A human being without an emotional life would be a strange sort of creature. But what is an ’emotion’?
Let me give you a few examples. Loneliness, reverence, depression, boredom. Enthusiasm, exhilaration, joie de vivre. Impatience. Nostalgia, admiration, humility. Fear, misery. Love, surprise, disillusion, fear, wonder, envy. Disgust, anger, awe. Relief. Moral indignation. Pity. Irritation. (I hope you yourself are not experiencing any of these last three.) Peace of mind, gratitude. Sympathy. Remorse. Grief, disappointment. Fury, elation, despair, affection, tenderness, resentment, panic, self-satisfaction.
I give you this long list to remind you of the range of things that we think of as emotions, and also because they are the emotions I mention (in order) in my article on ‘The Concept of Emotion’, which served as the first appendix to my Oxford DPhil thesis on Jane Austen and Charlotte Brontë, and which you can now read, and even download, on this website. (The whole thesis also available online, but not on this website.) This was written years ago, but I think it does actually answer the question “what is an ’emotion’?” in detail, with a host of examples.
A couple of years ago in Valencia, I had dinner with a Cambridge physiologist. He was a full-time academic, researching the physiology of emotions. He mentioned to me that “the psychologists” had still not come up with a satisfactory definition of ’emotion.’ It made me realise that my own attempt, all those years ago, could still be valid, even a scientific and cultural game-changer. (If you see what I mean, do please pass the good news on!)