Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-fscjk Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-23T12:08:16.868Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

The Sentimental Self

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  01 January 2020

Joseph Kupfer
Joseph Kupfer*
Affiliation:
Iowa State University, Ames, IA50011-1306, USA
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

Sentimentality is usually thought of as a mild vice. Unlike such vices as cruelty, dishonesty, or contemptuousness, sentimentality appears to affect only the individuals who have it, and then, not very adversely. So what if we indulge our taste for prematurely dying heroines or stoic, sweet-natured children? Shedding a tear or feeling a diffuse affection does not seem to hurt anyone, not even ourselves. But because of its impact on the self, sentimentality is a more serious vice than might be suspected.

Regardless of the immediate object of our sentimental gaze, the self is also sentimentalized. The self is not only the subject engaged in sentimentalizing activity, but also its mediated object. A sentimentalized sense of self discourages activity and keeps us from dealing with the world directly. The distortion of and absorption in the self is dangerous for sentimental individuals and those with whom they interact. To see why, we must examine the structuring of perception, thought, and emotion which makes up sentimentality. Our inquiry will be sharpened by reference to literary depictions which reflect or encourage sentimental response. Versing us in the ways of sentimentality, some literature may generate our everyday patterns of sentimentalized thought and feeling.

Type
Research Article
Information
Canadian Journal of Philosophy , Volume 26 , Issue 4 , December 1996 , pp. 543 - 560
Copyright
Copyright © The Authors 1996

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Thackeray, William Makepeace Vanity Fair (New York: Heritage Press 1940), 38Google Scholar

2 Dewey, John Art as Experience (New York: Minton, Balch 1934), 24Google Scholar

3 Eaton, Marcia ‘Laughing at the Death of Little Nell: Sentimental Art and Sentimental People,’ American Philosophical Quarterly 26 (1989) 269–82, at 275Google Scholar

4 Richards, I.A. Practical Criticism (New York: Harcourt, Brace 1960), 261Google Scholar

5 Jefferson, Mark ‘What Is Wrong With Sentimentality?’ Mind 92 (1983) 519–29, at 527CrossRefGoogle Scholar

6 Savile, Anthony The Test of Time: An Essay in Philosophical Aesthetics (Oxford: Clarendon Press 1982), 239Google Scholar

7 Nussbaum, Martha ‘Equity and Mercy,’ Philosophy and Public Affairs 22 (1993) 83–125, at 108-9Google Scholar

8 Among those with helpful ideas on how fiction can occasion truthful conjecture about reality are Silverman, Stuart ‘Knowledge and Acceptance, and the Experience of Literature,’ British Journal of Aesthetics 13 (1973) 243–50CrossRefGoogle Scholar; MacDonald, Margaret ‘The Language of Fiction,’ Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society, Supplementary Vol. 28 (1954) 165–96CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Hospers, John ‘Implied Truths in Literature,’ Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 19 (1960) 37–46CrossRefGoogle Scholar. In passing, Hospers makes this promising observation: ‘Works of literature are able, through the delineation of character and the setting forth of situations … to suggest hypotheses about human behavior, human motivation, human actions, and sometimes about the social structure (45).’ On the view I argue for here, the hypotheses suggested by sentimental depictions should be less revealing and true of real people than depictions which are not sentimental.

9 Newman, Ira ‘The Alleged Unwholesomeness of Sentimentality,’ in Neill, and Ridley, eds., Arguing About Art (New York: McGraw-Hill 1995) 228–40, at 238.Google Scholar

10 Tanner, Michael ‘Sentimentality,’ Proceedings of the Aristotelian Society 77 (1976-77) 127–47, at 130CrossRefGoogle Scholar

11 Dostoevsky, Fyodor The Idiot, trans. Henry, and Carlisle, Olga (New York: New American Library 1969), 67Google Scholar

12 A good starting point for inquiry into self-deception is Jean-Paul Sartre's classic discussion in Being and Nothingness, trans. Barnes, Hazel (New York: Philosophical Library 1956)Google Scholar. His discussions of ‘Bad Faith’ (Part One, Chapter Two) and going to sleep, in particular, suggest how sentimentalists could sense the threat of self-scrutiny and action without full awareness or acknowledgment of it.

13 Midgley, Mary ‘Brutality and Sentimentality,’ Philosophy 54 (1979) 385–89, at 385, 387CrossRefGoogle Scholar