‘Emotions’ in Gopal Sreenivasan's Emotion and Virtue

Abstract

In his remarkable new book, Emotion and Virtue, Sreenivasan defends the view that, in the case of many virtues, in order for an exemplar of each of these virtues to be a reliable judge of what that virtue requires in specific circumstances, she must possess a particular, morally rectified, emotional trait. In this article, I raise two challenges to “the argument from salience” that Sreenivasan offers in favor of this view. First, I argue that, although Sreenivasan wishes to remain neutral about different philosophical theories of emotions, the success of his argument depends, in fact, on the outcome of the debate about the nature of emotions. Second, I challenge the central claim of Sreenivasan's argument from salience, namely, that the possession of a morally rectified emotional trait, cleverness, and supplementary moral knowledge is sufficient to explain an agent's ability to reliably judge what a given virtue requires in specific circumstances.