Negative emotions are familiar enough, but they have rarely been a topic of study in their own right. This volume brings together fourteen chapters on negative emotions, written in a highly accessible style for non-specialists and specialists alike. It starts with chapters on general issues raised by negative emotions, such as the nature of valence, the theoretical implications of nasty emotions, the role of negative emotions in fiction, as well as the puzzles raised by ambivalent and mixed emotions. The second part of the volume consists of studies of specific emotional phenomena, ranging from the emotion of being moved and the sense of uncanniness to jealousy, hatred, shame, contempt, anxiety, and grief.

About the Editors

Christine Tappolet is Full Professor at the Département de philosophie at the Université de Montréal. Her research interests lie mainly in ethics, moral psychology, and emotion theory. She has edited a number of volumes, including, with Sarah Stroud, Weakness of Will and Practical Rationality (2003), and is the author of two books, Émotions et valeurs (2000), and Emotions, Values, and Agency (2016).

Fabrice Teroni is Associate Professor in the Philosophy Department at the University of Geneva. He has published several articles and monographs on the general theory of emotions (The Emotions: A Philosophical Introduction, Routledge 2012), on the nature of shame (In Defense of Shame: The Faces of an Emotion, 2011) and on memory. He has recently edited, with Hichem Naar, The Ontology of Emotions (2017).

Anita Konzelmann Ziv was Senior Research and Teaching Assistant in the Philosophy Department at the University of Geneva. Her research focuses on shared and moral emotions. She co-edited Self-Evaluation – Affective and Social Grounds of Intentionality (2011) and Institutions, Emotions, and Group Agents: Contributions to Social Ontology (2013).

Table of Contents

Notes on Contributors

Introduction

1. Emotionally Charged: The Puzzle of Affective Valence
Fabrice Teroni
2. Nasty Emotions and the Perception of Values
Christine Tappolet
3. Imaginative Resistance: Negative Emotions, Values and Fiction
Anne Reboul
4. Who is Afraid of Contrary Emotions?
Clotilde Calabi and Marco Santambrogio
5. Bitter Joys and Sweet Sorrows
Olivier Massin
6. The Emotion of Being Moved
Julien A. Deonna
7. The Uncanny and Other Negative Existential Feelings
Jérôme Dokic
8. Disgustingly handsome: Nausea in the Face of Physical Beauty
Anita Konzelmann Ziv
9. Stench and Olfactory Disgust
Vivian Mizrahi
10. Anxiety: A Case Study on the Value of Negative Emotion
Charlie Kurth
11. Grief
Carolyn Price
12. The Moral Shadows of Shame and Contempt
Raffaele Rodogno
13. Negative Emotions and Racism
Luc Faucher
14. How to Think Yourself Out of Jealousy
Ronald de Sousa