Reply to my Critics

Abstract

In response to critical discussion of my book, A Tear Is an Intellectual Thing: The Meanings of Emotion, I clarify and develop various aspects of my analysis of jealousy in particular and affectivity in general. In relation to jealousy, I explore the nature of pathology, the role of fantasy and of the rival, and the place of examples and of evolutionary theory. In relation to affectivity, I emphasize the difference between distinguishing emotions from other psychological states and distinguishing among, within and between, particular emotions (where affectivity may not be central). In addition, I emphasize the dangers of a version of G.E. Moore's error in demanding a nonreductive analysis of “good” in parallel demands for a nonreductive analysis of “affectivity.”