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Upheavals of Thought: The Intelligence of Emotions
“Emotions are not just the fuel that powers the psychological mechanism of a reasoning creature, they are parts, highly complex and messy parts, of this creature’s reasoning itself.”
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About this work
Upheavals of Thought is Martha Nussbaum's 2001 study of the emotions, arguing that feelings are not blind surges but forms of intelligent thought, judgments about what matters to us and what we cannot fully control. Ranging across philosophy, psychology, music, and literature, it builds toward an account of compassion and love as central to ethics.
About the author — Martha Nussbaum
Martha Nussbaum (born 1947) is an American philosopher at the University of Chicago, known for work on ethics, emotions, and human capabilities. She argues that a good life and a just society must take feeling and vulnerability seriously.
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People also ask
What is Upheavals of Thought about?
The nature of the emotions. Nussbaum argues that emotions are intelligent appraisals of what we value, not irrational forces, and traces their role in compassion, grief, and love.
What is Nussbaum's theory of emotion?
That emotions are forms of evaluative thought: they reflect our judgments about things outside our control that matter deeply to us, which makes them central to ethics rather than opposed to reason.
Is the book accessible?
It is substantial and scholarly, but Nussbaum writes clearly and draws on music and literature, which makes its ideas vivid for the patient reader.