Pride and Conceit: Emotions of Self-Assessment

Abstract

Robert Solomon, who wrote the first comprehensive, well-known study of emotions during recent times, maintains that a central feature of emotions is that they are ‘self-involved’.¹ He also says that in many emotions the judgment of the self is implicit or in the shadows, implying that the self casts a shadow on emotions like admiration, anger and envy. ‘Anger, which always involves a judgment that one’s self has been offended or violated, may nonetheless focus its fervor strictly towards the other person. Resentment, although clearly self-involved and based upon a personal stance of defensiveness, protects its self with a projected armour of objectivity’.² He says that in every case the self is an essential pole of emotional judgment. Solomon even seems to suggest that the nature of emotions will remain incomprehensible without a theory of the self.³ But ultimately, the self in emotions is a point of reference implying subjectivity. Even today, in examining the problematic relationship between emotions and the self, there is a kind of unwillingness to probe deeply into the question of the reality of the self, as well as the moral criticism of the emotions.