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Abstract
What does it mean to be sad? What difference does it make whether, how, and why we experience our own, and other people’s, sadness? Is sadness always appropriate and can it be a way of seeing more clearly into ourselves and others?
In this volume, a multi-disciplinary team of scholars - from fields including philosophy, women’s and gender studies, bioethics and public health, and neuroscience - addresses these and other questions related to this nearly-universal emotion that all of us experience, and that some of us dread. Somewhat surprisingly, sadness has been largely ignored by philosophers and others within the humanities, or else under-theorized as a subject worthy of serious and careful attention. This volume reverses this trend, presenting sadness as not merely a feeling or affect, but an emotion of great moral significance that in important ways underwrites how we understand ourselves and each other.
Anna Gotlib is Associate Professor of Philosophy at Brooklyn College CUNY.
This lively and bold collection explores oft-neglected issues in philosophy that relate to negative and positive facets of sadness, including what grieving is, whether short-term sadness after a loved one’s death is problematic, what matters to us when death is imminent, whether sadness can be good for us, and the meaning of nostalgia. Thought-provoking and tugs at the heart strings.
Anita Superson, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Kentucky
In its fine exploration of different kinds or aspects of sadness—grief, heartbreak, nostalgia—this remarkable collection sheds entirely fresh light on an emotion to which philosophers have paid scant attention. Here we have an example of moral philosophy at its best.
Hilde Lindemann, Professor of Philosophy at Michigan State University
In the moral psychology literature, much has been written about happiness and almost nothing about sadness. Anna Gotlib’s edited volume on the moral psychology of sadness fills a significant gap in the literature by conveying a variety of ways that sadness as an emotion plays a crucial role in our moral lives.
Peggy DesAutels, Professor of Philosophy at the University of Dayton and Director of the American Philosophical Association Committee on the Status of Women
Table of Contents
| Section Title | Page | Action | Price |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cover | Cover | ||
| The Moral Psychology of Sadness | i | ||
| The Moral Psychology of Sadness | iii | ||
| Contents | vii | ||
| Acknowledgments | ix | ||
| The Topographies of Sadness | 1 | ||
| 1. Introduction | 1 | ||
| 2. The Strangest Of Emotions | 3 | ||
| 3. The Moral Psychology Of Sadness | 8 | ||
| 4. The Topographies Of Sadness | 13 | ||
| Notes | 14 | ||
| References | 16 | ||
| Part I | 19 | ||
| THE PHENOMENOLOGIES OF SADNESS | 19 | ||
| Chapter 1 | 21 | ||
| Untold Sorrow | 21 | ||
| 1. Loss | 21 | ||
| 2. Sorrow | 24 | ||
| 3. Un-narratable Loss | 26 | ||
| 4. Sorrows Told And Untold | 30 | ||
| 5. Bearing Witness | 33 | ||
| Notes | 36 | ||
| References | 41 | ||
| Chapter 2 | 43 | ||
| Should We Feel Sad about Scheffler’s Doomsday Scenario? | 43 | ||
| 1. Happiness And Sadness | 44 | ||
| 2. The Doomsday Scenario | 45 | ||
| 3. Additional Reasons Doomsday Might Not Be So Bad | 48 | ||
| Notes | 51 | ||
| References | 52 | ||
| Chapter 3 | 53 | ||
| Sadness, Sense, and Sensibility | 53 | ||
| 1. Sadness And Love | 54 | ||
| 2. Being Sad Well, Being Sad Ill | 59 | ||
| 3. Coda: Austen’s Metaphysics Of Emotion | 64 | ||
| Notes | 66 | ||
| References | 66 | ||
| Chapter 4 | 69 | ||
| Sadness, Intersubjectivity, and the Lesson of | 69 | ||
| 1. The Science Of Sadness | 70 | ||
| 2. The Existentialism Of Emotions | 75 | ||
| 3. From Anxiety To Sadness | 78 | ||
| Notes | 86 | ||
| References | 89 | ||
| Part II | 91 | ||
| SADNESS AND OTHER EMOTIONS | 91 | ||
| Chapter 5 | 93 | ||
| Grief and Recovery | 93 | ||
| The Argument From Unimportance | 98 | ||
| The Argument From Desertion | 105 | ||
| Anxieties Revisited | 110 | ||
| Acknowledgments | 111 | ||
| Notes | 111 | ||
| Bibliography | 114 | ||
| Chapter 6 | 117 | ||
| Forgiveness and the Moral Psychology of Sadness1 | 117 | ||
| 1. Forgiveness And The Problem Of Sadness | 117 | ||
| 2. Sadness, Grief, And Depression | 123 | ||
| Interlude: The Wife Of An Alcoholic Tells Her Story | 128 | ||
| 3. Blame And Sadness | 129 | ||
| 4. Sadness, Self-respect, And Respect For Morality | 136 | ||
| 5. Sadness And Forgiveness | 141 | ||
| Notes | 145 | ||
| References | 151 | ||
| Part III | 153 | ||
| SADNESS AND NOSTALGIA | 153 | ||
| Chapter 7 | 155 | ||
| Nostalgia and Mental Simulation1 | 155 | ||
| 1. Introduction: A Brief History Of Nostalgia | 155 | ||
| 2. Characterizing Nostalgia | 157 | ||
| 3. Final Thoughts: Nostalgia, Mental Simulation, And Political Motivation | 170 | ||
| Notes | 171 | ||
| References | 177 | ||
| Chapter 8 | 183 | ||
| Memory, Sadness, and Longing | 183 | ||
| 1. Introduction | 183 | ||
| 2. What Is Nostalgia? A Few Origin Stories | 185 | ||
| 3. Sadness, Memory, And Nostalgia: A Few Mistaken Notions | 188 | ||
| 4. Nostalgia, Sadness, And Longing | 193 | ||
| 5. Exiles And Frauds: The Many Practices Of Nostalgia | 198 | ||
| Notes | 201 | ||
| References | 204 | ||
| Index | 207 | ||
| About the Contributors | 213 |