True to Our Feelings What Our Emotions Are Really Telling Us [Paperback]

We live our lives through our emotions, writes Robert Solomon, and it is our emotions that give our lives meaning. What interests or fascinates us, who we love, what angers us, what moves us, what bores us--all of this defines us, gives us character, constitutes who we are. InTrue to OurFeelings, Solomon illuminates the rich life of the emotions--why we don't really understand them, what they really are, and how they make us human and give meaning to life. Solomon provides a guide to cutting-edge scientific research, as well as to what philosophers and psychologists have said on the subject, but he also emphasizes the personal and ethical character of our emotions. He shows that emotions are not something that happen to us, nor are they irrational in the literal sense--rather, they are judgments we make about the world, and they are strategies for living in it. Fear, anger, love, guilt, jealousy, compassion--they are all essential to our values, to living happily, healthily, and well.

Preface
Acknowledgments
Introduction
Part I: Emotional Strategies: An Existentialist Perspective
1. Anger as a Way of Engaging the World
2. Why It Is Good to Be Afraid
3. Varieties of Fear and Anger: Emotions and Moods
4. Lessons of Love (and Plato's Symposium)
5. We Are Not Alone: Compassion and Sympathy
6. Extremes of Emotion: Grief, Laughter, and Happiness
7. Self-Reproach in Guilt, Shame, and Pride
8. Nasty Emotions: Envy, Spite, Jealousy, Resentment, and Vengeance
Part II: Toward a General Theory: Myths about Emotions
9. What an Emotion Theory Should Do
10. Myth 1: Emotions Are Ineffable
11. Myth 2: Emotions Are Feelings
12. Myth 3: The Hydraulic Model
13. Myth 4: Emotions Are in the Mind
14. Myth 5: Emotions Are Stupid (They Have No Intelligence)
15. Myth 6: Two Flavors of Emotion, Positive and Negative
16. Myth 7: Emotions Are Irrational
17. Myth 8: Emotiol2