Whether through New Year’s resolutions or compulsive buying of personal growth books, we all strive to become better people. But how can we reach our goal, and what sort of success can we expect? How do we educate our emotions? Lastly, what is a good person? These are the questions that Christine Tappolet of the Department of Philosophy at Université de Montréal set out to answer. She has just received a $101,000 grant from the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council Canada to study educating the emotions, in collaboration with philosophers Luc Faucher of the Department of Philosophy at UQAM and Ruwen Ogien, of the National Scientific Research Centre in Paris. We criticize people’s reactions and emotional makeup because we think we can understand them somehow. For a number of years, Christine Tappolet has been interested in the idea that our emotions give us access to knowledge about good and bad. She feels that our emotions are value perceptions and the basis for all morals and ethics. The appropriate emotion should correctly translate the specific values of the context that gives rise to it. Anger shows its usefulness when it tells us about an injustice.

To find out how our emotions are shaped and take root, Christine Tappolet proposes to study therapies that have evolved out of different conceptions of emotions. Beck’s cognitive therapy, for example, seeks to resolve emotional problems solely through reasoning. However, Christine Tappolet has her doubts: anyone who is afraid of spiders won't stop being afraid just by thinking that spiders are harmless!

Mrs. Tappolet will focus mainly on a conception put forward by Martha Nussbaum, whereby appreciation of works of art, and especially literary works, can help form our emotional makeup. In her view, novels and movies enable us to put ourselves in someone else’s shoes and share their emotions, developing our own at the same time.

Yet we still have to understand how this kind of education is actually put into practice. Researchers may be motivated by the analogy between emotions and the senses as ways to perceive reality. For example, we might try to sharpen and refine our emotional sensitivity, just as we learn to distinguish wines by tasting them. Moreover, there is an interdependence between different emotions. Separating the capacity to love from a propensity for jealousy is not a simple matter. Consequently, it may be impossible to modify or suppress some emotions without affecting others.

Once an objective or ideal for educating the emotions has been determined, it remains to be seen how far they can actually be influenced. To answer this question, the researchers will examine the empirical literature in psychology, biology and anthropology. They believe that an interdisciplinary dialogue between philosophers and scientists is essential to a better understanding of the emotions and their role.

Researcher: Christine Tappolet
Telephone: (514) 343-7666
Email: christine.tappolet@umontreal.ca
Funding: Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada