Rethinking the Fittingness of Emotions

Emotions are always about something and are thus intentional. Emotional fittingness is a normative concept that is used to describe the relationship between an emotion and its object. If an emotion is fitting, it must somehow correctly capture the connection between the particular object and the formal object, i.e., the corresponding evaluative properties. It is widely held in the literature that there is a generic standard of correctness with respect to the evaluative property that characterizes fittingness. I accept that there is such a notion of fittingness that is distinct. However, I argue that three constraints need to be satisfied in an account of emotional fittingness. First, a notion of fittingness should leave room for metaethical disagreements and thus should not assume that the criterion of fittingness is universally applicable to everybody in the same sort of situation. Second, although fittingness assessment is orthogonal to moral justification, as indicated by the argument against the “moralistic fallacy,” the judgment of whether an emotion is fitting sometimes is constrained by background moral considerations. Third, one important value that has been attributed to an emotion’s being fitting is actually constituted by something beyond fittingness, namely by (affective) appreciation, which is fitting emotion plus understanding. Thus, an account of fittingness should not confuse experiencing a fitting emotion towards the object with appreciating the object. Fittingness is a normative dimension that is unique yet limited and constrained. While I do not develop a full account of emotional fittingness, the constraints argued for here should apply to all accounts of fittingness