ABSTRACT
This chapter reflects three important propositions about emotions. First, emotion is viewed as intertwined with reason, rather than diametrically opposed to it. Second, emotions are viewed as a source of knowledge. Finally, personal emotions are viewed as operating within broader emotional contexts. The chapter considers how emotions can develop that encourage people either to gravitate towards a sense of social proximity or, conversely, to recoil and retreat, creating social distance and a subsequent reduction of responsibility towards the Other. Emotions have a special relationship to morality, with feelings of anger, compassion, envy, fear, grief, shame and love, to name just a few, providing knowledge and informing people judgements about what is fair and just. For the members of Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA) represented in the chapter, their emotional experiences amounted to a process of transformation in which responsibility to the Other eroded as social distance increased.
