In this chapter I present my reconstruction of Kant’s theory in more detail. One important aspect is Kant’s insistence that the feeling of pleasure is not to be understood as a sensation, occasioned or caused by the representation of an object and separate from the sensations that are involved in the representation. I analyze Kant’s often neglected argument for this claim in § 3 of the Critique and conclude that his view is best understood as an ‘attitudinal’ theory: if a representation satisfies the a priori principle or interest of a faculty, we adopt an attitude of preferring or desiring to have that representation in our mind; equivalently, we say that the representation is purposive for the faculty. In this way the transcendental definition of pleasure, which characterizes the feeling as the tendency of a representation to be maintained in the mind, and the theory of pleasure as interest satisfaction are combined.

Chapter 6 suggests that the relevance-theory notion of cognitive effect be supplemented with the new notion of affective effect. We propose two different types of affective effect: primary affective effects, which typically act as input to inferential processes, and secondary affective effects, which are typically the output of inferential processes. Primary affective effects come in two flavours: anticipatory effects and transfer effects. The first of these are those effects which prepare an individual for a course of action; the latter are communicative, and inextricably linked with the interpretation of natural codes, inherently communicative behaviours which are ‘natural’ in the sense of Grice. In the case of secondary affective effects, propositional descriptions give rise to affective effects which rest on the imaginative abilities of the hearer/reader. This happens typically with literature and poetry. Emotions, we argue, appear to be a central contributor to persuasion, and we suggest this is so because of the special relationship that exists between affective and cognitive effects within the domain of achieving relevance.

Chapter 3 examines the psychological processes that are important when people are forming perceptions of procedural fairness. The psychology of perceived procedural fairness discussed here argues that quite often people start out with a general hunch that things do not feel right. Cognitive processes help us to understand how to interpret this hunch, allowing people to start forming perceptions of procedural fairness in more confident ways. Groups may facilitate this process, for example, by communicating certain frames about how to interpret what has happened and what group members should do about this. People need to know that they are making progress toward meaningful goals, and this also plays a crucial role in the formation of fairness judgments. How these psychological processes work out in institutional contexts is also important and is discussed as well.

The emotions of frontline responders are traditionally viewed as problematic, because emotions are seen as distractive and impediments to an efficient pursuit of optimal crisis response outcomes. In addition, personal involvement in the situation might result in trauma since responders are often unable to prevent tragedy and suffering. Dissociation from the response, instead, might best enable responders to cope with traumatic experiences and avoid negative psychological consequences. Yet, compassion and altruism give meaning to their work for many responders and can improve their customized care to those in need. Detachment, moreover, is rarely fully effective. The emotional attitude of crisis responders, therefore, poses a dilemma. It is useful to note that emotions are diverse in nature and intensity. This means that there is room to explore how to manage emotions in such a way that feelings of empathy and involvement are enabled without responders succumbing to it. In any case, it requires unwavering organizational and team support.

In Chapter 1, we provide an overview of the project, starting by exploring how we came to conduct a study on heterosexual first-time parents. We situate the study within our own histories of research on family diversity and highlight why a focus on heterosexual couples contributes to our understanding of norms about reproduction and kinship. We also include a brief overview of the Australian context when it comes to the composition of families. We then outline some of the major studies that have been undertaken previously on heterosexual first-time parents, before then outlining the conceptual frameworks that we utilise within the book. These include the concepts of social flesh, the ways in which feelings get institutions under the skin, and the use of juxtaposition as a way to highlight social norms within a critical kinship studies framework.

In Chapter 8 I examine Lacoste's study of affective experience and consider the possibility that God might be recognised in the affect as an event. For Lacoste, God’s presence to affection takes place in moods rather than feelings. The recognition that God has passed in experience is always subject to self-deception and must be tested against the tradition of the believing community. Revelation and truth are connected by means of Augustine's reversal: when it comes to God, we do not love what we first know but know what we first love. This attends to the paradox that occurs in the reception of phenomena appearing only to freedom – paradoxical phenomena appear as credible rather than indubitable and are open to acceptance or rejection. For Lacoste, such phenomenality ‘cannot be perceived without our decision to see it’ and begins in ‘an experience formed in the element of non-self-evidence’. It arouses love; it is the experience of love that first draws the 'believer'. Revelation touches experience in an encounter that is felt before it is known. Prepredicative, signifying by way of moods rather than feelings, the revelatory encounter is primarily relational rather than doctrinal.

In the chapter, I explore what may be gained by reading textual instantiations of feelings in light of current knowledge of their underlying emotional counterparts. The overall idea is to bridge the gap between ‘biology’ and ‘culture’ to examine how knowledge about basic biology may contribute to deepen the textual understanding. I seek to illustrate the theoretical discussion by providing a biological emotional reading of Paul’s First Letter to the Corinthians chapter 6. I analyze Paul’s emphasis on baptism as moral cleansing in light of recent research in moral psychology and evolutionary biology on the Lady Macbeth complex. The argument is that there is an intrinsic relationship between the use of water and cognitive notions of cleanness, purity, dirt, moral filth, and impurity. These insights may be used to cast further light on Paul’s argument, thus illustrating the overall point that historians of religion, ancient historians, and classicists will benefit considerably by including knowledge from life sciences in the historical analyses.

Among the few things that Descartes (2004) was certain of was that he understands: “I am a thing that thinks: that is, a thing that doubts, affirms, denies, and understands.” These are the things he is, and we too are, conscious of. They make up what we think of as our minds. Yet understanding seems to be the most fundamental member of Descartes’s list. Descartes’s mind–body distinction and treating mind as something spiritual continues to haunt modern theories of the mind.

This chapter concerns the Aristotelian Feelings. Aristotle provides a list of the feelings in Nicomachean Ethics II 5, but he fails to give any analysis of their inner workings. For that we need to turn to Aristotle’s Rhetoric II 1-11 and passages from his de Anima. While it is a controversial matter to appeal to texts outside the Nicomachean Ethics, I argue that it is possible to draw important lessons from these texts for the interpretation of the Ethics while keeping sight of the major differences between the scope and often of the content of these different works. Two important features of the feelings that emerge from such an examination are: (1) that the feelings provide indexical insight – information about the immediate context of choice and action; and (2) that the feelings, while motivational, only get their direction from a person’s character and the particular circumstances that person is in. For example, sympathy (eleos) may motivate one to help someone in need if one is a good person, or it may motivate one to turn away, if one is a bad person.

In Chapter 6, I consider how much integration of thought and feeling is required for a good character, and how much integration or disintegration of thought and feeling exists in the psyche of the bad person. Both discussions raise the question whether the good person has a pleasanter life than the bad person. I attempt to answer this question by distinguishing two levels of pleasure (and pain), and by applying Aristotle’s view that virtue is the measure of pleasure. The beginning of the chapter clarifies my view and addresses an objection that my account of the interdependence of thought, desire, and feeling in the good person is too demanding. My answer relies on Aristotle’s threefold analysis of a feeling as a physiological reaction, an impression of a salient consideration in the here and now, and a motivating desire to do this now. The good person can have physiological reactions without having a full feeling – so, for example, a good person may still be hungry even if she does not want to eat another chocolate now. The end of this chapter discusses the thought in thoughtfulness, addressing the objection that my account of the good person is not demanding enough.

Sentimentalism in eighteenth-century Scottish literature reflected the ideas of moral philosophers like Francis Hutcheson, David Hume and Adam Smith, who argued that our sense of morality has its origins in feelings aroused by impressions conveyed by the senses. The influence of Smith’s concept of the impartial spectator, an imaginary witness and judge of human interactions, is evident in novels by Henry Mackenzie and Tobias Smollett, whose characters’ emotional responses to scenes of suffering are described in great detail. In theatre, John Homes’ Douglas was deemed a success by the amount of tears shed by the audience, while Joanna Baillie’s plays dramatised moral sentiments by illustrating particular vices and virtues. Macpherson’s Ossianic poems became an international sensation through their nostalgic sentimentalism, which depicted the pure and noble virtues of a bygone era. Sentimentalism in the poetry of Robert Burns celebrates both individual subjectivity and common humanity through his treatment of universal themes like love and nature. Unlike the Romantic movement that would follow it, which tended to privilege individual autonomy and subjectivity over sociability, sentimentalism in Scottish literature depicted individuals as social beings whose sensibility was stimulated and defined by their interactions with others.