The dark side of the exceptional: On moral exemplars, character education, and negative emotions

ABSTRACT

This article focuses on negative exemplarity-related emotions (NEREs) and on their educational implications. In this article, we first argue for the nonexpendability of negative emotions broadly conceived by defending their instrumental and intrinsic role in a good and flourishing life. We make the claim more specific by focusing on the narrower domain of NEREs and argue for their moral and educational significance by evaluating whether they fit the arguments provided in the previous section. We go on to propose three educational strategies to foster NEREs’ positive moral role. In conclusion, we point out that an exemplarist approach to character education would greatly benefit from a more fine-grained account of the emotions involved in the educational process and from a broader perspective on which of these emotions should be taken as valuable for educational purposes.

KEYWORDS:

• exemplarism
• character education
• negative emotions

Acknowledgments

We are grateful to Aaron Ben-Ze’ev, Julien Deonna, Matt Stichter, Fabrice Teroni, Daniel Vanello and Juliette Vazard for their valuable comments on previous versions of this article, and on the talks from which it derives.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. By ‘appropriate,’ we mean emotions that happen to be both fitting (i.e. they attach to their proper intentional object) and justified (i.e. the agent has good reasons for experiencing them) (see Deonna & Teroni, 2012, p. 6).

2. See, e.g. Kristjánsson (2003, pp. 355–356).

3. Analogous arguments can be found in Kristjansson (2008).

4. Cf. NE II.6, 1106 a30–33.

5. It is important to stress that we believe both emotions fit both arguments; it is only the lack of space that prevents us from defending this stronger claim.

6. Among them, La Caze (2001) and Thomason (2015). Van de Ven, Zeelenberg, and Pieters (2011) even argue that benign envy fares even better than both admiration and malign envy in motivating the subject to improve.

7. A slightly different definition of envy, as a ‘feeling of undeserved inferiority,’ can be found in Ben-Ze’ev (2016).

8. This is not to deny the importance of other distinctions and subdistinctions, such as primitive vs sophisticated, and general vs particular. Among other taxonomies, the most common distinguishes two main forms of envy: the malign and benign. Protasi (2016) distinguishes between emulative, inert, aggressive and spiteful envy. Ben-Ze’ev (2016), on the other hand, only distinguishes between benign and malicious envy.

9. In our perspective, both admiration and admiring envy are globalist attitudes. This, we claim, is compatible with taking both as directed to the moral good the agent displays rather than to the agent herself. Cf. De Caro, Vaccarezza, and Niccoli (2018).

10. This, it might appear, conflates the epistemic-access argument and the right-mean one. Although we are comfortable with admitting that the two arguments partly overlap, or, rather, they are interconnected and support each other, we also claim that they are clearly distinguishable, in that the former has to do with reliably accessing the relevant evaluative and moral properties, and the latter with feeling the way a virtuous agent would.

11. On the differences between envy and jealousy, see, among others, Taylor (1988), Ben-Ze’ev (1990) and Protasi (2017).

12. Classical philosophical accounts of shame by Aristotle, Kant, Spinoza and Sartre share this claim. More recently, the social view on shame has been put forward, among others, by Calhoun (2004), Williams (1993) and Wollheim (1999).

13. Fussi (2018) represents a good balance, explaining how in the emotion of shame a social evaluation concerning visibility and reputation and a deeply personal self-evaluation about our own identity and values intertwine.

14. Influential works that take shame as a global evaluation are Taylor (1985) in philosophy and Lewis (1971) in psychology. Deonna et al. (2012, p. 85, pp. 102–105) provide substantial philosophical arguments against this position. For a defense of shame as a local evaluation in empirical psychology, see Gausel and Leach (2011).

15. Propriety-shame and embarrassment partially overlap, insofar as both address social norms such as good manners and etiquette. Anyway, shame is usually much more severe than embarrassment. For a specific analysis of embarrassment, see Purshouse (2001).

16. Deonna et al. (2012) have it that in shame we discover ourselves as exemplifying the polar opposite of this self-relevant value. According to Fussi (2018), in shame we perceive ourselves as exemplifying that value below a critical threshold.

17. In relation to admiration, it has been referred to as the ‘non-motivational admiration problem.’ See Grigoletto (2018).

18. See, e.g. Rhethoric II.10; Summa Theologiae IIae q. 36 a. 1 ad 2.

19. By saints we mean exemplars who appear to be morally perfect in all respects, and to possess all the main virtues; by heroes, we mean ‘imperfect’ moral exemplars, who despite being exemplary in some respect lack virtue in other domains (see Wolf, 1982; Blum, 1988; Croce & Vaccarezza, 2017).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Maria Silvia Vaccarezza

Maria Silvia Vaccarezza is a philosopher working at the intersection between Virtue Ethics, Philosophy of Emotions and Philosophy of Education.

Ariele Niccoli

Ariele Niccoli is a philosopher of education interested in the intersection of Philosophy of Emotions, Virtue Ethics and Moral Psychology.