On The Adequacy of Emotions and Existential Feelings

Abstract

In the analytic tradition of the philosophy of emotions the folk notion of adequacy is understood with regard to - at least four - different questions, viz. (a) a moral question, (b) a prudential question, (c) an epistemic question, and (d) a fittingness (or correctness) question. Usually, the fittingness question is treated as being the central one. I have some doubts concerning this assessment, particularly when it comes to substantial - interpersonal or cultural - controversies about whether a specific emotional response is adequate or whether a specific event deserves the emotional responses it triggers. To approach these matters, I recommend first doing without the established distinctions, for they may prematurely tempt us into assessing the adequacy of emotional responses in terms of one of these categories thereby overlooking other features that deserve attention. Instead, I will start with the folk notion of adequacy and then refine stepwise the conceptual landscape to get closer to what the crucial issues of adequacy are.