A Tear Is an Intellectual Thing: The Meanings of Emotion Jerome Neu OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS A Tear Is an Intellectual Thing This page intentionally left blank A Tear Is an Intellectual Thing The Meanings of Emotion Jerome Neu New York Oxford Oxford University Press 2000 OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS Oxford New York Auckland Bangkok Buenos Aires Cape Town Chennai Dar es Salaam Delhi Hong Kong Istanbul Karachi Kolkata Kuala Lumpur Madrid Melbourne Mexico City Mumbai Nairobi Sao Paulo Shanghai Singapore Taipei Tokyo Toronto Copyright © 2000 by Jerome Neu First published in 2000 by Oxford University Press, Inc. 198 Madison Avenue, New York, New York 10016 www.oup.com First issued as an Oxford University Press paperback, 2002 Oxford is a registered trademark of Oxford University Press All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of Oxford University Press. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Neu, Jerome. A tear is an intellectual thing : the meanings of emotion / Jerome Neu. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-19-512337-9; 0-19-516029-0 (pbk.) 1. Emotions (Philosophy) I. Title. B105.E46N48 1 999 128' .37—dc2i 99-10364 3 5 7 9 8 6 4 2 Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The essays in this book have been written over a period of more than twenty-five years. During that time I have benefited from the support of many institutions and individuals. I wish to gratefully acknowledge fellow- ships and other material assistance provided by the Rockefeller Founda- tion, the Stanford Humanities Center, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the National Endowment for the Humanities. Preparation of the manuscript was assisted by Faculty Research Funds granted by the University of California at Santa Cruz, and by the efficient folks at the Uni- versity's Document Publishing & Editing Center. The places of original publication of the essays are indicated in the references provided at the end of this book, and permission to reprint is here gratefully acknowledged. All of the essays have been revised to some extent. "Mill's Pig" and "Jealous Afterthoughts" are new I have been sustained in a variety of ways by the people who commented on the essays while they were being written, and to them I am particularly grateful. I dedicate this book to Norman 0. Brown, who argued with me every inch of the way. This page intentionally left blank CONTENTS I. Mill's Pig: An Introduction 3 2. "A Tear Is an Intellectual Thing" 14 3. Jealous Thoughts 41 4. Jealous Afterthoughts 68 5. Odi et Arno: On Hating the Ones We Love 8i 6. Boring from Within: Endogenous versus Reactive Boredom 95 7. Pride and Identity 108 8. Plato's Homoerotic Symposium T30 9. Freud and Perversion 144 To. What Is Wrong with Incest? 166 Fantasy and Memory: The Etiological Role of Thoughts according to Freud 177 12. "Does the Professor Talk to God?": Learning from Little Hans 200 13. Levi-Strauss on Shamanism 229 14. "Getting Behind the Demons" 239 15. Life-Lies and Pipe Dreams: Self-Deception in Ibsen's The Wild Duck and O'Neill's The Iceman Cometh 262 Notes 289 References 315 Index 331 This page intentionally left blank A Tear Is an Intellectual Thing [...]... unchanging and immortal soul But the metaphysical move to unchanging substances, whether material or immaterial, to serve as the bearer of the ever-changing properties of things and people is really unnecessary The notion of substance or of the self as an unchanging substratum is ultimately based on a mistaken notion of identity: for a thing to remain the same thing despite change does not depend on an. .. particular situation and story Lafcadio Hearn has remarked that the Japanese smile is not necessarily a spontaneous expression of amusement, but a law of etiquette, elaborated and cultivated from early times It is a silent language, often seemingly inexplicable to Europeans, and it may arouse violent anger in them as a consequence The Japanese child is taught to smile as a social duty, just as he is. .. triggering another Moreover, whether the tears of animals or even of other people express any emotion or the same emotion as in us will not be a matter for simple (or even for deep) physiological observation We do not regard the tears that accompany violent laughter as tears of amusement, despite the fact that the physiological mechanism that produces them may be the same as in cases of tears of sadness After... think Is lacrimal secretion a tear only on a human face? My short answer needs elaboration Blake refers to the widow's tear and the tear of love and forgiveness 2 There are tears of sadness and tears of joy and doubtless dozens of other kinds 3 What differentiates these various kinds of tears? It is not the physiology: all tears look alike The differences lie in the thoughts that provoke them or that,... this neglects the difference between imagining an alternative and an alternative actually being available Sometimes we are in fact up against a wall and have no real choice.) So while it may be illuminating to suggest that fainting can be understood as a magical attempt to escape, Sartre is carried away by his general theory when he treats running, the expression of active fear, as also a magical attempt... So the empiricists and rationalists would argue among themselves about, for example, whether general ideas are abstract or particular (Is the idea of "dog" like a picture of a particular collie, or more like a set of muddy superimposed images of many particular dogs? Is the ideal idea of dog a mongrel mutt?) At any rate, Aristotle had a useful thought early on Recognizing the vast variety in the many... are in fact universal Ekman indicates that an effort was made to avoid data contaminated by images disseminated through movies, and the like, by finding visually isolated cultures He argues that the apparent variations reported by LaBarre and others are to be explained by variation in elicitors, or display rules ("socially dictated obligations which call for the management of facial appearance" [1851),... development and cultural history, the nature of explanation and evidence, the two faces of many emotions (including jealousy and pride), and the pervasiveness of 10 A TEAR IS AN INTELLECTUAL THING ambiguity and ambivalence But perhaps most central is the notion of moral identity, a notion that appears in various guises throughout the essays (including sometimes in terms of integrity, self-esteem, and the superego)... cry by "A TEAR IS AN INTELLECTUAL THING" 25 thinking of her pony.) Children in general quickly learn the instrumental and manipulative uses of crying Do they use a technique to make themselves cry? Sartre offers a radical answer to the question of whether crying is an action His answer is a straight yes But his answer is made especially radical by the fact that he does not single out crying as an expression...For a tear is an intellectual thing, And a sigh is the sword of an angel king, And the bitter groan of the martyr's woe Is an arrow from the Almighty's how WILLIAM BLAKE 1 MILL'S PIG An Introduction "Is it better to be Socrates dissatisfied, or a pig satisfied?" John Stuart Mill's advice on answering his question was: don't ask the pig.' He has a point It is not that pigs should be assumed to . A Tear Is an Intellectual Thing: The Meanings of Emotion Jerome Neu OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS A Tear Is an Intellectual Thing This page intentionally left blank A Tear Is an Intellectual Thing The. Iceman Cometh 262 Notes 289 References 315 Index 331 This page intentionally left blank A Tear Is an Intellectual Thing For a tear is an intellectual thing, And a sigh is the sword of an angel. and evidence, the two faces of many emotions (including jealousy and pride), and the pervasiveness of 10 A TEAR IS AN INTELLECTUAL THING ambiguity and ambivalence. But perhaps most central is