ABSTRACT
The American philosopher Robert Solomon devoted his career to the establishment of emotions as rational. He never denies that emotions include feelings and bodily manifestations. Solomon's view of emotions follows closely that of Jean-Paul Sartre, especially in the emphasis on our responsibility for our actions. Solomon takes William James, together with C. G. Lange, as the classical exponent of the physiological view: James's analysis of religion and emotion, like his analysis of religion generally, is of the individual and not of the group. Thus James explicitly argued that emotions were nothing other than the affects of neurological processes, in particular, neurological disturbances demanding expression in action of some kind. Cannon showed that the same visceral and neurological changes accompanied very different emotional states and that artificial induction of these changes did not produce the appropriate emotions. At the same time James rejects the association of an emotion with any fixed bodily movement.
