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Passions: Philosophy and the Intelligence of Emotions

A distinguished philosopher and author takes you on a tour of his more than three-decade-long intellectual struggle to reach an understanding of emotions: "the key to the meaning of life." Far from being routine, emotions are "the key to the meaning of life," says distinguished philosopher and author Robert C. Solomon, who in these 24 lectures takes you on a tour of his more than three-decade-long intellectual struggle to reach an understanding of these complex phenomena. His conclusions can be surprising and very much against the current of common sense."
Passions: Philosophy and the Intelligence of Emotions is rated 3.9 out of 5 by 72.
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Rated 5 out of 5 by from Am still working my way through previous purchases. Will get back to you.
Date published: 2022-11-15
Rated 2 out of 5 by from Neither deep nor interesting I love this topic. But I couldn't make it past lecture 4. I guess it was a little interesting to delve in minor points and history, but it was dispassionately presented and there is so much more to tackle and better ways to do it.
Date published: 2022-02-06
Rated 5 out of 5 by from First Rate I was put off by the icon provided, which caused me to think it was pop psychology nonsense. FAR from it. Pure gold from start to finish.
Date published: 2021-12-24
Rated 5 out of 5 by from The late, great Robert Solomon Professor Solomon made a cameo in Richard Linklater's film Waking Life, as Linklater was once a student of Solomon's. With that said, I believe Solomon is a legend and is the best on the Great Courses series. Whoever gives him a bad rating is clueless and clearly did not understand his lectures, or in other words, were over their heads. His lectures are not New Age kitsch but are profound and life-changing. Do yourself a favor and buy all of Solomon's courses! The man passed away suddenly from a heart attack several years ago but will be forever immortalized in these great lectures.
Date published: 2020-12-26
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Possibly life changing. I listened to this course in my early 20s and it shaped the way I now (late 30s) continue to view emotional landscapes.
Date published: 2020-12-17
Rated 4 out of 5 by from Some great insights. I enjoyed this course. Some of the lectures and concepts, such the ones about anger and love and emotions being a way we interact with the world, really struck me. Some lectures, such as the one about the rationality of emotions, seemed less deeply thought out. But on the whole, I learned some things that will stick with me. It was worth my time.
Date published: 2020-06-13
Rated 3 out of 5 by from Average I didn't learn quite what I expected and had to put in a little more effort to finish the series than I would have liked. The instructor was thoughtful, well organised, and generally seemed to have a broad understanding of the subject. I'll likely watch the series again in the future and may update this if my opinion changes.
Date published: 2020-05-12
Rated 5 out of 5 by from Hesitant purchaser! I was interested in only two chapters. Based on the reviews I decided to purchase at the sale price. Thank you reviewer's for giving me the nudge I am in your debt. I was hooked from the very first chapter and could not stop until I had sensory overload. I have enough to chew on here for a whole year. The video is the way to go because his body language and facial expressions are communicating supportively to what he is saying verbally. As a public speaker, he was reminding me that what you say is of course important, the way you say it will make it stick!
Date published: 2020-01-03
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Overview

Fear, joy, grief, love, hate, pride, shame. We all have emotions, and we recognize emotions in others. But do we really understand what emotions are and what they signify? It is remarkable how often we are wrong about our own emotions and misread the emotions of others. We also deceive ourselves about their meaning. The more we puzzle over the nature of emotions, the deeper the mystery becomes. It is a mystery that is by no means solved, but one that repays careful, philosophical analysis.

Far from being routine, emotions are "the key to the meaning of life," says distinguished philosopher and author Robert C. Solomon, who in these 24 lectures takes you on a tour of his more than three-decade-long intellectual struggle to reach an understanding of these complex phenomena. Some of his conclusions are surprising and very much against the current of common sense.

Professor Solomon's lectures unfold as a rich dialogue with other philosophers, including Plato, Aristotle, the Stoics, Descartes, Adam Smith, Nietzsche, William James, Freud, Heidegger, and Sartre. He also relates these views to contemporary work in the cognitive sciences on emotions, notably research by Antonio Damasio, Joseph LeDoux, and Paul Ekman. And he discusses the portrayal of emotions in writers and artists including Homer, Shakespeare, Melville, Dostoevsky, and Picasso.

Emotions Have Intelligence

By probing the ideas of these and other thinkers and presenting his own views, Professor Solomon will lead you to a remarkable conclusion: Emotions have intelligence and provide personal strategies that are vitally important to our everyday lives of perceiving, evaluating, appraising, understanding, and acting in the world.

This idea runs counter to the widespread view that draws a sharp distinction between the emotional and the rational and views the emotions as inferior, disruptive, primitive, and even bestial forces. For Professor Solomon, many emotions are distinctively human and they are far more complicated than mere "feelings." They are rational judgments—sophisticated strategies for survival.

In exploring the multifaceted nature of emotions you will address questions such as:

  • How do we distinguish emotions from feelings, such as heartache?
  • What is the meaning of our emotions, and how do they serve to enrich and guide our lives?
  • Is there a determinable number of basic emotions that serve as building blocks for the range of emotions we experience?
  • Is an emotion such as jealousy a genetic trait shared by all humans—or is it something learned?
  • The Japanese have an emotion named amae, but it seems unknown to Westerners. To what extent do language and culture determine emotional experience?
  • Are emotions subconscious products of the mind, or are they under conscious control?

Philosopher at Work

One of the fascinating features of this course is that you get to witness a philosopher wrestling with the ideas of his predecessors—accepting, rejecting, refining their contributions, and modifying some of his own earlier views—in a demonstration of the intellectual honesty required to make progress in tackling a profound philosophical problem. He also ranges beyond philosophy to draw insights from psychology, sociology, neurology, history, and literature.

A multi-award-winning teacher at The University of Texas at Austin, Professor Solomon has written or edited more than 45 books, including The Passions, Not Passion's Slave, In Defense of Sentimentality, and About Love, as well as works on Existentialism, Nietzsche, Hegel, business ethics, and introductory philosophy.

In a review of Not Passion's Slave, he was singled out for being "at the heart of a revival of philosophical interest in the emotions" by The Times Literary Supplement, which noted his "energetic and provocative contributions to the field."

Professor Solomon had such a profound effect on one of his students at UT, the future film director Richard Linklater (best known for Before Sunrise and Before Sunset), that Linklater included a memorable extract of Professor Solomon lecturing on Existentialism in the acclaimed feature film Waking Life.

Professor Solomon has conducted three other highly popular Teaching Company courses: No Excuses: Existentialism and the Meaning of Life; Will to Power: The Philosophy of Friedrich Nietzsche (with Kathleen Higgins); and Great Minds of the Western Intellectual Tradition (selected lectures).

Wondrous Troublemakers

"I want to invite you to look at your own emotions as if they are something wondrous, mysterious, and exotic, something you've always taken for granted—even when they've gotten you in trouble," says Professor Solomon at the outset of this course, which he divides into three sections:

  • Passions, Love, and Violence: The Drama of the Emotions (Lectures 2–9). The course begins with eight lectures on specific emotions (anger, fear, love, compassion, pride, envy, vengeance, and grief) with insights into the complexity, importance, and roles emotions play in our lives.
  • Out of Touch with Our Feelings: Misunderstanding the Emotions (Lectures 10–17). These eight lectures examine how we misinterpret and fail to take responsibility for our emotions. For example, the innocent-sounding claim that emotions are feelings represents a fundamental misunderstanding of what emotions are about. Other misconceptions are the seemingly innocent assertion that emotions are "in the mind" and the idea that we are the victims or slaves of our passions.
  • How Our Passions Enrich Our Lives (Lectures 18–24). The concluding section takes a positive look at the richness and value of our emotions, probing what it is about them that make life worth living. Professor Solomon talks about laughter, music, and the roles that emotions play in different cultures.

Throughout the course, Professor Solomon returns again and again to his thesis that emotions have intelligence, an idea that has roots in Western philosophy tracing back to Aristotle. The notion of "emotional intelligence" gained notoriety through a 1990s bestseller by psychologist Daniel Goleman, but while Goleman and other popular writers on the subject primarily discuss learning how to control emotions, Professor Solomon digs deeper to reach the core of how emotions themselves contain intelligence—indeed many kinds of intelligence—and to explore the complex emotional repertoire that makes us uniquely human.

As you listen to these lectures, prepare to think: Think about your own emotions; think about what you observe in others; think about the enormous body of research and conjecture on this fascinating topic as Professor Solomon takes you on a challenging and stimulating journey.

"Emotions are our doing," he says. "An emotion is not just a product of evolution, but a product of cultivation and, sometimes, personal choice. If you look at your emotions and say, 'I will take responsibility for this because it is my doing,' sometimes you will be wrong; but in general, you will suddenly find that you've taken ownership of your life in a way that you hadn't before. And it seems to me that is a very important philosophical lesson."

About

Robert C. Solomon

What I want to ask you is to look at emotions, as I have, as something wondrous, something mysterious, something exotic, as well as something dangerous, something profound, and something valuable.

INSTITUTION

The University of Texas at Austin

Dr. Robert C. Solomon was the Quincy Lee Centennial Professor of Business and Philosophy at the University of Texas at Austin, where he taught for more than 30 years. He earned his undergraduate degree in molecular biology from the University of Pennsylvania and his master's and doctoral degrees in philosophy and psychology from the University of Michigan. He held visiting appointments at the University of Pennsylvania; the University of Auckland, New Zealand; UCLA; Princeton University; and Mount Holyoke College. Professor Solomon won many teaching honors, including the Standard Oil Outstanding Teaching Award; the President's Associates Teaching Award (twice); and the Chad Oliver Plan II Teaching Award. In addition, he was a member of Academy of Distinguished Teachers at UT, which is devoted to providing leadership in improving the quality and depth of undergraduate instruction. Professor Solomon wrote or edited more than 45 books, including The Passions, About Love, Ethics and Excellence, A Short History of Philosophy with Professor Kathleen Higgins, A Better Way to Think about Business, The Joy of Philosophy, Spirituality for the Skeptic, Not Passion's Slave, and In Defense of Sentimentality. He also designed and provided programs for corporations and organizations around the world. Professor Solomon passed away in early 2007.

By This Professor

No Excuses: Existentialism and Meaning of Life
854
Emotions as Engagements with the World

01: Emotions as Engagements with the World

Professor Robert C. Solomon begins by reviewing the rich history of thinking about emotions. He introduces the major themes of the course, including Jean-Paul Sartre's idea that emotions are "magical transformations of the world."...

32 min
The Wrath of Achilles

02: The Wrath of Achilles

Starting a sequence of eight lectures on basic emotions, this lecture treats anger, typified by the wrath of Achilles in Homer's Iliad. Anger is reputedly the most dangerous emotion, but it has a positive aspect as well, and Professor Solomon argues that anger is sometimes right and even obligatory....

31 min
It's Good to Be Afraid

03: It's Good to Be Afraid

Fear is arguably the most important emotion, for without it we would be vulnerable to many dangers. Although often regarded negatively, people sometimes go out of their way to experience fear. This raises a paradox that has intrigued philosophers since Aristotle....

33 min
Lessons of Love-Plato's Symposium

04: Lessons of Love-Plato's Symposium

This lecture addresses the endlessly fascinating emotion of love, focusing on Plato's classic dialogue Symposium with its odd story told by Aristophanes, which illustrates how love reconfigures personal identities and relationships....

34 min
We Are Not Alone-Compassion and Empathy

05: We Are Not Alone-Compassion and Empathy

Philosophers including David Hume, Jean-Jacques Rousseau, and the economist Adam Smith defended what they called sympathy as a natural moral sentiment. Sympathy is similar to what we call compassion and provides the basis of ethics....

34 min
Noble? or Deadly Sin? Pride and Shame

06: Noble? or Deadly Sin? Pride and Shame

Pride, like its opposite, shame, is an emotion of social self-evaluation. Its place in society shifts with morals, religion, and politics. This lecture is about a family of such emotions, including guilt, embarrassment, remorse, regret, and self-loathing....

30 min
Nasty-Iago's Envy, Othello's Jealousy

07: Nasty-Iago's Envy, Othello's Jealousy

Envy and jealousy are double-edged, self-destructive emotions, even as they aim at bringing down other people. Both are vividly demonstrated in Shakespeare's Othello. Envy is a bad emotional strategy, since it turns into resentment and deludes itself into jealousy....

31 min
Nastier-Resentment and Vengeance

08: Nastier-Resentment and Vengeance

Resentment is a particularly nasty emotion. Friedrich Nietzsche diagnosed it as inexpressible vengeance. Accordingly, vengeance can be seen as the natural extension of resentment. Vengeance is also an offshoot of anger, as its most cold-blooded and protracted expression....

31 min
A Death in the Family-The Logic of Grief

09: A Death in the Family-The Logic of Grief

Grief is misunderstood as both the most private and most negative of negative emotions. But in truth it is a continuation of love. The withdrawal that is so familiar in grief should not be mistaken for a breakdown of rational behavior, but as a period of reflection and reconstitution of the self....

31 min
James and the Bear-Emotions and Feelings

10: James and the Bear-Emotions and Feelings

Starting a sequence of eight lectures on how we misinterpret and consequently fail to take responsibility for our emotions, this lecture argues against a widely accepted idea that gained contemporary respect through the writings of William James: emotions are feelings....

31 min
Freud's Catharsis-the Hydraulic Model

11: Freud's Catharsis-the Hydraulic Model

Professor Solomon challenges the hydraulic model as a metaphor for emotions. Freud used this model extensively. The problem is that it is mechanical, and the emotions are not mechanisms. They are engagements with the world....

29 min
Are Emotions

12: Are Emotions "in" the Mind?

The concept of the mind as the private domain of emotions is an outgrowth of the philosophy of René Descartes. An alternative view, phenomenology, advocated by Martin Heidegger and other philosophers, holds that the mind is an activity and the objects of our emotions are essentially objects in the world....

31 min
How Emotions Are Intelligent

13: How Emotions Are Intelligent

Professor Solomon argues that emotions are engaged in our efforts to get along with people and to cope with an often difficult world. They give us insight and provide intelligence about the world. In other words, they have what philosophers call intentionality, and this requires intelligence.

31 min
Emotions as Judgments

14: Emotions as Judgments

Understanding emotions involves understanding the judgments that structure them. This lecture goes through several of the emotions already discussed-notably anger, shame, embarrassment, hatred, envy, and resentment-to show how this is the case....

31 min
Beyond Boohoo and Hooray

15: Beyond Boohoo and Hooray

This lecture questions the distinctions between positive and negative emotions. We should be much more attentive to the richness of intelligence within emotions and not reduce the subtlety of emotions to a simple "hooray!" or "boo-hoo!"...

31 min
Emotions Are Rational

16: Emotions Are Rational

To say that an emotion is irrational is to say that it has somehow missed its target, but that is also to say that an emotion can get its target right and thus be rational. The ultimate aim of our emotions is to enhance our lives, to help us get what we want and need....

31 min
Emotions and Responsibility

17: Emotions and Responsibility

To say that emotions are strategies is to say that they are to some extent our doing. With some passions we may find ourselves "out of control," but even then we tend to choose and cultivate those passions. As examples, this lecture looks at anger and love....

32 min
Emotions in Ethics

18: Emotions in Ethics

Beginning the final section of the course, which takes a positive look at the richness and value of emotions, this lecture surveys the history of ethics, from Aristotle and the Stoics in antiquity through what was called emotivism in the 20th century....

33 min
Emotions and the Self

19: Emotions and the Self

All emotions are self-involved; that is what makes them different from intellectual judgments. As strategies, they are concerned with the well-being of the self. To understand the centrality of the self in the structure of our emotions, it is necessary to broach the huge topic of consciousness....

31 min
What Is Emotional Experience?

20: What Is Emotional Experience?

Emotions are feelings, but they are not just the physiological symptoms of emotional excitement. This lecture analyzes the many components of emotional experience, from autonomic nervous system responses and sensations to much more subtle and sophisticated and experiences....

32 min
Emotions across Cultures-Universals

21: Emotions across Cultures-Universals

Emotions differ from society to society-in their causes, expression, language, and, consequently, in their experiences. But what are the underlying similarities across cultures? Are there basic biological structures that all people have in common?...

31 min
Emotions across Cultures-Differences

22: Emotions across Cultures-Differences

Continuing the theme of emotions across cultures, Professor Solomon focuses on significant differences between cultures, including some emotions that are unknown to Westerners. Two such examples are the Japanese emotion amae and the Ifaluk (Caroline Islands) emotion fago....

30 min
Laughter and Music

23: Laughter and Music

Two universal expressions of emotion are laughter and music. Laughter most often conveys joy, amusement, and humor, but it can also communicate nervousness and embarrassment. Music not only enhances emotion, but also imitates, expresses, and evokes emotion....

28 min
Happiness and Spirituality

24: Happiness and Spirituality

In this final lecture, Professor Solomon returns to a central issue: the way emotions and rationality form an inseparable team, not two opposing forces. It is through reflection, not emotion alone, that human happiness becomes possible. He also addresses the culmination of emotional life in spirituality....

32 min