Emotional Reason
Deliberation, Motivation, and the Nature of Value

This book proposes an innovative theory of emotions, desires and evaluative judgements.

Bennett W. Helm (Author)

9780521801102, Cambridge University Press

Hardback, published 5 April 2001

272 pages
21.6 x 14 x 1.9 cm, 0.5 kg

"This book is a significant contribution to some of the most central debates in moral psychology and represents an important advance in the articulation of a broadly McDowellian approach to them." Ethics

How can we motivate ourselves to do what we think we ought? How can we deliberate about personal values and priorities? Bennett Helm argues that standard philosophical answers to these questions presuppose a sharp distinction between cognition and conation that undermines an adequate understanding of values and their connection to motivation and deliberation. Rejecting this distinction, Helm argues that emotions are fundamental to any account of value and motivation, and he develops a detailed alternative theory both of emotions, desires and evaluative judgements and of their rational interconnections. The result is an innovative theory of practical rationality and of how we can control not only what we do but also what we value and who we are as persons.

Acknowledgements
1. Two problems of practical reason
Part I. Felt Evaluations: 2. Emotions and the cognitive-conative divide
3. Constituting import
4. Varieties of import: cares, values and preferences
Part II. Practical Reason: 5. Single evaluative perspective
6. Rational control: freedom of the will and the heart
7. Deliberation about value
8. Persons, friendship and moral value
Select bibliography
Index.

Subject Areas: Philosophy [HP]