We interview Owen Flanagan (James B. Duke Distinguished Professor of Philosophy and professor of psychology and neuroscience at Duke University) about his recent book How to things with emotions: The morality of anger and shame across cultures. (Princeton University Press). An expansive look at how culture shapes our emotions—and how we can benefit, as individuals and a society, from less anger and more shame
The world today is full of anger. Everywhere we look, we see values clashing and tempers rising, in ways that seem frenzied, aimless, and cruel. At the same time, we witness political leaders and others who lack any sense of shame, even as they display carelessness with the truth and the common good. In How to Do Things with Emotions, Owen Flanagan explains that emotions are things we do, and he reminds us that those like anger and shame involve cultural norms and scripts. The ways we do these emotions offer no guarantee of emotionally or ethically balanced lives—but still we can control and change how such emotions are done. Flanagan makes a passionate case for tuning down anger and tuning up shame, and he observes how cultures around the world can show us how to perform these emotions better.
Through comparative insights from anthropology, psychology, and cross-cultural philosophy, Flanagan reveals an incredible range in the expression of anger and shame across societies. He establishes that certain types of anger—such as those that lead to revenge or passing hurt on to others—are more destructive than we imagine. Certain forms of shame, on the other hand, can protect positive values, including courage, kindness, and honesty. Flanagan proposes that we should embrace shame as a uniquely socializing emotion, one that can promote moral progress where undisciplined anger cannot.
How to Do Things with Emotions celebrates the plasticity of our emotional responses—and our freedom to recalibrate them in the pursuit of more fulfilling lives.
"How to Do Things with Emotions is a welcome corrective to Anglophone philosophy’s tendency to frame Western presumptions as universal. And it presents an appealingly sensible moral program."—Becca Rothfeld, New Yorker
“This is no ordinary book on emotion. Flanagan sees society as ailing, and believes that two emotions, anger and shame, are the problem. He takes us on a tour of philosophical thinking about, and cultural difference in understanding of, emotions, all in the service of convincing us that emotions are things we do. If so, he says, we can learn to do anger and shame differently, and be better off for it. Reading this engaging and well-crafted book gave me hope. What a gift from an author.”—Joseph LeDoux, author of The Deep History of Ourselves: The Four-Billion-Year Story of How We Got Conscious Brains
“This is an urgent book for our times, both inspiring and provocative. Flanagan invites us to work on our emotional style, to tamp down our anger, and to develop a mature and responsible shame. His argument involves a subtle theory of what emotions do and why we can intervene, and considers what culture and anthropology can teach us. We can learn to be different. And we must.”—T. M. Luhrmann, author of When God Talks Back: Understanding the American Evangelical Relationship with God
“In this state-of-the-art account, Flanagan examines the multilevel constitution and cultural diversity of emotions. He builds on the anthropological observation that shame and anger are complex moral emotions—not only felt, but also enacted and performed. In the West, and particularly in post-Trump America, Flanagan contends, ‘we can do shame better.’ Likewise, our ubiquitous rage can be channeled into reasoned, constructive anger. This forcefully argued book takes philosophy into the field.”—Andrew Beatty, author of Emotional Worlds:
