The education of the emotions

It would be very satisfactory if, writing about the education of the emotions, I could be quite certain what the emotions were. But that unfortunately is not easy, indeed is perhaps impossible. Richard Peters has written more than once about the emotions, and education of the emotions. ¹ His view was that emotion was a kind of appraisal of a situation, a perception of it as nice or nasty, as agreeable or disagreeable. Where such appraisals lead directly to action, we may speak of motive. For example, if I sum up a situation as dangerous, I feel fear (an emotion); and if I take action, if for example I hide my head under the pillows, then fear becomes my motive, what actually gets me to do the thing in question. But, though the very same 'thing' (not to commit myself), fear, may be either a motive or an emotion, there is no necessary connexion between emotions and actions. Indeed, conceptually, Peters argues, emotions are distinguished from motives by being essentially passive. This means that in experiencing an emotion, the owner of the experience is not first and foremost an agent but a patient. He suffers from the emotion. He is overcome by, swept away by, surprised by the emotion. It wells up in him, without his consent or knowledge. He is essentially moved, disturbed, upset by it. So though hatred may motivate someone to murder, or to getting a rival sacked from a job, equally it may be experienced by someone sitting in his armchair brooding, and may be experienced violently and in its purest form without action resulting.