Abstract

We are now in the age of affectivism (Dukes et al., 2021): while emotions have long been contrasted with cognition, they are now seen as a central element of our rational life. Samuel Lepine joins this paradigm, arguing that emotions are cognitive states, source of axiological knowledge, and even an essential component of values. Lepine’s original contribution consists of an extremely cautious and impressive interweaving of psychological and philosophical discussions of emotions as well as of values. We may take from La nature des émotions a set of entangled statements: (i) emotions are cognitive states distinguished by their evaluative nature; (ii) they are sui generis psychological modes that focus our attention and prepare our body for action; (iii) they are evaluative since we can ascribe a correspondence between the emotion and the value instantiated by the emotion’s intentional object (i.e., correctness conditions); (iv) the correctness and justification conditions of emotions partially depend on the background motivations on which every emotion is based, because (v) values depend on some non-evaluative properties of external objects as well as on the agents’ motivations. These different points fit together to form the most comprehensive introduction to emotions I’ve read since Deonna & Teroni’s The Emotions (2012). Let us examine how.