ORCID
0009-0007-9667-7751
Date of Award
4-30-2024
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Degree Type
Dissertation
Abstract
It has grown increasingly common to hold that some emotions that feel bad can be important to our well-being. This idea appears in “common sense” views, such as the view that it is important to feel grief after the loss of a loved one, as well as in sustained philosophical defenses, such as those written defending the value of anger for securing justice. I seek to push back on this idea. After preliminary clarifications, I defend the claim that an emotion’s feeling bad provides a prima facie reason to assign it a negative impact on our well-being on every plausible account of well-being. Next, I consider several kinds of value that negative emotions may nevertheless promote that could render them all-things-considered positively impactful on our well-being, including epistemic value, motivational value, and aretaic value. I will defend the claim that to the extent negative emotions promote such values, those values could be better promoted by alternatives such as more positive emotions. Therefore, negative emotions do not positively contribute to our well-being as much as available alternatives and it would be generally best for us to avoid them.
Language
English (en)
Chair and Committee
Eric Brown
Recommended Citation
Colacchia, Christopher, "Emotions that Feel Bad are Bad: An Investigation into the Purportedly Positive Parts of Negative Emotions" (2024). Arts & Sciences Electronic Theses and Dissertations. 3013.
https://openscholarship.wustl.edu/art_sci_etds/3013