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The Moralistic Fallacy: On the 'Appropriateness' of Emotions

D'Arms, Justin, Jacobson, Daniel·2000·Philosophy and Phenomenological Research

Abstract

Philosophers often call emotions appropriate or inappropriate. What is meant by such talk? In one sense, explicated in this paper, to call an emotion appropriate is to say that the emotion is fitting: it accurately presents its object as having certain evaluative features. For instance, envy might be thought appropriate when one's rival has something good which one lacks. But someone might grant that a circumstance has these features, yet deny that envy is appropriate, on the grounds that it is wrong to be envious. These two senses of 'appropriate' have much less in common than philosophers have supposed. Indeed, the distinction between propriety and correctness is crucial to understanding the distinctive role of the emotions in ethics. We argue here that an emotion can be fitting despite being wrong to feel, and that various philosophical arguments are guilty of a systematic error which we term the moralistic fallacy.

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Metadata

Authors
D'Arms, J., & Jacobson, D.
Venue
Philosophy and Phenomenological Research
Publisher
JSTOR
Published
2000-07
Volume
61
Issue
1
Pages
65
ISSN
0031-8205 (ISSN-L)
OpenAlex
W2044608255
Cited by
1,068
References
14
FWCI
80.21
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
closed

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CoChat. (2026). Citation check: The Moralistic Fallacy: On the 'Appropriateness' of Emotions. https://app.cochat.ai/papers/10.2307/2653403
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D'Arms, J., & Jacobson, D. (2000). The Moralistic Fallacy: On the 'Appropriateness' of Emotions. Philosophy and Phenomenological Research. https://doi.org/10.2307/2653403

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