Creative Resentments

Abstract

Abstract This chapter explores the role that emotions play in moral change, focusing on the case of resentment. It develops two related theses. The first holds that feelings of resentment are grounded in the resenter’s conviction that some portion of their existing normative expectations has been violated. The second, often voiced by feminist philosophers, holds that resentments can make a rational contribution to the development of new normative expectations, transforming the resenter’s existing normative outlook. Certain expressions of the prior norm requirement in recent discussions of anger and resentment clash with the notion of norm-creative resentments, portraying resentment as essentially conservative of existing norms. Against this, this chapter develops the notion of “emotional articulation,” according to which emotions can involve cognitively complex processes that give rise to genuinely new normative commitments. The chapter compares the resulting view with Martha Nussbaum’s cognitivist theory of emotion.