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Feeling Wisely and Too Well: Mistaken Judgments of Emotion

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Feeling Wisely and Too Well: Mistaken Judgments of Emotion FEELING WISELY AND TOO WELL: MISTAKEN JUDGMENTS OF EMOTION L.H. Townsend A dissertation submitted to the faculty at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in the Department of Philosophy. Chapel Hill 2019 Approved by: Susan Wolf Douglas MacLean Carla Merino-Rajme John Roberts Sarah Stroud ©2019 L.H. Townsend ALL RIGHTS RESERVED ii ABSTRACT L.H. Townsend: Feeling Wisely and Too Well: Mistaken Judgments of Emotion (Under the direction of Susan Wolf) The history of philosophy has seen many theories that are, in one way or another, unfriendly to the emotions. Emotions are perceived as irrational: they are thought to be separate from reason, to distort rational thinking, or to lead people to act against their own best interest or judgment. Emotions are perceived as undesirable and inferior: emotional people are thought immature, weak, or incompetent. I argue that this legacy of problematic ideas shows up in contemporary literature, even in work that appears to be friendlier toward the emotions. Intense emotions, especially, are likely to be subject to distorted or mistaken evaluations. Moreover, there is an anti-emotion bias in everyday life consistent with the tendency in the literature to distort and undervalue, revealed by patterns of mistaken judgments of emotional response to oppression. I argue that it is important to recognize these phenomena as demonstrating a bias against emotion, and that merely reducing it to other forms of bias overlooks something important. However, I acknowledge the disparate impact anti-emotion bias has on women and people of color. My arguments in this chapter are not meant to challenge or diminish the role racism and sexism have in the impact of anti-emotion bias. Rather, by pointing out bias against emotion and its interaction with other biases, I hope to illuminate one way oppression functions. If indeed anti-emotion bias interacts with and reinforces oppression, my arguments shed light not only on how to improve our philosophical theories of emotion, but on an important part of the project of dismantling racist and sexist oppression. Finally, I argue that the variety of evaluative standards by which we assess emotion deserves more attention in our theories and iii everyday judgment. Paying attention to the many ways emotion can be good or bad will result in greater appreciation of the complexity of emotion, and is likely to expand our conception of the range of emotion that is valuable and appropriate. iv For my younger self, and everyone who feels “too” well v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS Susan: thanks for slogging through what were some really messy drafts (to put it mildly), for helping me turn them into something readable, and for helping me improve so much as a writer. Carla: your comments were incredibly helpful, constructive, and encouraging. That sounds so small, but more than once throughout the years your feedback was exactly what I needed to hear and how I needed to hear it. Thank you. Doug: thanks for being up for arguing with me. Mariska: thank you for looking out for graduate students. It’s meant a lot to me to have you in the department. Brook: I am not sure I would be here if you had not been such an incredible mentor to me early on. I am so grateful for your role in my development as a philosopher and a feminist. And thank you for telling me to stick it out and finish when six months felt like forever and those three letters didn’t feel worth the struggle. Thank you to the feminist philosophers who wrote brilliant essays that were a joy to read and helped me understand my world and recognize what I was trying to say: Susan Campbell, Margaret Little, Alison Jaggar: each of you wrote papers that helped me remember why I love philosophy when I really needed the reminder. Audre Lorde (for everything), Alice Walker (especially for “Olive Oil” and everything else in The Way Forward is With A Broken Heart and Anything We Love Can Be Saved), Brittney Cooper, Kristie Dotson, and Marilyn Frye. To my teachers and space-holders: Kevin, thank you for hanging out with me in the abyss of my mind and giving me space to wander around in there. Maggie, thank you for helping me back into my body and emotions. Patty, I will be forever grateful to you for creating the most vi magical, most healing, most queer space I’ve ever had the privilege to be present in. Being in that space helped my spirit wake up and dare to imagine it was possible to be full and present and vulnerable without turning away from the ugliness and oppression. Michelle, you are a wonder. This world is without a doubt a better place for you being in it and I am better for having known you. Thank you for embodying love and contradiction and skill in action. Thank you for sharing your wisdom and intuition. To those beside and behind me: Aliosha and Minji: thank you for making the department just a bit brighter for me. Tamara and Caleb: I am beyond grateful for being part of the best cohort ever. I don’t know if I would be here without you and if I were it would have been a much worse time. Macy: thank you for the feminist consults, the perfect facial expressions, and being on the same page. You are a good person and a great friend. DeeAnn, you quickly became one of my favorite people and (from my perspective, even though we haven’t really fought yet) a very good friend. Listening to you laugh is medicinal. You helped me feel a little less alone during some of the worst bits of this process. Stephanie, thanks for the insight and inspiration only a fellow water sign could bring to this project—it seriously got this whole thing going. To the amazing groups of women who have kept my spirit alive: Becca, Jody, Serena, and Joy: our little group has given me a taste of what the world can be and our weekends have been such magical cocoons of goodness. I have so much love for you all. To my Vagina Monologues Fam: thank you for such an amazing perfect foray outside the department. Mama V loves you. Steph, Jamie, Dar, Linds, Em, Macy, Tamara, Caleb: group chats are legit so important and I am so grateful for ours. Linda: I can’t think of the right words to thank you so you get your own line. vii Special shout-out to Steph and Jamie who’ve been around for twenty (!) years and counting. To my parents and sisters: thank you for giving me a rock-solid start in life and just enough dysfunction to keep things interesting. I am always grateful for you. To Momma, who I suspect will teach me more about life and love than just about any other creature on Earth. I am privileged every day by your companionship. To Hanna: I was only kidding a little when I said you taught me everything I know about anger. This project couldn’t have happened if you hadn’t given me the space to find the words for my feelings (even if you did end up exasperated by just how many words I came up with). I love you. To my students: you gave me life, refreshed my love for philosophy and people, and taught me so much. It has been a privilege to teach and a crucial part of how I was able to make through the Ph.D. There are so many students I am grateful for. Special thanks to: my Existentialism class in 2015—my first-ever solo course and an absolutely delightful group to spend the summer with. All the students who look alive and nod vigorously—it is hard to overstate how grateful I am for you, and all the students who let themselves get excited about and frustrated with the texts. Allana who paid me the ginormous compliment of taking three courses with me and boosted my ego forever. Marleina (you look like a philosopher to me you are a damn good philosopher), Thom, Summer (thank you for trusting me), Chris (your authenticity and open, friendly nature makes me smile even now), Hailey (you have no idea how much your recognition meant to me), Rachel, Antonio (I still remember your blog post from Vagina Monologues), and Zakiyyah (you gave me faith in assigning revisions. It was such a pleasure to read your ideas and watch you improve so quickly). Kat, thanks for reminding me we have choices even when it doesn’t feel like it. My Philosophical Issues of Gender students in 2016—thanks for the conversation about mansplaining, whitesplaining, and last names. Raven, viii Sarah, Elissa, Emily, Andrew—y’all were in one of my most challenging but most rewarding classes. Each of you had so much heart and so many brilliant ideas. Sophie—you’re incredible. It was an honor to share space and conversations with you and I love watching what you’re doing in the world. To the students in my African-American Political Philosophy course—I was so worried about taking on a new course while finishing my dissertation but y’all were just what I needed to make it through. This has been one of my favorite-ever courses to teach. I won’t call you out by name since the term isn’t over yet but please know that many of you brought me so much joy with your brilliant ideas and your willingness to laugh and struggle and find the words and demand excellence of yourselves.
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