Why talk about emotional intelligence?

The term itself, which was introduced to the American public by Daniel Goleman in a popular book some years ago, is important primarily for its shock value—emotional intelligence sounds like a contradiction in terms.

Traditionally, we have viewed emotions, or what used to be called “passions,” as one distinct side of human nature. Reason, rationality, and intelligence, meanwhile, stand distinct and apart on the other side.

Yet those of us who have studied emotions as part of the human experience long ago recognized the intelligence of emotions.

The purpose of this course, then, is to eliminate that false dichotomy and to show the interdependence of philosophy and psychology.

Philosophers talk about ethics and the good life, whereas psychologists do rock-bottom science.

Yet philosophy has always needed to appeal to empirical psychology, just as empirical psychology has always needed to refer to philosophy.

One without the other is incomplete.

Thus, we will consider the thinking of many great philosophers—Aristotle, Nietzsche, William James, Sigmund Freud, Jean-Paul Sartre—even as we learn about the movement in philosophy called Phenomenology, the study of experience, and about recent research in psychology.

A battle continues over the nature of emotion—whether it is primarily a physical feeling or some kind of intelligent engagement with the world.

Today, we will make the existentialist case that our emotions are not dumb feelings or physiological reactions but sometimes intelligent, if often short-sighted, strategies for coping with the world.

The history of philosophy is often characterized as the story of rationality and reason, but that is not the whole story. Philosophers from Plato onward have talked about emotions.

The ancients tended to think that we would be better off with what the Greeks called apatheia, or “apathy”—freedom from the emotions—to obtain ataraxia, “peace of mind.”

By contrast, some philosophers, including Albert Camus, have stressed the importance of passion as among the redeeming qualities that make a person human.

Søren Kierkegaard insisted that the good life is based on “passionate inwardness.”

Friedrich Nietzsche, too, argued that passions characterize the good life.

What does it mean to say that emotions are intelligent?

Untitled Slide

• It is to say that emotions are ways of dealing with the world, often very efficient and effective ways.

A. Evolution explains some of this emotional development.
B. Culture is defined by emotions and, in turn, determines which emotions are socially acceptable.
C. Personal experience further shapes our emotional intelligence and how we engage in the world.