Reflexive Emotions

This book looks closely at three first-order reflexive emotions—shame, humor and humility—that are shown to be not only exclusively human, but definitive of major aspects of human selfhood, agency and normativity. A separate chapter that covers second-order emotions, shows that when negative, they display a crucial and equally exclusive aspect of human normative self-critique.

In addition to jointly delineating agency, sapience, normativity, rationality, and the ability to critically self-reflect, this book further demonstrates the inevitable role of the we in the I (to paraphrase Axel Honneth), namely, how realizing one’s full human potential necessarily requires engaging others. This book appeals to students as well as researchers and looks closely at how these three reflexive emotions bestow categorical value on otherness, rendering normative diversity not merely something to be tolerated or rationally overcome, but a rare and necessary blessing.