Description

Fear, joy, grief, love, hate, pride, shame. We all have emotions, and we recognize emotions in others. But do we really understand what emotions are and what they signify? It is remarkable how often we are wrong about our own emotions and misread the emotions of others. We also deceive ourselves about their meaning. The more we puzzle over the nature of emotions, the deeper the mystery becomes. It is a mystery that is by no means solved, but one that repays careful, philosophical analysis.Far from being routine, emotions are “the key to the meaning of life,” says distinguished philosopher and author Robert C. Solomon, who in these 24 lectures takes you on a tour of his more than three-decade-long intellectual struggle to reach an understanding of these complex phenomena. Some of his conclusions are surprising and very much against the current of common sense.Professor Solomon’s lectures unfold as a rich dialogue with other philosophers, including Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, Descartes, Adam Smith, Nietzsche, William James, Freud, Heidegger, and Sartre. He also relates these views to contemporary work in the cognitive sciences on emotions, notably research by Antonio Damasio, Joseph LeDoux, and Paul Ekman. And he discusses the portrayal of emotions in writers and artists including Homer, Shakespeare, Melville, Dostoevsky, and Picasso.Emotions Have IntelligenceBy probing the ideas of these and other thinkers and presenting his own views, Professor Solomon will lead you to a remarkable conclusion: Emotions have intelligence and provide personal strategies that are vitally important to our everyday lives of perceiving, evaluating, appraising, understanding, and acting in the world.This idea runs counter to the widespread view that draws a sharp distinction between the emotional and the rational and views the emotions as inferior, disruptive, primitive, and even bestial forces. For Professor Solomon, many emotions are distinctively human and they are far more complicated than mere “feelings.” They are rational judgments—sophisticated strategies for survival.In exploring the multifaceted nature of emotions you will address questions such as:How do we distinguish emotions from feelings, such as heartache?What is the meaning of our emotions, and how do they serve to enrich and guide our lives?Is there a determinable number of basic emotions that serve as building blocks for the range of emotions we experience?Is an emotion such as jealousy a genetic trait shared by all humans—or is it something learned?The Japanese have an emotion named amae, but it seems unknown to Westerners. To what extent do language and culture determine emotional experience?Are emotions subconscious products of the mind, or are they under conscious control?http://www.teach12.com/tgc/courses/Course_Detail.aspx?cid=4123