The Evaluative Dimension of Emotion in Martha Nussbaum’s Judgmentalism
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.5902/2179378691830Keywords:
Emotion, Cognition, JudgmentAbstract
The objective was to explore the evaluative dimension of emotion in Martha Nussbaum’s judgmentalism, seeking to understand what underpins her cognitivism in the model of emotions she proposes. The author defends the thesis that emotion has a cognitive and intentional nature, being identical to a type of evaluative judgment about something of immense value for the individual’s flourishing – a notion inherited from the ancient Stoics and later reinterpreted by her. To this end, she deflates the preliminary notion of value judgment, adopting a broad understanding of cognitive evaluation without precise limits, in which she employs expanded conceptions of intentionality and cognition in order to make it possible to ascribe emotions to children and non-human animals. Situating her defense within the debate between cognitivism and non-cognitivism in the field of morality, and seeking to safeguard the intelligibility of emotion, the non-cognitive elements – such as habit, affect, and feeling – although motivationally potent in emotional evaluation, are subsumed as parasitic upon beliefs and evaluative judgments, as is her notion of the body, and as such, are not considered necessary to the definition. Consequently, although it is not possible to regard her evaluative processes as purely abstract, the phenomenological character of emotion – active in emotional evaluations – is not properly taken into account.
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