EMOTIONS AND ETHICAL NORMS

The child we imagined in Chapter 4 now has many emotions: joy at the presence of good things and fear of their absence; anger at the sources of frustration and gratitude for aid and comfort; shame at her inability to control the sources of good; envy of competitors and guilt at her own aggression; disgust at the slimy and the decaying; wonder at the beauty of the world. By now we can see how these emotions support the child's ability to act, as they mark off patterns of salience and urgency in her surroundings; we also see how they may support generous and beneficent action. But we also see a darker set of connections. The urgent needs of infantile dependency can engender a paralyzing shame, accompanied by destructive resentment that puts later ethical development at risk. The child's intense involvement with nearby objects risks impeding general social concern in later life. The intensity and ambivalence of the child's attachment to its first objects may distort the perception of other objects she will soon encounter. Disgust's repudiation of animality can eventually lead to destructive forms of social hierarchy. None of these problems threatens the account of emotion as value-laden recognition: for it is from evaluation that they all arise. They do, however, make us wonder to what extent emotions are rational in a normative sense, that is, suitable for guiding good adult deliberation.