BEYOND ONTOLOGY - IDEATION, PHENOMENOLOGY AND THE CROSS-CULTURAL-STUDY OF EMOTION

In this essay, I want to raise certain questions about the nature of e motions, about the similarities and differences in human psychology (' 'human nature''), and about the relation of psychological inquiry to e thics (in particular, the relationship between emotions and ethics). T he core of my thesis, which I have argued now for almost twenty-five y ears, is that emotions are (in pare) a form Of cognition, a matter of ''ideas'', or in the current lingo, ideation. David Hume, rather famou sly, analyzed several ''passions'', notably pride, in terms of ''impre ssions'' and ''ideas''. While he held onto the traditional view that e motions were essentially sensations (''impressions''), he also elabora ted an account of emotions defined by a complex (''a monstrous heap'') of idea, for example, the idea of self and of achievement in pride. M oreover, such ideas are relevant to ethics. For Hume, in particular, m orals area matter not of reason but of ''sentiment'', thus bringing th e understanding of emotions squarely into the arena of ethical discour se. Which opens the question whether different cultures with different ideas might have a very different conception and/or experience of pri de as well as any number of different emotions. One might also ask, no t very fruitfully, whether different cultures have different sensation s, impressions Or ''affects'', but the promise of cross cultural emoti ons research clearly seems to lie on the side of ''ideas'', in terms o f different ways of seeing, different ways of conceiving, different wa ys of carving up and evaluating the world.