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Acknowledgements
My work in editing this volume has been made possible by a research residency at the IMéRA Institute for Advanced Study of the University of Aix-Marseille. I had the opportunity to enjoy a very stimulating interdisciplinary endeavour and beneft of all the time required for editing a volume. I would like to thank the director Prof. Raouf Boucekkine and the colleagues of the program Crossing Paths— Exploring Interdisciplinarity, especially Prof. Pierre Livet, for the invaluable support provided. I would also like to thank two colleagues, Mog Stapleton and Dave Ward, both from the University of Edinburgh, for their kind help and precious advice in diferent phases of the editorial process.
I started planning this editorial project as Marie Skłodowska-Curie Research Fellow at the University of Edinburgh, School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences (PPLS), working as Principal Investigator for the project EMOTIONS FIRST funded by the EU (grant number: 655143) and hosted by the Eidyn Centre. In the process of developing the project, I have benefted immensely from the very inspiring working environment within the PPLS, and the intellectual
generosity and original thinking of its members—among them Andy Clark, Jesper Kallestrup, Michela Massimi, Duncan Pritchard and Dory Scaltsas. My gratitude extends also to the Eidyn research assistants who enriched the work routine with the taste of philosophical friendship.
Some of the papers included in this volume have been delivered at the International Conference “Feeling Reasons” (Edinburgh, 24–26 May 2017) that I organised as part of the EMOTIONS FIRST activities, and under the aegis of the European Philosophical Society for the Study of Emotions (EPSSE). Te Mind Association, the Scottish Philosophical Society, the Department of Philosophy, and the Eidyn Centre of the University of Edinburgh kindly provided the funding. I thank them for their generous support.
I would also like to thank Brendan George for his guide in bringing this volume to fruition, and his editorial assistants, April James and Lauriane Piette, for the skilfull advices provided throughout the process. I would also thank the anonymous referees granted by Palgrave Macmillan for their helpful comments at the initial stage of planning the collection.
Finally, I express my sincere gratitude to Prof. Duncan Pritchard, the director of the Eidyn Centre, who supported this editorial project from the beginning, providing insightful feedbacks on the epistemology of emotional experience and, most importantly, trusting me.
Notes on Contributors
Anja Berninger is a Lecturer (akademische Rätin) at the University of Stuttgart. Her main feld of research is Philosophy of Mind. She is especially interested in empathy, emotion and memory. Recent publications include the journal article “Tinking Sadly. In Favour of an Adverbial Teory of Emotions” (Philosophical Psychology 2016) as well as the German-language book-length study: “Gefühle und Gedanken. Entwurf einer adverbialen Emotionstheorie” (Mentis 2017).
Michael S. Brady is a Professor of Philosophy at the University of Glasgow. His research centres on the Philosophy of Emotion, and its links with Moral Philosophy and Epistemology. In 2013 his book Emotional Insight was published by Oxford University Press. He was recently Co-Investigator on a major interdisciplinary project on the Value of Sufering, hosted at Glasgow; his book on this topic, Sufering and Virtue, was published by OUP in 2018. He was Director of the British Philosophical Association, having previously served as Secretary of the Scots Philosophical Association. Outside of academia, he has acted as a philosophical advisor on a number of productions by the Manchester-based theatre company Quarantine.
Laura Candiotto is Alexander von Humboldt Foundation Senior Research Fellow at the Institute of Philosophy of the Free University of Berlin. She has also held positions at University of Edinburgh, University of AixMarseille and Ca’ Foscari University of Venice. Her research on emotions merges her interest in Social Epistemology and Philosophy of Mind, Social Ontology, Teories of Happiness and Well-Being, and the History of Philosophy. Her publications include, “Purifcation through emotions” (Educational Philosophy and Teory 2018); “Boosting cooperation. Te benefcial function of positive emotions in dialogical inquiry” (Humana. Mente 2017); “Socratic Dialogue faces the history. Dialogical inquiry as philosophical and politically engaged way of life” (Culture and Dialogue 2017); “Extended afectivity as the cognition of the primary intersubjectivity” (Phenomenology and Mind 2016). Te volume Emotions in Plato, edited with Olivier Renaut, is forthcoming for Brill.
Andy Clark is a Professor of Cognitive Philosophy at the University of Sussex. He is the author of several books including Surfng Uncertainty: Prediction, Action, and the Embodied Mind (Oxford University Press 2016). He is currently PI on a European Research Council Advanced Grant ‘Expecting Ourselves’, looking at Consciousness and the Predictive Brain.
George Deane is currently a Ph.D. student on ‘Expecting Ourselves’, a 4-year ERC-funded interdisciplinary project led by Professor Andy Clark, applying philosophy and cognitive science to investigate the nature and mechanisms of conscious experience within the predictive brain. His work focuses on integrating predictive processing with existing theories of consciousness and embodied cognition.
Roberta Dreon is an Associate Professor of Aesthetics at Ca’ Foscari University, Venice. Among her publications, the Italian volume “Out of the Ivory Tower: John Dewey’s Inclusive Aesthetics” (Marietti 2012) has been translated in French and published by Questions Téoriques in 2017. She recently edited “Te Venetian Lectures” held by Joseph Margolis for Mimesis International (2017). She published many articles on Pragmatism, Evolutionary Aesthetics, Merleau-Ponty’s Phenomenology, Hermeneutics, as well as a book on Heidegger in 2003 and a volume on
the connections between sensitivity and language in 2007. She is currently working on a project on Pragmatist Anthropology, focusing on the themes of sensitivity, habits and human enlanguaged experience.
Owen Earnshaw completed his Ph.D. in 2011 in the Philosophy of Psychiatry, focussing on the Phenomenology of Delusions. Since then he has been involved in teaching and research at the University of Durham and the Open University. His main interests are in Phenomenology, the Philosophy of Mental Health and understanding emotions and moods. He is a member of the Applied Phenomenology Research Cluster and chairs the Phenomenology Reading Group at Durham Philosophy Department.
Pascal Engel is the director of studies at Ecole des hautes études en sciences sociales, Paris. His work is mostly in the Philosophy of Mind and Epistemology. He is the author of Truth (Cambridge University Press 2002), Ramsey, Truth and Success (with J. Dokic, Routledge 2002), Va savoir (Editions Hermann 2007) and Les vices du savoir (Agone 2018).
Anthony Hatzimoysis is an Associate Professor of Contemporary Philosophy at the University of Athens, and a Visiting Professor in Epistemology at Alliance Manchester Business School, and at Pepperdine Graziadio Business School, having held academic posts at the University College London (UCL), the University of Manchester, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). He is the co-founder of the European Philosophical Society for the Study of Emotions. His main works include the volumes Philosophy and the Emotions (Cambridge University Press 2003), and Self-Knowledge (Oxford University Press 2011), and the monograph Te Philosophy of Sartre (Routledge 2013).
Raamy Majeed is a Lecturer in Philosophy at Te University of Auckland, New Zealand. He has also held positions at University of Cambridge, Lehigh University and Te University of Otago. He currently works in Philosophy of Mind and Cognitive Science, and is the author of “Do Gestalts Efects Show Tat We Perceive High-Level Aesthetic Properties?” (Analysis 2018), “Why the Canberra Plan Won’t
Help You Do Serious Metaphysics” (Synthese 2017) and “Conceptual Instability and the New Epistemic Possibility” (Erkenntnis 2016).
Dina Mendonça is a research member of the Institute of Philosophy (IFILNOVA) at Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities of NOVA University of Lisbon (FCSH/NOVA). Holding a Ph.D. in Pragmatism by the University of South Carolina, USA (2003), she researches on Philosophy of Emotions and Philosophy for Children. Her current research is focused on the application of the Situated Approach to Emotions to Ethics and Decision Making. She is the author of several papers on emotion theory and, in addition, promotes and creates original material for application of philosophy to all schooling stages, and as an aid in creative processes.
Cecilea Mun specializes in the areas of Philosophy of Emotion and Mind, Epistemology, and Feminist Philosophy. She is the founding president of the Society for Philosophy of Emotion, and the founding editor of the Journal of Philosophy of Emotion. She is also the author of Interdisciplinary Foundations for the Science of Emotion: Unifcation Without Consilience (Lexington Books forthcoming), and the editor of Interdisciplinary Perspectives on Shame: Methods, Teories, Norms, Cultures, and Politics (Lexington Books forthcoming).
Kathryn Nave is a Ph.D. student on the ‘Expecting Ourselves’ project, led by Professor Andy Clark. Her work focuses on how insights from both Predictive Processing and work in the Phenomenological tradition can be combined to help us better understand the structure and function of visual experience.
João Sàágua is the rector of NOVA University of Lisbon and a Full Professor of the Faculty of Social Sciences and Humanities of NOVA (FCSH/NOVA). Holding a Ph.D. in Contemporary Philosophy he has been teaching at NOVA since 1990 accumulating a long experience as a professor at all levels of university teaching in Portugal and abroad. He was a Visiting Scholar at the University of Oxford, and combined several management positions with an intensive teaching and research activity being the author of several books and articles on Logic, Philosophy of Language and Argumentation Teory.
Dave Ward is a Lecturer in Philosophy in the School of Philosophy, Psychology and Language Sciences at the University of Edinburgh. He works on the relationships between perception, agency and understanding. Key recent publications include: “What’s Lacking in Online Learning? Dreyfus, Merleau-Ponty and Bodily Afective Understanding”, (Journal of Philosophy of Education forthcoming); (with G. Ongaro) “An enactive account of placebo efects” (Biology and Philosophy 2017); “Achieving transparency: An argument for enactivism” (Philosophy and Phenomenological Research 2016).
Sam Wilkinson is a Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Exeter. Before that, he was a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Edinburgh, working on the European Research Council Advanced Grant ‘Expecting Ourselves’, led by Professor Andy Clark. Sam has published several papers in Philosophy of Mind and Cognitive Science in journals like Mind and Language, Consciousness and Cognition and Review of Philosophy and Psychology.
Part I Introduction
1 From Philosophy of Emotion to Epistemology: Some Questions About the Epistemic Relevance of Emotions
Laura Candiotto
Tis volume consists of twelve full-length articles by leading and up-and-coming academics on the exciting topic of philosophy of emotions. Tis very multidisciplinary feld of research focuses on the diferent roles that emotions play in our life. Signifcant work has been done in the area of moral philosophy, for example highlighting the weight of emotions and other afective states in nurturing our moral concerns, leading our decision-making, and also disclosing what it is that we care about most.1 Te aim of this volume is to analyse the role of emotions in knowledge acquisition, in its many and diferent processes and functions, especially focusing at the intersection between epistemology and the philosophy of mind and cognitive science. In fact, if we easily recognise the value of emotions in our moral life, it is difcult to not think that emotions impair knowledge, intrude on reasoning, and express our
1For a comprehensive overview of the most relevant work that has been done in this feld in the last decades, see the second and the third volume of Ben-Ze’ev and Krebs (2018).
L. Candiotto (ed.), Te Value of Emotions for Knowledge, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-15667-1_1
epistemic faults and self-deception.2 And we should thus admit that these seemingly bad emotional behaviours have strong implications for moral judgements too. Emotions disrupt very often indeed, just think about the emotional biases and implicit prejudices that hinder our correct understanding of a thing, or how fast we judge a person poisoned by ill-founded jealousy and rivalry. But, we should concede, emotions can also make the process of inquiry appealing, for example nurturing our motivation towards knowledge acquisition, or letting us perceive the salience of an experience for our self-understanding, as the trend of emotional intelligence in pop-culture has very well emphasised— although with commercial exploitations, in certain cases.3
Neuroscientists have discovered the integrated functionality of emotions and reasoning in our mental life. Emotions are now understood as a constitutive element of human rationality, grounding concept creation and deliberative thinking, and partaking in the various cognitive processes, rather than being framed in opposition to rationality (Gray et al. 2002; Pessoa 2008, 2013).4 Although the value of emotions in our mental life has been recognised by cognitive science, epistemology has remained a bit suspicious about it. It is true that some important pieces of work in the epistemology of emotions have been already developed especially by those philosophers who look at the science of mind for illuminating questions about the nature of emotions.5 But as
2For the conceptualisation of emotions as misguided judgements at the beginning of our philosophical history, see Sorabji (2000). A prominent topic, widely discussed since the antiquity, is the possible contribution of emotions to akrasia (weakness of the will) and self-deception. Many philosophers, and then psychologists, have been dealing with it until now. Exemplary cases for the contemporary philosophical debate on emotions are Rorty (1987) and Mele (2000).
3For an academic study on emotional intelligence, see Barrett and Salovey (2002).
4It is important to mention a signifcant shift in cognitive science from the interactionist models of the late Nineties to the more recent integrationist models for which emotion and cognition are deeply entangled in our mental life. Te integrationist model, frst developed in neuroscience, is now assumed by many specifc research felds, from developmental psychology (Labouvie-Vief 2015) to theories of learning and skilfull behaviour (Gardiner 2015).
5But this does not mean that there is a general consensus about what our best science says regarding the emotions. In fact, diferent research programs have been developed throughout the years and the diferent results are also refected in the philosophical conceptualisations about them. Some good exemplars are de Sousa (1987) on the two systems theory (also called “Two-Track
Christopher Hookway (2003) has clearly stated, everyone would agree in ascribing to jealousy or anger our intellectual mistakes, however very few theorists would accept ascribing a positive role to our afective responses in the formation of reliable beliefs. In fact, granting a signifcant role to emotions in cognitive performances does not mean to also admit their truth-conduciveness—and only the latter should count for epistemology.
One of the innovative traits of this volume is to discuss the conditions that rule the benefcial role that afective states as emotions, meta-emotions, and moods can play in our epistemic practice, avoiding their popular shortcomings, but also the extreme rationalism which refuses to ascribe any positive epistemic function to them. In epistemology as a normative discipline, it is fundamental to ask what counts as acquiring or having the knowledge, what contributes to epistemic success and at which level, what possesses epistemic relevance and salience. Tis volume shows that emotions do count for our epistemic enterprise, and against the scepticism about their possible positive role in knowledge, it highlights the how and the why of this potential, also exploring aspects of their functionality in relation to specifc kinds of knowledge.
But what does it mean that emotions contribute to knowledge? In the history of philosophy many answers have been ofered to reply to this question, focusing on specifc emotions—for example love as one of the best driving forces to truth in Plato and Scheler—beliefs’ a priori grounding, as in the Scottish Sentimentalism and German Romanticism, metacognitive feelings as emotional attunements to reasons6 or, as in the case of doubt, afective evaluations of the epistemic status of a belief in the Pragmatist philosophy, and afective dispositions
Mind”), Grifths (1997) and DeLancey (2001) on the evolutionary approach and Ekman’s basic emotions, Prinz (2004) in relation to Damasio’s somatic marker hypothesis, and Tagard (2008) on the interactionist model. For a new account on emotions grounded in the new research program of the predictive mind, see Chapter 5
6Contemporary philosophy of emotions diferentiates between emotions and metacognitive feelings. See Proust (2015) and Carruthers (2017).
to world experience in the Phenomenological and Existentialist traditions.7 But instead of specifcally looking to our rich philosophical history,8 this volume addresses the fundamental questions that underlie the deep entanglement between emotions and knowledge, asking for the criteria that can grant it, and assessing them. In addition to questioning the epistemological relevance of emotions, much of the work undertaken in this volume is directed to specifc types of knowledge, such as self-understanding, group-knowledge, and wisdom, and to specifc functions played by certain emotions in these cases, such as disorientation in enquiry and contempt in practical reason. Terefore, this volume draws special attention to how the function of emotions in knowledge is dependent on the types of knowledge—and why emotions’ efcacy increase in relation to specifc epistemic practices. Tis means that the volume highlights the necessity of studying the epistemic relevance of specifc types of emotions in precise epistemic contexts. Focusing on epistemic practices, as the revision of beliefs or collective enquiry, the volume also considers the role played by epistemic subjects and communities in epistemic agency, thus discussing the epistemic signifcance of their afective states in belief-forming practices.9
In addition to highlighting the innovative character of the volume, the aim of this introduction is also to discuss the relevance that emotions can play in our epistemic life considering the state of the art of the philosophical debate on emotions. Te debate that lies at the interface between epistemology, theory of emotions, and cognitive science has been taken into consideration by some other important publications in
7Tese are not only historical references to our glorious past since many contemporary approaches have renewed the traditions with novel accounts. For example, consider the prominent Neo-Aristotelian tradition in virtue epistemology (Zagzebski 1996) and the sentimentalist philosophy of mind (Slote 2014), or those approaches that are strictly anchored to the phenomenological tradition, as the ones of Matthew Rattclife (2008), Tomas Fuchs (2017), and Shaun Gallagher and Dan Zahavi (2008).
8For an excellent overview on the history of philosophy of emotions see the new edited volume by Cohen and Stern (2017).
9Recently Joëlle Proust (2018) has highlighted the importance of looking at epistemic activities for grasping the social dimensions of knowledge and thus for developping what it has been called socially extended epistemology. In this volume, especially in Chapters 11–13, we show how much the understanding of shared/collective emotions matter for this enterprise.
the last years, as the edited volumes Epistemology and Emotions by Georg Brun et al. (2008) and Emotions and Value by Sabine Roeser and Cain Todd (2014), the very popular handbook by Julien Deonna and Fabrice Teroni, Te Emotions (Deonna and Teroni 2012), the introduction to the philosophy of emotion by Carolyn Price (2015), and the new one by Michael Brady (2018), and some of the chapters of the Oxford Handbook of Philosophy of Emotion edited by Peter Goldie (2010), as for example the ones by Adam Morton (2010) and Kevin Mulligan (2010). Tis new collection of essays brings new light to the debate, introducing new questions, for example about the role of emotions in participatory sense-making (see Chapter 11), the value of sufering in wisdom (see Chapter 9), and the rationality of moods (see Chapter 13), or new answers to old questions, as the intentional character of emotions (see Chapters 2, 3, and 10), and their epistemic value in moral knowledge (Chapters 7–10). It also introduces new conceptual frameworks for understanding the role of emotions in knowledge, as predictive processing (see Chapter 5), and brings to the contemporary debate the conceptual frameworks of important traditions of thought, such as Pragmatism (see Chapters 4 and 6), Phenomenology and Existentialism (see Chapter 8), explicitly emphasising the necessity of studying the role of emotions in epistemic contexts and within the embodied and situated experience of an epistemic agent (see Chapters 1, 4, 5, 6 and 11).
As it has been efectively summarised by Georg Brun and Dominique Kuenzle (2008), fve epistemic functions have been claimed for emotions: motivational force, salience and relevance, access to facts and beliefs, non-propositional contributions to knowledge and understanding, and epistemic efciency. Tese diferent functions can be articulated within diferent conceptual accounts. My strategy is thus the one of focusing on the three main models on emotions as evaluative judgements, bodily feelings, and perceptions, following the fl rouge of emotional intentionality for rising questions about their epistemic functions. Emotions are conceptualised as equipped of intentionality (de Sousa 1987; his account is extensively discussed here in Chapters 2 and 3), that means that they can be said to be about something. For cognitive theories, emotions have evaluative judgements for their content (Nussbaum 2001, 2004; Solomon 1976). Tis means that the
intentional object of an emotion is the value of something or, said in another way, emotional intentionality discloses what is of value to the subject, those features of the intentional object that are signifcant to us.10 Emphasising the cognitive valence of emotions in this way allows us to investigate their epistemological status. For example, we could ask about the conditions of the correctness of their intentional character (D’Arms and Jacobson 2000), their appropriateness to the situation (Brady 2013) and their requiredness (De Monticelli 2015), or the apparent objective dimension of their fttingness (Todd 2014).11 Tere are alternatives to this view that look at the intentional object for assessing if emotions are justifed, such as the attitudinal theory for which the evaluative judgement does not belong to the intentional object, but to the disposition towards it (Deonna and Teroni 2012), models that take the evaluative judgements as non-doxastic states (Roeser 2011), “perspectival”, meaning that emotional response varies with the evaluative perspective (Greenspan 2003), and experiential representations (Montague 2009, 2014). Tere are also accounts that ask to look at emotion’s justifcation as the coherence between the evaluative content of emotion and the subject’s internally justifed values, therefore building an important bridge between the objective and the subjective dimensions of emotion, their truth and authenticity (Salmela 2014). Finally, there are theories that ascribe to emotions a very peculiar kind of intentionality, the one of the “feeling-towards” (Goldie 2000), recognised as fundamental for practical reasoning and moral judgements (Goldie 2007). Tis line of investigation discloses important overlaps
10It should be noted that this thesis could be assumed in many diferent ways, from one more apt to relate it to desires and hedonic levels (Helm 2001; Oddie 2005) to the ones that look at afects as the basic components of constructed emotions (Barrett 2017). Tese diferences partially depend on the very much debated topic of emotional valence in afective science (for an overview of the issue, see Colombetti 2005). Te thesis for which emotions disclose values (Johnston 2001) can also be used for explaining the analogy between perception and emotions— as perceptions are directed to objects, emotions are directed to values (Sauer 2012)—and can be articulated within diferent versions of intentionalism, as it has been recently argued by Vanello (2018). Tis thesis can be taken in functional terms too, and thus arguing that emotions are not a type of perception, but they function as perceptions (Price 2015).
11It is important to notice that the topic of the intentionality of emotions related to their fttingness has been one of the most debated since the pioneer book by Kenny (1963).
between epistemology and ethics, but also with aesthetics (Skellekens and Goldie 2011; Roeser 2018), for example investigating the epistemic signifcance of feeling moved by and feeling attracted to a piece of art and assessing the epistemic valence of the appreciation of a fctional intentional object, thus nurturing an interdisciplinary approach to emotion theories (on the relevance of fction and literature for grasping the meaning of emotions in our life, see here Chapters 7 and 10).
But it is not only the cognitive theories that can be a valid point of reference for an epistemological investigation of emotions. In fact, from the point of view of emotional phenomenology, we can assess the intentionality of bodily feelings, both inward and outward, also discussing the possible contribution of the pre-refective dimension of the subjective experience of the living body in the generation of meaning (Petitmengin 2007), and specifcally of the physiological dynamics of health and breath as constitutive of the subjective point of view (Depraz 2008). Te feeling-centred theories of emotions, such as the neo-Jamesian model developed by Prinz (2004) through to the important infuence of Damasio (1994, 1999), and—with diferent emphasis—the afective intentionality model by Slaby (2008) and the enactive approach by Colombetti (2014), ask to focus on embodied cognition and frstperson experience for looking at emotional phenomenology, while also analysing their social embeddedness (Fuchs and De Jaegher 2009; Fuchs and Koch 2014), social sharing (Salmela 2012; De Jaegher 2015; Zahavi 2015), and social functioning and cultural scafoldings (Grifths and Scarantino 2008; Slaby 2014; Colombetti 2015; Colombetti and Krueger 2015; Candiotto 2016; Krueger and Szanto 2016).12 From an epistemological point of view, these models invite, for example, to analyse the function played by afective bodily feelings in epistemic agency, also assessing their relevance, and to investigate afective bodily feelings from the perspective of frst-person knowledge, in certain cases also challenging the very notion of the subject of knowledge. For Lorraine Code, in fact, mainstream epistemology has always focused on
12An important contribution to this debate is forthcoming, the Routledge Handbook of phenomenology of emotions (Szanto and Landweer, forthcoming).
the value of propositions, and not on the properties of the epistemic subjects, thus developing a “view from nowhere” (Code 1992). But, as Roberts has claimed, a philosophical study of emotions requires taking into account the point of view of the human participants in the creation of meanings and values (Roberts 2003, p. 37), since if we do not do so the risk of losing the epistemic signifcance of emotions is very high.13 Emotions are in fact what makes knowledge signifcant to us, what disclose our personal concerns, what nurture our epistemic responsibility and for which we need to be responsible—as Robert Solomon efectively said, reversing the Humean motto, about our choice to not be the passion’s slave (Solomon 2003, p. 40).14 But this does not mean avoiding epistemological investigation and instead moving to psychological or educational ones. As a matter of fact, in the last decades many new and comprehensive approaches to knowledge have been developed for taking the subject into account, such as virtue epistemology, and models of cognition that are more sensitive to the subject experience and her environment like the 4Ecognition approach, that deserves to be further investigated from the integrated point of view of epistemology and philosophy of emotions (see Chapters 1, 4–6, and 11). Te alleged subjectivity of emotions could be very useful too, especially for deepening the analysis of certain kinds of knowledge, such as critical refection and introspective knowledge (Goldie 2004, pp. 92–95; Solomon 2007, pp. 150–158). But—I want to stress it again clearly—if one could be convinced by the necessity of looking at the epistemic subject for better understanding our cognitive processes, it is not said that one would grant it for epistemology too. Tis challenge is crucial because
13It is important to notice that one of the main reasons of scepticism regarding a positive role of emotions in knowledge in our philosophical tradition has been exactly their subjective and private dimension that seems to be against the objective standards of knowledge. For an overview of the conceptualisation of emotions as subjective, see Calhoun (2004).
14Tis claim, that is strictly related to the cognitive account on the rationality of emotions, has been discussed well beyond the boundaries of the philosophical circles, notably in the NeoAristotelian afective turn in education (Nussbaum 1995; Kristjánsson 2018), but also in decision theory and economics (Kirman et al. 2010). But altought this widespread interest, the capacity to be responsible over our emotions is still controversial, especially if emotions are not conceptualized as cognitive, but as unbiden automatic responses that make us lose reason (Elster 1999, 2010).
it highlights the relevance of the investigation of this topic from the point of view of the epistemology of afective bodily feelings, in this case: the readers will fnd some argument for assuring a positive function for emotions in embodied and situated epistemologies in this volume, but we are far from a conclusive answer. And this is good news because we have many other paths to investigate in this exciting feld of research. For instance, I see an interesting bridge between those accounts that stress the relevance of afective bodily feelings in our epistemic practices and the feminist tradition in epistemology (see for example Jaggar 1989; Alcof and Potter 1992),15 for which we could examine whether the epistemic agent’s emotional involvement is a crucial aspect that underlies our epistemic practices, or if it is accidental, especially in relation to gender, race, and social status diferences. Another chief path that deserves to be further explored is the one that assesses the necessity of overcoming the personal/social divide that has been quite strong in the feeling-centred approaches to emotions (an excellent guide to this route is Protevi 2009). And this path may bring one to travel through the enactivist approaches to emotions in knowledge, focusing on how organisms afectively perceive the environment through their action-tendencies (Ellis 2005; Slaby et al. 2013) and pragmatic and epistemic actions (Wilutzky 2015), also disclosing relevant bridges to dynamical approaches to knowledge (Livet 2016) and the pragmatist tradition that asks to move from the study of knowledge as true belief to epistemic activities (Hookway 1990). Terefore, emotions can be the trojan horse for bringing the issue of the subjectivity of knowledge to mainstream epistemology, asking for a non-reductionist approach to afective bodily-feelings that, without forgetting the complexity of the subjects’ emotional experience, can beneft from important recent results in the intertwined feld of embodied neuroscience and phenomenology.
15It should be noted that the feminist refection on emotions has been mostly pursued within the feld of political philosophy and cultural studies (see, for example, Mendus 2000; Ahmed 2014). However, I think that the prominent research activity pursued by feminist epistemology and philosophy of science can be a valid and challenging reference for addressing the topic of emotions in knowledge too.
Coming back to our main topic, a middle ground between the feeling-centred theories of emotion and the evaluative judgement theories have been ofered by the perceptual model for which emotions are perceptions of evaluative properties (Elgin 1996, 2008; Tappolet 2000, 2012; Döring 2007), rather than inferences. For the perceptual account, emotions are cognitive—like the judgement theories, but their evaluation has a rich phenomenology that should be taken into account—like the feeling-centred theories, as directly revealing what is meaningful to the subject (Hatzimoysis 2003), or even what it is inaccessible to the subject in other ways (de Sousa 1998).16 Te point here is to look at alternatives to propositional knowledge, such as the epistemic immediacy of direct perception and disclosing response-dependent properties of an object (Elgin 1996, 2008). Just as when we say that the party last night was amusing or that the family dinner was depressing, thus getting access to the properties of the party and the dinner from the direct experience of the perceiver. For this model, propositional knowledge may rest upon non-propositional elements, such as these quasiperceptions that are emotions. If emotions are perceptions, then they generate beliefs and, therefore, epistemology should ask if these beliefs are justifed or reliable and on what grounds. Te perceptual model has also found an immediate epistemological valence thanks to the research leaded by Linda Zagzebski (2003) in virtue epistemology. In this case, the fttingness of an emotion does not depend on beliefs only, but also by some character-traits of the epistemically responsible subject, such as her trustworthiness (Zagzebski 2012), her concern (Candiotto 2017a, b) and existential commitments (Slaby and Wüschner 2014), or intellectual humility (Tanesini 2008). Te perceptual model is widely discussed in the volume, both in arguing for and against it, see for example Chapters 10 and 12.
From this brief overview of the implications for epistemology from the debate in philosophy of emotion, we can derive that the investigation regarding the role of emotions in knowledge does not only ask
16For an overview of the psychological literature about the role played by the afects in self-disclosure, see Forgas and Moylan (2002).
to assess the functions of emotions in knowledge, but also and more fundamentally requires to put into question the very notion of knowledge. Accordingly, some of the chapters not only explore the evaluative knowledge ascribed to emotions as its object, but also explore the role of emotions in those kinds of knowledge that put the subjects, the epistemic communities, and their practices at the centre, like selfawareness, refexivity, revision of beliefs, social understanding, and group knowledge-building. Te volume also tests the capacity of other epistemologies, like the one of enactivism and predictive processing, in giving a good account of the role of emotions in knowledge. Tis step towards epistemic practices and the how of knowing, fundamental for the pragmatist epistemology (Hookway 1990, 2000), has been argued for many years for example by Goodman and Elgin (1988), and in general by the externalist approaches to knowledge. Te externalist turn in epistemology seems in fact to better ft the enquiry on the epistemic relevance of emotions because it works on those processes of acquisition and generation of beliefs, instead of a more traditional investigation of the internal justifcation, where emotions seem to perform signifcant functions, as markers of salience or motivations for enquiry, for example. Moreover, an externalist approach to emotions can also contribute to developing the understanding of epistemic agency in the diferent and many practices of epistemic subjects and communities.
However, if emotions are taken in the standard way to be private states of the mind, it seems implausible to not consider what the traits of a mature epistemic agent are which count most for knowledge, and ask if emotions play a part in these. Saying this, I want to highlight that in discussing the function of emotions in knowledge from the point of view of epistemology we also need to assess the conditions that allow the subject and the epistemic communities to be competent knowers employing emotional rationality, and so an internalist account of knowledge as virtue epistemology, for example, seems to be needed too. Tis volume does not take a partisan position and, beyond the divide between internalism and externalism in epistemology, wishes to nurture a multi-focal perspective for focusing on the diferent aspects related to the potential relevance of emotions in epistemic practices. Tis also means undertaking an interdisciplinary
approach that, converging on the shared need of furthering our understanding of emotions in knowledge, explores their role from diferent perspectives. Terefore, in this volume we both look at emotions from the perspective of cognitive science and one of literature and fction, for example, highlighting the importance of the meeting between science and humanities.
Tis volume focuses on particular ways of carving out new territory at the intersection of epistemology and philosophy of mind and cognitive science, by exploring the epistemic role of emotions to the theory of knowledge in particular. Te questions that have animated the debate around this volume are many, from the most fundamental, such as why and how emotions have a special signifcance in the acquisition of knowledge, to more specifc ones, related to emotional rationality, epistemic practices, and communities of inquiry. Te following theoretical questions highlight some of the challenges around which the volume is centred and are a representative sample of the many research questions which philosophy of emotions raises for epistemology:
• What does it mean for emotions to be rational? How can emotions be vehicles of knowledge? What is the relation between emotions and beliefs? What is emotions’ biological function? What is the impact of meta-emotions in reasoning? Could moods be rational?
• How do our refections on emotions shape our self-awareness and self-understanding? What makes these self-refections more, or less, accurate? What is the role played by narrativity in practical reasoning, and how emotions contribute to it? Why does sufering matter to wisdom?
• What relevance do group level emotions have for acts of group cognition, participatory sense-making, and decision-making? What are the character traits that are benefcial or detrimental to group knowledge? What is the epistemic value of emotive bodily gestures and afective bodily feelings?
Contributors to Te Value of Emotions for Knowledge engage with these questions as well as issues related to specifc emotions. Te contributions that follow all explore various important connections among emotion,
rationality, and knowledge, including the role that emotions play in different kinds of knowledge. Te book is organized in 6 parts which highlight the diferent epistemic values that can be ascribed to emotions. Part I consists of the introduction to the volume and it addresses the main challenges that arise in bringing emotions under epistemic scrutiny, also presenting the many and diferent features of the new paths of investigation in the feld. Part II addresses the epistemic status of emotion in rationality for answering the traditional questions about the intentionality of emotions, especially looking at the pioneering work by Ronald de Sousa in the feld. Part III examines the epistemic function of emotions in the intersections among brain, body, and environment from the point of view of 4E Cognition and Pragmatism. Part IV explores the specifc role performed by emotions in the kind of self-understanding that is involved in autonomous agency and in critical thinking. Part V travels through the possible epistemic value of negative emotions and painful feelings, also discussing their relationship to moral values. Part VI inquiries into group level emotions and moods for detecting their epistemic value both in individual and group knowledge. Terefore, the leitmotiv of emotional intentionality fows from the more speculative and conceptual explorations of Parts I, II and III to the application of the value of emotions to specifc types of knowledge and epistemic practices, for providing innovative and original snapshots at the crisscross of philosophy of emotions and epistemology.
In what follows, I ofer a brief overview of each specifc chapter.
Chapters 2 and 3 analyse the fundamental question of the rationality of emotions discussing de Sousa’s account. In Chapter 2, How Emotions Know: Naturalizing Epistemology via Emotions, Cecilea Mun highlights the import of the intentionality of emotions to the knowledge of the world that we can gain in virtue of our emotional responses. In Chapter 3, What Can Information Encapsulation Tell Us About Emotional Rationality?, Raamy Majeed assesses de Sousa’s hypothesis about information encapsulation and, contrary to de Sousa, argues that it is not essential to emotion-driven reasoning, as emotions can determine the relevance of response-options even without being encapsulated.
Chapters 4–6 explore new conceptual frameworks for understanding the epistemic value of emotions, especially looking at those accounts that provide prominence to what the environment ofers to knowledgeacquisition. Chapter 4, A Pragmatist View of Emotions: Tracing its
Signifcance for the Current Debate, by Roberta Dreon, drives us to the pragmatist account of emotions highlighting its paramount importance for understanding the role of emotions in the diferent processes of knowledge-building, also underlying signifcant connections with the contemporary debate, especially with the extended and enactive accounts to cognition. In Chapter 5, Getting Warmer: Predictive Processing and the Nature of Emotion, Sam Wilkinson, George Deane, Kathryn Nave, and Andy Clark ofer predictive processing as a new perspective on emotion. Te upshot is a picture of emotion as inseparable from perception and cognition, and a key feature of the embodied mind. Chapter 6, Emotional Refexivity in Reasoning: Te Function of Describing the Environment in Emotion Regulation, Dina Mendonça and João Sàágua explore the intentionality of meta-emotions arguing that the recognition of refexivity of emotions is crucial for understanding the role of emotions in reasoning, also showing how adopting a Situated Approach to Emotions is well suited for explaining the refnement and complexity of emotion regulation.
Chapters 7 and 8 inaugurate the analysis on the epistemic functions played by emotions in specifc kinds of epistemic practices. In Chapter 7, Moving Stories: Agency, Emotion, and Practical Rationality, Dave Ward discusses J. David Velleman’s conception of being an agent as having the capacity to be motivated by a drive to act for reasons, arguing that our capacities to render ourselves intelligible are built upon a bedrock of emotionally sufused narrative understanding. In this chapter the epistemic value of emotions is understood as what mediate the kind of self-understanding that is involved in autonomous agency. In Chapter 8, Disorientation and Cognitive Enquiry, Owen Earnshaw suggests that the experience of disorientation is a background afect in intellectual enquiry, both motivating the enquiry and being necessary to instill certain epistemic virtues in the inquirer. Discussing Bewilderment through the lenses of the phenomenological and existentialist tradition, Earnshaw argues that it is an emotion that is evoked through the encounter with the “mystery” and that it has a role in cognitive enquiry as an indicator of where the boundary of sense has been overstepped by nonsense.
Chapters 9 and 10 ofer two intriguing and diferent explanations about the epistemic value of negative emotions. In Chapter 9, Learning
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"He knew it very well; but it didn't alter his feeling for them. He'll do the right thing by all of them, however they treat him," argued the other.
"You may think so, but John Henry's a great fool for turning his father down as he does all the same," declared her brother. "The man's not made of patience, and as to justice, the less we say about justice the better, when we think of you and look at you now."
"I've told John Henry to see his father; I've told him half a dozen times on the quiet," said Margery. "For his own sake he should."
Elsewhere, by a coincidence, this very thing that they desired was happening, for John Henry had met Jacob's ancient friend and been firmly directed to pay his injured parent a visit. He obeyed, being the more inclined to do so for private ends; and while Bullstone first felt satisfaction at the visit, his pleasure presently waned, since it became apparent that not concern for his father alone had brought John Henry.
He hoped that Jacob was better; but this was not what interested him.
"'Tis a very good thing you weren't killed," he said, "and I expect you'll have the law of that lunatic and win this time. He didn't ought to be at large, for he's cunning and wicked. He may do something like this again and bring it off next time."
"I've gone through all that with Adam Winter, his brother. You needn't trouble on that score. It's all part and parcel of other things, and there's no fear that Samuel would assault anybody but me. I've told his brother that I won't take any step in the matter, or have him put away. He's not the only one who has been revenged against me, John Henry. At any rate he did it openly."
"It's all very wretched and I'm sick of the subject, and I wish it could be dropped," said his son; "and it's a thousand pities that you can't go farther off from Brent, or else mother can't be took away out of it. There's a talk of her going to Uncle Lawrence, and it would be a blessing if she did, for she's
growing to a thread-paper and getting as weak as a rabbit. Of course you can't go, I suppose; but she might, and they ought to take her."
"Your mother's thin? So Auna says. It's a great grief to me."
"No business of mine anyway. But you must look after yourself nowadays, for there's nobody else to trouble about you, and I think I've a right to ask a few things, father."
"Certainly. Ask what you please, John Henry."
"Very well then. And first I'm very glad you've made such a good recovery, and I'd have come sooner but for the mountains of work. I hope you won't take it amiss, or think I'm pushing, or anything like that; but, with you, none of us ever know exactly where we're standing, because you do such unexpected things. I've always been a good son, I believe—quite so good a son as Avis is daughter, anyhow; and you've given her Owley, so I feel it's only fair, me being your eldest son, if I ask for Bullstone."
"Owley's my wedding gift to Avis. She's going to be married and going to live at Owley as you know; therefore it was a very good time to let her have it. You're not of age."
"I soon shall be; and the eldest ought to have Bullstone."
"Why in such a hurry? I haven't gone yet. Plenty of time."
"You let Avis have Owley."
"Fight against your mean greed," answered his father. "Even your grandmother won't approve lust for this world's goods. Go on with your work, learn your business and trust me for the future. Remember that I've got to think of others besides you. I've taken over Huntingdon for myself, because a time will come some day, when I'm old, that I may decree to live there—for the air and peace. And then, no doubt, you'll have Bullstone, and Peter will own the business at Red House. But there's Auna too. And I'm not past work yet."
"If you could give me a written, signed promise for Bullstone, I'd know where I stood."
"Give—give—give! And are you never to give? Are my children to receive always and return nothing—no duty, no love, no respect even? Have you ever thought what you owe to those who brought you into the world?"
"I owe no man any thing," answered John Henry without emotion. "And I never will. It's always the fashion, seemingly, for parents to make a fuss about what their children ought to do, and expect them to fall down and worship them. Why should I—just because you married and had a good time with mother? And, seeing what life is, I don't know that anybody need feel under any very great gratitude for being alive. It was all in the day's work that I was born; you didn't choose me, and a child don't owe a parent any thanks whatever for coming into the world. And so far as the rest is concerned, you've done your duty by me, and I've done my duty faithfully by you, and everybody. I've never given any trouble—never got into a scrape—always been straight and hard-working. And I deserve Bullstone and ought to have it."
"What does your mother say?"
"She's understood that the eldest son had it. But I can't talk of her to you, of course."
"Why not?"
"I'm mother's side, and God knows I wouldn't do nothing against her," he answered. "But this has nothing to do with her."
"How so, if all mine is hers?"
"She wouldn't take anything of yours, father, and never will. You talk as if nought had happened. You seem to forget. But you can't expect none of us to forget, while we see her every week. It's been a fearful thing—cruel for your children and everybody. It will never be forgot by mortal man I should think, and you can't expect any of us to be exactly the same again. We're honest and we've got our feelings and we've been through a lot. I'm
sure you owe us something. And if you're not going to let me have Bullstone, you ought not to let Peter have the business. I'm your eldest son and——"
"Learn what your mother thinks and come to me again," directed his father. "All I have is hers, and it was always her wish, when first Avis got engaged, that she should take Owley for her portion. If she'd like for you to have Bullstone while I live, it can be. After your mother's self, there's only Auna to think about."
John Henry cheered up and promised to do as he was directed.
"I'm properly certain mother would say I ought to have it," he declared.
"I expect she would, and her word's my law. You'll be of age in less than a year, so things may happen as you would wish. But I don't transfer till the present lease has run out. It wouldn't do for you to own the farm on which you're being taught your business."
"I know my business. I know full as much as Bob Elvin, if not more. I've got larger ideas than him."
"I dare say you have; and now you'd best be gone. And you can see me again when you've heard your mother."
John Henry departed and Jacob considered him. In the past he had much resented similar applications on smaller subjects: the young man never lost anything for the sake of asking; but now this large request left him unmoved. He meant to leave Bullstone to his son, and had no real objection to handing it over in his own lifetime. For the moment this incident offered hopes of a message from his wife. There might chance some thread in John Henry's demands to serve for the business of drawing Margery and himself together again. He was ever on the look-out for such threads.
CHAPTER IX
JACOB COMES HOME
The mother of Margery believed, with Augustin, that persecution is the only solicitude the virtuous have any right to show a sinner. She held that where the least doubt of salvation might still be said to lie, it was better to torment than ignore, since this form of attention will sometimes torture the wrong-doer into grief for his wickedness, and so open the door to repentance and salvation. But she was not often in such doubt and generally separated the goats from the potential sheep without difficulty. The doomed she did not ever persecute, since any attention paid to those patently condemned was not only useless to them, but implied danger to the agent.
Of such, without the pale, was Jacob Bullstone, and now a situation had been reached where one thing must certainly have happened, save for the attitude of Judith Huxam towards him. Even despite her it might yet occur and the issue still stood in hope; but success implied that Margery would first actively oppose her mother, and her power to do so lessened fast.
The double accident of Jacob's broken thigh and his wife's indisposition delayed a possible union, and now the next step to any such event depended upon Margery. By letting her husband know that she desired to return, she might have shifted the responsibility on to his shoulders, and so ensured the achievement; but she was still anxious that he should not know, since she feared the violent steps that he might take to bring them together. Moreover she desired to be able to say afterwards to her parents that she went of her own free will back to Red House, and that her husband had no hand in the action.
Thus precious days passed, and while Jacob gradually regained his strength, thought upon his daughter's wedding and hoped the event might be the beginning of a slow and patient re-winning of his wife, she was in reality won. Long years seemed already to drag between Margery and her home; while in her failing health, the life with her parents grew more and more distasteful and afflicting. She was conscious of the change in her
physical circumstances—more conscious of it than her father, or mother; but she still believed that a return to Red House would restore her strength. A situation, simple in itself, was thus complicated. The man and wife wanted to come together—because each, in a solitary heart, felt that only so was life longer to be desired at all. An instinct of self-preservation called upon Margery to return and she felt that, otherwise, her fading life forces might not be much longer preserved. It was not desire for Jacob himself, but hunger for the healthy environment of home, that fortified her to get back to it. She had forgiven her cruel ignominies and now regarded them as she regarded her anæmia—as a sickness for which evil fortune had to be blamed. Jacob similarly had suffered from a dreadful sickness, and now he was cured. Thus nothing but religion stood between them to Margery's mind. She could pity Jacob in some moods, and see nothing wrong in her desire to return to him; while, in others, she still doubted, so far as he was concerned, but did not doubt for herself. Then the conviction increased that she must go back to Red House if she were ever to recover, and when she heard, through Auna and her own brother, that Jacob actually desired her to return, the last doubt vanished.
Bullstone's attitude resembled hers in intense desire; but he was ignorant of her dangerous health and postulated a gradual ordeal—an ordeal mercifully to end in her complete forgiveness and her subsequent return. Peace might yet await them; but he was now broken into a patience he had not known, a patience willing to leave the future in his wife's hands. But there stood between them and any such consummation the figure of Margery's mother, assured that her daughter's husband was lost; that he was a man who could represent nothing but danger to the community of the faithful—a man condemned to the consequences of his unequalled sin—one who, since wickedness is both contagious and infectious, must be avoided absolutely. To approach such a man or seek communion with him was to challenge a pestilence; and when, therefore, Judith had heard her child, in a mood of melting, say that a wife's place was beside her sick husband, she took alarm and girded herself to repel the danger.
Indeed, Margery became her chief care; she neglected lesser obligations and she devoted much time to planning her child's welfare. Upon the news of Bullstone's accident, she had hoped he would not recover and, for a time,
suspected that Providence had chosen this way to put Margery out of danger. But now Jacob was well again and about to return home; Avis clamoured for her delayed nuptials, and Margery held that she might, on such an occasion, be present, both in church, and afterwards, at Red House, if only for a little while.
Her mother firmly withstood the suggestion, and by her strenuous opposition convinced Jacob's wife of one thing: that only through the road of secret flight would she ever return to her husband's home. She knew now that Judith held it a choice between heaven and hell; she realised that if she returned to Jacob, her parents would regard her as eternally lost. The thought had shaken her at first, but she found, on examining it, that her attitude to religion was modified before reality. None had influenced her to this, for those whom she met were of her mother's opinion, and opportunity did not offer to learn the views of other people; but life and its present crying needs began to change her outlook. She contrasted the things she had been called to suffer and the unspeakable torments shed upon her husband out of his own weakness, with the established convention of a loving, sleepless and watchful God, who desires mercy better than sacrifice, and is all powerful to establish that happiness on earth the craving for which He implants in His creatures.
She was no longer concerned for her soul, while her personal griefs served to show her mother's convictions in a new light. Thus, as her hold on existence grew more frail, she recoiled with increased revulsion from the dogmas of the Chosen Few. Mrs. Huxam had defeated her own object, as religious mothers are apt to do, and by drowning the wounded Margery in the billows of a melancholy and merciless faith, was indirectly responsible for creating a new vision, wherein failing nature still offered Margery some measure of promise. The very escape in spirit comforted her and she was more cheerful for a time; but she did not get stronger, save mentally, and her license of mind alarmed Mrs. Huxam, who read these symptoms in her own light. She felt that her daughter's unrest and doubt were the visible sign of an inward temptation, wholly to be expected at this crucial juncture in her affairs; and while obeying the doctor in matters of food and medicine, Judith believed that the vital encounter must be fought on other ground.
She was not as yet frightened for her child's life, but only concerned for her soul. She determined, once for all, that Margery should not go to the wedding of Avis. She now tried to wrest this matter away from Jacob, and even considered whether the ceremony might be arranged and hastened, while he was in hospital; but Barlow Huxam would not support her in this. He pointed out that to take such a step, which was possible enough, seeing that Avis and young Elvin were amenable to Judith, would be unwise and likely to create a measure of sympathy with Bullstone. For the postmaster had as yet by no means bated in his bitterness; he did not desire any weakening of public sentiment against his son-in-law. That such a weakening existed already caused him some astonishment; but his attitude promised presently to respond to a stimulus that would not have touched Judith, for a measure of humanity, from which Mrs. Huxam's sterner outlook escaped, leavened Barlow's opinions.
Thus at the crucial moment it stood, and then a first step was taken. On a day in November, Jacob Bullstone came home, and Avis and Auna and Peter met his carriage at the outer gates of Red House.
All, for different reasons, were glad that he should be back again, and Auna chronicled each little incident of his return, hoping that opportunity would occur to tell her mother about it. She hid her young heart, which throbbed painfully to see her father so lame. But he told them that was a smaller matter, which would mend yet, and, at worst, not prevent him from presently riding again.
Peter did not rest until his father had been to the kennels, where Jacob was glad to be. He gave his son praise, admired two new litters of puppies and spoke with George Middleweek. George had matter for entertainment, or so it seemed to himself.
"Old Barton Gill was poking about here yesterday week," he said. "He told me he expected to find everything wrong and that he wasn't disappointed. He thought the puppies were a terrible poor lot and better in the river than out of it; and he said the kennels didn't look so smart, by a very long way, as in his time. He took a very grave view of everything, and at last he reached a point when I said that, old though he was, I should feel called to break his neck if ever I catched him here again."
"He's a ghost from the past, George," answered the master.
"Yes; and there's a few things less useful to busy men than ghosts from the past—especially weak and silly souls like Gill," answered Mr. Middleweek. "He's a ghost easily laid, however, and I don't reckon he'll be back along in a hurry. 'Tis amazing how silly the wisdom of most old men looks, even in the light of middle-aged knowledge."
"The times move so fast," explained Jacob, "and the wisdom of the fathers is the foolishness of the children. In fact there's only one high fashion of wisdom, if you come to be an old man, George; and that is to keep your mouth shut all the time."
"There's some old fools you can forgive," declared the kennel-man, "but not old fools that bleat the past. Who has got time or patience for them?"
Then, as the evening shut down, Jacob came into tea and found that Auna and Avis had arranged a feast for him.
Now it was the turn of Avis and she led the conversation to her marriage.
"I do hope you'll see your way to it pretty soon, father," she said, and he promised her that the wedding was going to be his first care.
"Pray God your mother will be well enough to come," he hoped boldly; and Auna echoed his wish, but Avis doubted.
"I'm sure she wouldn't like Bob and me to wait any more, even though she's not very well. And I don't much think she would come, even if she could," explained Jacob's daughter. "Of course there's no getting away from the past, and granny would be a good bit put about if mother was to want to come to Red House after."
"Grandfather's rather wishful for mother to be at the church, however," said Auna, "for he told me so."
"And I'm sure Avis would wish that, too, and Bob also," declared her father. He had rather dreaded home-coming, but the ordeal proved pleasanter than he expected. Two men called together during the evening and Billy Marydrew, with Adam Winter, dropped in, that they might congratulate Jacob on his recovery.
Avis and Peter went about their own affairs, but Auna sat beside her father until he bade her leave them.
"I made this here man come in with me," explained William. "He weren't coming, but I said he'd be welcome for two reasons—firstly to wish you a friendly wish, which was in him to do, and secondly to see me home, because the night be blowing up for foul and I'm so light as a leaf nowadays; and if the wind thrust me in the river, there I should certainly bide."
They shook hands and Winter spoke.
"You know how much I've felt about this. It was a very terrible thing to fall out and——"
"Don't go back to it. Don't let it trouble you any more. How is the man? Does he understand that it was a bad thing to do? Does he understand that he and I have both been out of our minds and done bad things? Or he may argue, perhaps, that he was right to take the law into his own hands. Anyway what he did to me was a great deal less than what I did to you. I know—I know, Adam. It's one of the few blessings left that time can let me talk in this stark fashion to you. Where there's such forgiveness as yours to me, there's a great foundation for friendship. Humble enough on my side. But it would be well to know if Samuel has took your line in that matter and harbours no malice, or if I must be on my guard."
"He's long since forgotten all about it. He remembers no more than my bull remembers. He'll wonder to see you lame and treat you respectful, same as he did before."
"That's good then. There's compensations for a weak mind if it carries a weak memory, Adam. And yet, without memory, we can't mourn our sins
and better our behaviour."
"That's why the beasts that perish don't get any forwarder, Jacob," explained William. "Memory be left out of them, save in small particulars. And so they just live, and their sorrow is a passing matter and their happiness not much more than a sense of comfort. And Sammy's terrible lucky in one thing, like all other lunies, that, though he pays the price of his wits in this world, he's a dead certainty for salvation in the next. You may be born without a mind, you see, but if you're a human, you can't be born without a soul; and though this world's blank for Samuel, in any high sense, his number's up for the Kingdom of Heaven, since he's so sinless as a jackdaw, for all his mischief."
"A deep subject," admitted Adam, "and I don't know as ever I looked at it like that, Billy; but comforting for certain to them that care for the soft, unfinished ones."
"Oh, yes," promised Mr. Marydrew cheerfully, "our maniacs will all be there to welcome us; and in the light that pours out of the Throne, my dears, 'tis very likely indeed we shall find that the softies were often a damn sight saner than some of us, who prided ourselves on our wits."
"That's true for certain," said Jacob. "I can confess before such as you, though to some sort of men I never shall. But I can tell you that I've been mad and am sane again—sane enough, at any rate, never to trust my sanity any more. I was a very proud man, William, but pride has left me. I shall never be proud again, nor proud of anything that belongs to me."
"You never were that," answered Winter. "In fact, where you had the right to be proud, you were not, Bullstone."
They talked together, and Auna, who had been sent away soon after their arrival, now returned and poured drink for them. Jacob felt no objection to saying things before her that he would not have said before his other children.
"It is a good thing in my life to know that you can sit in this room as a friend," he said to Adam Winter. "There's a sort of sorrow that is not all
pain; and though I shall never look upon you without sorrow, I shall always welcome the sight of you."
"I understand. And may the welcome never grow less and the sorrow dwindle," answered the other. "We've gone through a deep place; and I've lived to gather from you that you were possessed, as many good men have had the ill luck to be; and please God others, that matter a very great deal more than I do, may live to understand the same."
Thus, upon his home-coming, there fell a fitful ray of peace into the outer regions of Bullstone's mind; and, content for a brief hour to live in the present and trust this Indian summer, he took heart for a little while.
He thanked them for their visit and declared, presently, that his physical wounds had been a good thing.
"To go short on your leg is a trifle, if it helps you to go longer in your heart, and take wider views and rise up into patience," he said. "I'm the wickedest of men, and yet I have got good friends who are wishful for my betterment. And I never shall forget it—never."
"You're not a wicked man, father. Tell him he's not a wicked man, Mr. Marydrew," urged Auna.
"Nobody's very wicked, my dear," answered Billy; "and nobody's any too good. We're all much of a muchness, and good and evil be like the berries on the trees—-all stomachable to somebody. Good's bad and bad's good according to the point of view, and only through being bad, some folks reach to being good. To some nice people being good is as easy as falling off a log—same as it is to you, Auna, because you can't be any other; and to some equally nice sort of people, 'tis a lot more difficult. The point ain't so much whether you be good, as what you be good for. Some folk be so good as gold, and yet good for nought; and some are so wicked as the devil, and yet good for a lot. In fact 'tis a very wonderful world, my dear."
Auna laughed and presently the men rose to go home. Adam promised to send Samuel to see Jacob on the following day. Margery had not been named, but William alluded to her as he departed.
"There's always hope," he said. "I'll come along to-morrow and eat my dinner with you, and us'll have a tell. And don't you get too busy. You'll be a sick man yet, and your maiden here must look after you so well as she can."
Auna promised to do so, and when Avis and Peter had eaten their suppers and gone to bed, she waited on her father.
"I do all the things you do," she told him. "I lock up and put out the lamps and everything, because Avis is too busy with her wedding, and Peter don't remember little things."
She helped him to his own room presently and he found it prepared for him in every particular. Then she aided him to undress, and he bade her return, when she was ready to go to bed, and say good night. She came, in her grey flannel night-gown, and jumped in beside him for a little while.
He was very silent now and very tired. But he liked to listen to her. It seemed as though the years had rolled away and Margery, young again, was lying beside him. The very inflection of Auna's voice was hers.
And while she talked, the girl was thinking of her mother, too, for she knew what was in Jacob's mind.
"Go now," he said, for her presence became too poignant. "Good night, my dinky treasure, and God bless you."
She kissed him.
"And I hope—oh, how I hope mother will soon be here beside you, father dear."
He squeezed her hand.
"Dout the candle and go on hoping—go on hoping, my pretty bird."
Then she slipped away and the man lay awake for many hours before the circumstance of his home-coming. Its goodness was precious; but the loneliness and doubt tormented him.
CHAPTER
X FLIGHT
Margery fluctuated and on her feeblest days the desire to return home became most intense. For her own sake she longed to be back at Red House; for his sake she wanted to be with Jacob. Her emotions towards him eluded her; but when she knew definitely from Auna that his only dream on earth was to see her again beside him, pity woke a faint ghost of the old love. Red House itself drew her, for she felt that if the remainder of her life was to be spent as a sick woman, she could be a more useful one and a happier one in her home than with her parents. Though they assured her daily that their home was hers, and dwelt much on the delight of the villa residence, soon to receive them and Margery, she could win no pleasure from the thought and her weakened mind shrank more and more from the robust opinions of her mother and her father's forced cheerfulness. They were incapable of understanding all that she felt, and now indeed she lacked physical courage to attempt further explanation. In any case she would be opposed. Therefore, with plenty of leisure for thought, she matured her secret plans. They were foolish plans, for though the idea of telling Auna frankly that she longed to come home and leaving the rest to Jacob had more than once tempted her, this obvious course she feared, as being likely to create greater difficulties of ultimate reconciliation with her parents. So she gave neither Auna nor Avis any hint of the action proposed, but arranged with Jeremy, on the understanding that no word concerning his part in the plot should be whispered. That assured, with ill grace he promised to meet her on a night in November, one fortnight before the day now fixed for the wedding.
Thus Margery planned her return home and hoped that the wedding of Avis and Robert Elvin would serve its turn to distract attention and smooth affairs afterwards. In sanguine moments she even trusted time to conciliate
her parents. That her father would some day forgive her she knew, and that her mother must logically pardon in the obedience to her own faith, she hoped. For Margery fell back whole-heartedly upon the belief that she was prompted and driven home again at Heaven's command. She found much consolation and support in the belief that Providence willed her return. For her, as for many, faith was only fatality writ in a more comfortable word.
It had been arranged that at three o'clock on a certain morning, Jeremy and his trap should wait near Lydia Bridge, and that his sister should come by the pathway under forest trees, beside the river and join him there.
Margery conserved her strength for this supreme effort and, for two days before it came, lived in a trance. But she was alert enough to take more food than usual and preserve a cheerful attitude. Her only doubt centred in the extent of her physical strength, and now on the eve of her departure, as that winter day closed in under a cold and frosty sky, she wished, too late, that she had asked Jane to meet her close at hand, and pilot her through the night to Jeremy.
She knew that she could safely leave the house, for her parents always slept well and would not be awakened by any sound that she might make.
She sat with them that night until they bade her go to bed. Then her mother ministered to her, read a chapter from the Bible, while Margery drank her glass of hot milk, and so wished her good night and left her. The hour was ten o'clock and she knew that nearly five hours must pass before she would start. A little milk pudding was always left beside her, to eat in the night if she awoke. This she determined to take at two o'clock, before she began to dress. Now the details, that seemed so simple at a distance, began to loom larger and more complicated. There was, after all, so much to do before she could get clear of the house, and the subsequent walk through the wood by the river began to seem a great thing. For she, who had once loved the night, felt nervous of it now. Again and again she wished that she had asked Jane to meet her near the post-office. She even considered the possibility of changing her plans and fixing another night, before which this detail might be arranged. But Jeremy would be at Lydia Bridge by three o'clock, and if she failed him, he could not be counted upon for a second attempt.
Her mind ran forward. She would leave Jeremy at the outer gate of Red House, while she,—about four o'clock, or earlier—would go through the wood and knock at the door. There was a bell, too; but if she could rouse Jacob without wakening any other, that must be best. His room looked over the porch. If she were strong enough, she would throw small stones and waken him.
She pictured him looking out and seeing her. He would certainly know who it was by star-light and hasten to let her in. The peat fire never went out at this season, and he would bring her to it and draw it up. He would not say much. He would be like a man fearful to wake from a dream; but she would speak. He must never know who had brought her home: he would not be jealous about that, Indeed he could not fail to guess. After all it would be very like Jeremy to confess in secret—for the sake of Jacob's applause and possible reward. Her husband would take her up to her room, then, and leave her to go to sleep, while he dressed and began the day. And presently her children would come to see her, while the familiar sounds would be in her ears—the song of the river, the bleating of the goats and the barking of the dogs. Puppies would tumble into her lap again—new puppies that she had never seen; and old dogs she remembered would be there to remember her. She would be very still and rest all day; and then painful things must happen, for Avis, or Peter, must go swiftly in the morning to tell them at Brent and allay their alarm. She started out of this dream, for already she seemed lying in her own bed at home. But she was not there yet. Thinking wearied her. A clock struck midnight.
She was back again in thought at Red House presently. It seemed already hastening to meet her, instead of withdrawing far away under the stars and waiting for her to come to it. Her mind wandered over little homely things and indulged in little homely wonders. How was Jacob's linen? Auna mended for him now. And her own shards and husks—Auna had told her that nothing of them was touched. Jacob never allowed anybody to go near the great wardrobe that he had bought for her when they were married. But her clothes had curiously interested him. She doubted not that he looked at the empty rags sometimes and took care of them. He had always treasured the russet costume in which she was so nearly drowned before their marriage. She concentrated upon Jacob and wondered why he
wanted her, and what he would think if he knew that she wanted him. Another hour passed and for a little while she slept, then woke frightened lest she had slept too long.
Elsewhere a scene of unusual vivacity was taking place which bore directly upon Margery's affairs; and while she reflected and dreamed, her parents entered upon a lively argument ere they slumbered. Barlow had taken his lozenge and was about to sleep when his wife addressed him and touched a matter already much in his mind.
"I'm a long way short of comfortable about Margery," she began, and he declared the same uneasiness. That he should echo her doubt interested Judith, but on questioning him she found that his fears were not concerned with her daughter's soul. Her bodily state it was that agitated him.
"Dr. Briggs told me only to-day she was going back rather than forward. She wants a good shake-up in his opinion, and a very serious thing is this: that she's not anxious to get well seemingly. Doctor held that was a grave symptom, She's not set on building up her strength, and she doubts if she'll ever do it, unless something happens to throw her mind out of itself."
"Something will happen soon," said Mrs. Huxam. "There'll be the excitement of changing houses."
"It isn't that sort of excitement, Judy. We're too apt to forget that Margery was always a bit delicate. After the awful shock, and before she'd got over that, she was snatched away from her regular life and thrown into ours, which is quite different in every way. Quite right and necessary, but we can't realise all that meant, or all she had to go through, I expect. We only knew that she'd escaped from the evil to come; but there was another side to her home life which no doubt she's dreadfully missed and which we didn't know. In fact she's confessed it often. And now she's got anæmia, and that's dangerous in itself."
"I'm troubled about something a good bit more dangerous than anæmia," answered Judith. "The dust we're made of only holds together as
long as our Maker wants to cage our souls on earth. Then He cracks it and lets the soul out; and that happens at the moment He wills and not a moment sooner. Margery is like a swallow in September—restless, restless. You can see it in her eyes—not resigned and not interested in the villa residence, but thinking far too much of self. The devil's at her, Barlow."
"It's nature—not the devil. And you must put the body first for the minute, because the state of the soul often depends upon it. In a word I'm not at all sure if Lawyer Dawes wasn't right. He told me flat out, that if he could make it happen, he'd get Margery and her husband friends again; and he said that was more likely to improve her health, and save her life even than anything that can overtake her. He's seen a good bit of Jacob Bullstone and he assures me he's a changed man."
"And what did you say? Reproved the vain fool I should hope. 'Save her life!' Doesn't Dawes know that 'He who loses his life for My sake shall save it'? Did you tell him that? Did you remind him that the only life that matters to a Christian is the eternal life?"
"I did not," confessed Barlow, "because, in the case of Lawyer Dawes, that would have been vain conversation. And I may remind you the specialist that Dr. Briggs had down to see Margery from Plymouth said something to the same purpose. He's known for a very clever man indeed, with many good and amazing cures to his credit, and he understands his business be sure. Briggs didn't agree with him I grant, because he hates Bullstone for his crimes, and wouldn't have her go back; but Dr. Nettleship, from Plymouth, did firmly hold that if they could be brought together it might be the turning point for Margery and restore her health and peace. And, what's more, I wouldn't be so very much astonished if Margery herself was agreeable."
Mrs. Huxam sat up wide awake.
"You properly shock me," she answered, "and I'm very sorry that I've heard you utter these loose thoughts. For they show a weakness that I never guessed was so near home. And now you say she's that way inclined herself, and don't that show I'm right—that her spirit is in danger? It's too true that she's in moods sometimes, when she thinks of that man in a very
improper manner. I've surprised her in them, and we know Satan finds plenty of evil thought for idle minds. But let it be understood once for all that they are evil and open the way to deadly danger; and never let me hear you say again that it might be well for her to go back to Red House; because if I do, I'll change my lifelong feeling to you, Barlow."
"Don't say nothing you'll repent," begged Barlow, "You've taken this in far too fierce a spirit. We only want to consider all possible plans for making Margery well in body first."
"We have not to consider anything of the sort," answered Judith. "Her body matters not a brass button against her soul; and if, in her bodily weakness, the devil sees an opportunity, then 'tis for us to hinder him, not help him. You're very near as bad as old Marydrew and other people I've heard on the subject. Don't you see what becomes of your daughter's soul, if she goes back to that doomed sinner even in thought? You've astonished me a good bit by your earthy blindness to-night, for I thought you were long past any such weakness. Sometimes my heart sinks when I look at life and see, even among my nearest, such dangers opening under their feet. But you —I certainly did always count that you were safe."
Barlow in his turn was hurt.
"So did I," he said, "and with tolerable sound reason; and it's a source of great pain to me that you can doubt it. You mustn't imagine, Judy, that I'm taking any fatal attitude. I'm very well satisfied that Margery can look after her soul; surely you've taught her how to do that? And I'm also tolerably certain I can look after mine. You mustn't get into the way of thinking you're the only creature on God's earth who be out of danger. I'm talking of our daughter's body for the minute, not her soul, and if the Plymouth doctor says a certain thing—a man of great knowledge too—and you have reason to believe that Margery may have some ideas in the same direction, then I say it's well within reason, and religion also, to turn it over before you turn it down."
"And I say that you lie," answered Mrs. Huxam firmly. "As to reason, I don't know and don't want to know. I hate the word. I know where reason will bring most humans, despite their Saviour's blood poured in a river for
them. And I will speak for religion and our child's eternity and only that; and I tell you that any such horror as her going back to her old life would shut the door of Heaven against her for evermore. And that you know as well as I do; and I hope you'll call on God to forgive you for pretending to doubt it. And I hope God will forgive you, else you'll soon be in pretty sad trouble yourself."
Mr. Huxam did not immediately reply, but the adamant conviction with which Judith spoke impressed him. He did indeed suspect that from the standpoint of religion she might be right; but he excused himself.
"A father is a father," he said, "and if natural longing, to see my only daughter strong and happy again, led me to offend—well, you must make allowance for human weakness, Judy."
"A father is a father as you say, Barlow; and a Heavenly Father is a Heavenly Father; and if you're not prepared to say 'Thy will be done' at your time of life, then I can assure you that it's a very hopeless attitude. We want to make Margery's soul sure for God. We want to know that when we're safe through the Vale, our children—the souls we have been allowed to bring on earth—will follow us to our eternal home, or go in front, as in the case of our Thomas. The order of going is God's business, but the road is ours, and having the Light, what shall be said of the human parent that would let a child stray on the wrong road if he could prevent it? You're playing with everlasting fire for your only daughter—that's what you're doing to-night."
"Then we'll go to sleep," said Mr. Huxam. "I quite understand she's in Higher Hands, and I also grant the duty to the soul is higher than the duty to the body. We'll see her together to-morrow, and tackle the subject, and try to find the right road for Margery—where body and soul both will be looked after."
But his wife would not let him go to sleep. She was roused into a very vivid wakefulness and she poured a long and steady flood of dogma into Barlow's weary ears. His answers became fewer and she talked him into unconsciousness at last; but she did not sleep herself; and thus it came about that while Margery was dressing and putting on all the warm clothes that
