Shadows of the Soul ─ Philosophical Perspectives on Negative Emotions

Negative emotions are familiar enough, but they have rarely been a topic of study in their own right. This volume brings together fourteen chapters on negative emotions, written in a highly accessible style for non-specialists and specialists alike. It starts with chapters on general issues raised by negative emotions, such as the nature of valence, the theoretical implications of nasty emotions, the role of negative emotions in fiction, as well as the puzzles raised by ambivalent and mixed emotions. The second part of the volume consists of studies of specific emotional phenomena, ranging from the emotion of being moved and the sense of uncanniness to jealousy, hatred, shame, contempt, anxiety, and grief.

Christine Tappolet is Full Professor at the Departement de philosophie at the Universite de Montreal. Her research interests lie mainly in ethics, moral psychology, and emotion theory. She has edited a number of volumes, including, with Sarah Stroud, Weakness of Will and Practical Rationality (2003), and is the author of two books, Emotions et valeurs (2000), and Emotions, Values, and Agency (2016).

Fabrice Teroni is Associate Professor in the Philosophy Department at the University of Geneva. He has published several articles and monographs on the general theory of emotions (The Emotions: A Philosophical Introduction, Routledge 2012), on the nature of shame (In Defense of Shame: The Faces of an Emotion, 2011) and on memory. He has recently edited, with Hichem Naar, The Ontology of Emotions (2017).

Anita Konzelmann Ziv was Senior Research and Teaching Assistant in the Philosophy Department at the University of Geneva. Her research focuses on shared and moral emotions. She co-edited Self-Evaluation – Affective and Social Grounds of Intentionality (2011) and Institutions, Emotions, and Group Agents: Contributions to Social Ontology (2013).