described as follows. First, the subject focuses her attention on the tar-
get and narrows her perception to her, which she considers to be irre-
placeable. This phenomenon has been described by Ortega y Gasset
as “falling in hate” (1988) (1). Hate is linked to imaginings related to
how to harm the target so that the original injury can be compensated
for (2). Memories are focused mainly on how the target has damaged,
provoked, or injured us (3). In malicious hate, there is a change of our
beliefs about the other to whom we attribute the property of being evil
(e.g., the other is evil for having attacked us, for being disgusting, and
morally low.) (4). Moreover, the hater can change her beliefs about her
own affective states and reinterpret her hate in terms of indignation,
resentment, or anger.11 Yet, despite the subject’s attempts, the malicious
hater is inwardly aware of the feeling of being diminished in worth (5).
This hater attributes to the other the property of evil in order to feel an
upliftment of her own self, for instance, in feeling morally superior to the
other (6).12 Moreover, the hater still acknowledges the other’s values: she
hates the other for being a better philosopher, for being more beautiful,
for enjoying more social recognition than her. As long as she perceives
the other as embodying these positive values, her apprehension of the
other’s values remains objective. Malicious hate, unlike the phenome-
non usually described as Ressentiment, is not totally blind to the other’s
values. Furthermore, the subject’s preferences remain unchanged since
the other is still regarded as worthy (despite the subject’s claims to the
contrary) (7). Finally, desires (8) are not changed in malicious hate. The
hater might still desire to be like the other, for instance.
In sum, changes in imaginings, memories, beliefs, and the apprehen-
sion of one’s own affective states, as well as the illegitimate attribution of
evilness, aim at relieving the pain caused by the feeling of a diminution
in one’s own value, generating a fictitious upliftment of self-worth. Yet,
since the hater is focused on the target, she is still aware of the other’s
value, and given that she is aware that the attribution of evil is unjus-
tified, she does not change her preferences and desires. This leads to a
tension between the unpleasant feeling of being diminished in worth
and the fictitious upliftment of self-worth generated by biased cognitive
states and attributions. As a result, the malicious hater, like the envier, is
in a state marked by tension and pain.
Despite having similar self-deceptive styles, envy is, in my view, more
painful than this kind of hate. Though both the malicious envier and the
malicious hater do see the other’s values and desire them, the malicious
hater’s attempt to devalue the other is stronger than the envier’s attempt.
Indeed, while the envier claims that the other does not deserve the good,
the hater attributes to the other the property of evil. Therefore, the mali-
cious envier is less blind than the malicious hater.
10.6 Concluding Remarks

In this chapter, I have argued that HASs entailing feelings of diminu-
tion in self-worth as constituent elements might intrinsically set in train
a series of self-deceptive maneuvers that generate an upliftment of the
subject’s sense of self. I have introduced the notion of “self-deceptive
style” to capture the distinctive ways in which each HAS performs the
IMSD and generates a fictitious upliftment of the self. I have suggested
that each HAS has its own self-deceptive style and I have illustrated this
claim by analyzing the cases of envy and hate.
To conclude, let me briefly mention two possible directions for
further research. The first consists in examining how the concept of
self-deceptive style might contribute to current research on emotional
mechanisms. While Salice and Salmela examine how emotions linked
to feelings of inferiority and impotence are transformed into less pain-
ful ones and develop a model of emotional mechanisms, I focus on the
specific way in which the feeling of a diminution in one’s value intrinsi-
cally motivates a distortion of the subject’s mental architecture so that
an upliftment of the self takes place. Though these are different pro-
jects, self-deceptive styles can be regarded as offering a micro-analysis
of tensions encountered at the level of the HAS, tensions which as such
can contribute to activate the emotional mechanisms of transmutation
of this HAS into another one.
Finally, the kind of micro-analysis of the internal structure of a HAS
developed in this chapter can shed light not only on how one HAS can
transform into another, but also on how emotions such as envy partici-
pate in the formation of sentiments such as hate which are enduring atti-
tudes which can be punctually felt. In turn, work on self-deceptive styles
can be used to explore how both emotions and sentiments participate in
the formation of affective attitudes such as Ressentiment.
Acknowledgments
This work is supported by the DFG (German Research Foundation)
(Project: Mental Images and Imagination). An early version of this
chapter was presented at a workshop at University College Cork in May
2022. I am indebted to Alba Montes Sánchez and Alessandro Salice,
the organizers of the workshop, and to Anna Bortolan, Bennett Helm,
Antonio Gómez Ramos, and the other participants for their valuable
comments. I am particularly thankful to Edward Harcourt for providing
extensive and insightful comments on an early draft. I am also grateful
to Simon Mussell for improving my written English.
Notes
1. In this chapter, I employ the expression “hostile affective state” in a broad
sense to encompass emotions (e.g., envy), sentiments (e.g., hate), affective
attitudes (e.g., Ressentiment), and all the other phenomena that belong to the
family of the affective.
2. Though I borrow this expression from Voigtländer (1910), my usage differs
from hers in different respects. First, while Voigtländer considered feelings
of self-worth all affective states which entail an apprehension of one’s own
value, I distinguish here three different phenomena: (1) the apprehension of
value in feelings of self-worth (e.g., feeling inferior, feeling powerless); (2)
the emotions (e.g., pride); and (3) the character traits responsible for making
us prone to experience such feelings (e.g., courage). Moreover, in my view,
feelings of self-worth can be constituent moments of other affective experi-
ences. For instance, envy entails feelings of being diminished in worth such
as feeling inferior and powerless.
3. See, for the distinction between both forms of self-esteem, Salice (2020b) and
Bortolan (2023). Some hostile affective states might also entail low disposi-
tional or trait self-esteem but since my focus here is on the feelings of being
diminished in worth, my interest is only on episodic self-esteem.
4. A similar model has been developed for the particular case of Ressentiment
by Voigtländer (1910) and drawing on her work, Aeschbach (2017).
5. Though in the literature, Ressentiment is not always regarded as an affec-
tive state (see, for instance, Salice and Salmela 2022), I take Ressentiment
here to be a hostile affective state in the broad sense mentioned in endnote
1. More precisely, Ressentiment is an affective attitude or disposition, i.e., a
long-lasting state which emerges over time and whose phenomenology can
be explained only in terms of the phenomenology of other affective states.
6. An implication of this claim is that regarding their respective hedonic
valences, HAS does not constitute a unitary class.
7. This does not exclude the possibility that we might take a positive stance
toward them, for instance, we might come to enjoy sadness when we know
the object is imaginary or fictional (this is the so-called paradox of tragedy).
However, the emotional experience of sadness feels bad by nature.
8. For an analysis of emotions’ influence on cognition, see de Sousa (1987, 195)
and Brady (2016). For the role of emotion in self-deception, see Lazar (1998)
and Mele (2000).
9. Note that I focus here on changes of belief motivated intrinsically by the
unpleasant feeling of being diminished in worth and leave aside changes of
belief motivated by extrinsic reasons (e.g., the interpretation of envy in terms
of feelings of injustice).
10. When Fischer, Halperin, Canetti, and Jasini (2018) and Salice (2020a) claim
that hate involves feelings of powerlessness, they have in mind cases of retrib-
utive hate but not cases of ideological and normative hate. I agree with the
idea that in order for retributive hate to arise, the subject must feel dimin-
ished in worth by the target. Yet, retributive hate as such has, in my view, the
function to protect the self and to restore her value. In this respect, Solomon
writes that hate entails “a degree of self-esteem” (1993, 267), while Hampton
describes hate as entailing an advancement of the self (1988).
11. Again, my focus here is on intrinsic changes of beliefs and not on changes of
beliefs due to extrinsic reasons.
12. Note that malicious hate, unlike retributive hate, is not a response to the
property of evil; rather this property is attributed to the other because we
hate it (for a different view, see Salice 2020a).
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Index
affective forecasting 2, 7, 17–18, desire 1, 9, 12, 19–22, 27, 29, 33,

23–28, 30–37 35–36, 49, 69, 77–78, 84, 98,
affective orientation 9, 125, 129–130, 103, 107, 110–112, 114–116, 120,
135–136, 141–142, 151–152, 160, 125, 132, 140, 161, 168–169, 177,
164 180, 191–192, 195, 207, 211, 217,
affective/emotional reactions 220–223
17–18, 20, 22–36, 43, 47, 105, distraction 168, 174–175, 184–185
107, 197
aggression 4, 134, 209, 212 emotional dissonance 195–196,
alienated emotions 7, 39, 41, 48–49, 199, 201
51, 52–53, 98 emotional mechanism 11, 24, 61, 65,
alienation 47–48, 172, 177, 180, 140, 184, 188, 194, 198, 200, 202,
181–182, 185 206–209, 219, 223
aptitudes 18–19, 31–32, 34 envy 2, 4, 11, 60, 188–196, 198–202,
204–206, 209–211, 213–216,
basic emotions 42, 104–105 219–225
Benjamin, Walter 168, 169, 171, 173, evidence 8, 17–23, 25, 28, 35, 39–41,
176, 178, 181 44, 59, 61–64, 68, 77, 80, 85–91,
blame 40, 163, 195, 199–200, 206 93, 97, 133–136, 139–140, 174,
boredom 2, 10, 24, 36, 47, 177, 188–192, 197, 202, 206, 211
168–187 existential feeling 4, 9–10, 130–131,
Buddhist philosophy (including 135, 139, 141–142, 145, 151–154,
Buddhist accounts, thinkers, 159–162, 164
thought, tradition, views) 103, expression 42, 57, 61–64, 67, 69–71,
106–107, 109–111, 113–118 89, 105, 117, 120, 140, 174–175,
195–197, 200, 211, 218, 224
Cassam, Quassim 1–2, 17–20, external reasons 99, 157–158, 214,
25–26, 39, 113 216
character (also character trait) 2,
6–7, 18–19, 26–27, 33–34, 36, facial mobility 70
40–41, 82, 89, 127, 132, 164, 191, fear 4–5, 7, 10, 29, 34, 39–40,
215–216, 224 42–49, 51, 71, 78–79, 104–105,
coherence 49–51, 98 109, 111, 133, 150, 174, 210, 212
containment 58, 63, 68–69 flourishing 8, 83–88, 90–91, 93–94,
contestation (of norms, values, 182
concepts, identities) 8, 77, 85, 94, friendship 145, 158, 164
96, 98
creativity 173–174, 186 Goldie, Peter 6, 36, 146–147, 150,
critical theory 178–179 154, 163
Index 229
Haslanger, Sally 74, 76, 86 objectivity 74, 80, 85–86, 95, 97
hate (also hatred) 2, 5, 11, 47, 68, other minds 56
86, 103, 109, 188–192, 195, 197,
202, 204, 209, 210–211, 213, 219, psychotherapy 58, 61, 68
221–225
Hawley, Katherine 133–135 racial hatred 11, 188–189, 192,
Heidegger, Martin 4, 130, 171, 198–202, 204
174–178, 184–185 racism 30, 188–191, 194, 203
honesty 7, 49–51, 53 rasa theory 103–106
hostile emotions (including Hostile Ratcliffe, Matthew 4, 125, 130–131,
Affective States or HAS) 2, 11, 151–153, 159–160
142, 204, 209–219, 223–224 reactive attitudes 8, 81–84, 88,
90–93, 96
imagination 21, 25, 105, 224 recalcitrant emotions 41, 43–47
impostor syndrome (also impostor recognition 11, 98, 134, 193–194,
phenomenon) 9, 126, 132–137, 198–202, 204
139–142 reflectivity 172, 177–178, 183–184
Indian aesthetics 103–105 resistant community 8, 77, 91–95
Indian philosophy (including Indian Romanticism 176, 180–181
schools of thought, thinking,
thought, tradition, views) 3, 6, 8–9, salience (also salient) 6, 130, 148,
103–104, 107, 109–110, 113, 115, 154–157, 193, 201, 217
117 Scheler, Max 1, 4, 203, 219
irrationality (also irrational) 7, 41, self-ascription 18, 20–22, 34, 40, 57,
43–47, 147–148, 150, 200 59, 61–62, 65–67, 148–149, 151,
158
Lawlor, Krista 20–22 self-concept (also self-conception)
liberation 6, 9, 108, 112–117, 3, 6, 9, 18, 21, 40, 49, 125–126,
119–120, 184 128–129, 132, 134, 136–137,
love 2, 4–5, 10, 18, 29, 39, 43, 45, 139, 141, 145, 148–149, 153–154,
47, 67–68, 79, 103–105, 115, 156, 162
136, 139, 145–165, 170, 183, self-deception 6, 7, 10, 11, 41, 43,
203–205 49–51, 59, 61, 174, 184, 188–189,
love, falling in see love 191, 203, 209, 211–212, 215–219,
love, falling out of see love 221–222
love, romantic see love self-deceptive style 11, 209, 211,
217–223
melancholy 169, 173, 176, 181 self-esteem 2, 4, 9–11, 82, 125–132,
mentalization 58, 62 135–141, 211, 218–219
mirroring 56–57, 62–63, 67 self-evaluation 126–127, 129,
Modernity 10, 171–173, 176–178, 131–132, 193, 209–210, 212
180, 182, 185 self-image 7, 47–49, 51, 111,
mokṣa 103, 107, 113–117, 119–120 126, 197
Moran, Richard 51, 59–62, 68 self-interpretation 20, 41, 48–49, 73,
80, 90, 92
narcissism 9, 126, 136–141 self-knowledge, substantial (also SSK)
narcissistic personality disorder 126, 2–3, 6, 17–23, 25–28, 32–35, 39,
136–139, 141 58–59, 185
narrative 3, 7, 10, 40, 49–50, 137, self-knowledge, trivial (also TSK)
140, 145–156, 158–163, 186, 200 2–3, 17–22, 33, 35, 58–59, 203
narrativity 50, 146 self-understanding 1, 3, 6, 10, 18,
norm 61, 73, 77, 81–84, 88–98, 182, 40, 145–149, 151–155, 157–160,
212, 214, 221 162–163, 176
230 Index
self-worth, feeling of or sense of 9, valuing 7, 22, 29–30, 77–80,
11, 128–129, 131–132, 138–141, 89, 191
210–223 vedanā 103–104, 106–107, 113
social construction 8, 74–76, 84–85, virtue(s) 12, 27–29, 32, 34, 40, 50,
90, 97 95, 115, 174
social identity 8, 73–74, 76, 82–84,
86, 88–93, 95–96, 189 Wittgenstein, Ludwig 57–58, 60–61,
spontaneity (also spontaneous) 7–8, 64–66, 69
57, 60–62, 64, 66–67 worth (also self-worth; worthy;
Strawson, Peter F. 8, 81 unworthy; worthless) 9, 11,
73, 77–79, 82, 128–132, 135,
time 10, 115, 173–179, 184–186 138–141, 210–223
values 1–2, 4, 8, 18–19, 23, 26,

29–30, 34, 41, 44, 46, 49–51, 73,
79–84, 86–97, 109, 126–128, 194,
196, 203–204, 217, 220–223

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Routledge Studies in Contemporary Philosophy

“This outstanding volume introduces a wide array of interesting and

This volume sheds light on the affective dimensions of self-knowledge

Alba Montes Sánchez is a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Center for Sub-

Alessandro Salice is a Lecturer at the Department of Philosophy of University

Updating the Interpretive Turn

Conservatism and Grace

The Ethics of Interpretation

The Nature and Practice of Trust

A Plea for Plausibility

Living with the Dead

Free Will’s Value

For more information about this series, please visit: https://www.

ISBN: 978-1-032-31710-6 (hbk)

Typeset in Sabon LT Std

Introduction: Self-Knowledge and Emotion 1

1 Affective Forecasting and Substantial Self-Knowledge 17

2 Alienated Emotions and Self-Knowledge 39

3 Acquiring Self-Knowledge from Others 56

4 Emotions and the Contestation of Social Identities 73

5 Emotion, Self-Knowledge, and Liberation

6 Good Enough to Be Myself? The Fraught Relationship

7 Three Stages of Love, Narrative, and Self-Understanding 145

8 Transitional Boredom: On Boredom and Self-Knowledge 168

9 Envy, Racial Hatred, and Self-Deception 188

10 Hostile Affective States and Their Self-Deceptive Styles:

Anna Bortolan is a Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at Swansea University,

This book is one of the main outputs of Alba Montes Sánchez’s

The relation between self-knowledge and human emotions is an often

1.2 Trivial and Substantial Self-Knowledge

• Knowing that you are generous (knowledge of one’s character).

Cassam (2014, 30ff) distinguishes SSK from TSK by several conditions:

a You haven’t performed the necessary inference from the evidence

1.3 Failures of SSK as Failures of Evidence

1.4 Affective Forecasting: General Theory

To know whether he is fastidious, Woody needs to know to what extent

To value something is to have a complex of positive attitudes toward

valuing involves a distinctive fusion of reason and emotion. It com-

Although valuing cannot be reduced to affective dispositions,15 valu-

Typical components of caring include joy and satisfaction when the

What valuing also requires is that, depending on a situation, the affec-

1.6.1 Objection 1: Functionalist Objection

1.6.2 Objection 2: Inductive Objection

I might be afraid of mice. I say “might be” because I have conflicting

2.1 Emotions Tell Us Things about Ourselves

2.3 Recalcitrant Fear

2.4 What Does Good Emotional Self-Knowledge Look Like?

0. According to the western philosophical mainstream, acquiring certain

1. Various sources will help me in this exploration. First, Philosophical

[W]ords are connected with the primitive, the natural, expressions

In the little transaction Wittgenstein describes here, at least if I’m a

2. I now want to turn to the second mainstream idea that—whoever as

540. It is a help here to remember that it is a primitive reaction

I think Wittgenstein is right about the “natural, instinctive kinds of

4. Emotions have featured repeatedly in this chapter but as it were in the

We do not think all varieties of the allocentric self-relation come

My topic is how certain complex social structures of emotions make it

individuals collectively interact to form a complex system. And once

4.1.1 Emotions and Caring

Introduction: Self-Knowledge and Emotion 1

1 Affective Forecasting and Substantial Self-Knowledge 17

2 Alienated Emotions and Self-Knowledge 39

3 Acquiring Self-Knowledge from Others 56

4 Emotions and the Contestation of Social Identities 73

7 Three Stages of Love, Narrative, and Self-Understanding 145

8 Transitional Boredom: On Boredom and Self-Knowledge 168

9 Envy, Racial Hatred, and Self-Deception 188

2.4 What Does Good Emotional Self-Knowledge Look Like?

6.2 Some Conceptions of Self-Esteem

6.4 Self-Knowledge and Self-Esteem in the Impostor Syndrome

8.2 Embrace Your Boredom. The Positive View on

9.2 Evidence about the Link between Envy

9.5 How Envy is Transmuted into Racial Hatred: