Abstract
Developing virtues requires attending to the affective and cognitive components of virtue. The former component implies cultivating apt emotional responses to specific situations. The cognitive part requires the (meta) virtue of phronesis. In dealing with “Phronesis in educating emotions,” this article attends to the nature of emotions and phronesis as its role in cultivating good action habits and virtuous emotional habits. It understands emotion regulation as one of the functions of phronesis. In the broader sense, phronesis includes elements other than deliberation, such as dialectics and rhetoric, which can be helpful to induce a certain suspicion or to persuade somewhat since our affectivity is susceptible to persuasion (i.e. Aristotle’s political dominion of emotions). As a topic in the intersection of moral psychology and moral philosophy, we get valuable insights into a psychologist’s work, Magda Arnold’s (1903–2002) emotion theory. Her understanding of emotion elicitation elucidates the relation between phronesis and emotions. The article focuses on one of the central elements of emotion elicitation, the appraisal. This piece can make the education of emotions for virtue development more understandable. At first glance, our initial appraisal may be hasty and inaccurate, leading to emotional reactions. However, with careful reflection, we can correct and improve upon our initial appraisal and subsequent emotions. If our initial assessment was flawed, this second, more thoughtful evaluation can be enhanced through phronesis. Due to the appraisal’s spontaneity, cultivating educated emotions requires values’ teaching, learning, and thus, appraising good things. With the development of virtues, intuitive estimates become adequate, so emotional responses are more attuned to diverse situations.
This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
A good summary of the literature about the relevance and limits of moral exemplars in moral education, taking into account the relatability and attainability of moral exemplars for motivational impact, can be found in Han and Graham (2023) Considerations for Effective Use of Moral Exemplars in Education: Based on the Self-Determination Theory and Data Syntheses. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/n6mkp. PPR: PPR667054. https://osf.io/sx92d/.
The ideas of the present and the next section are taken from Valenzuela (2024).
Arnold’s insights on intrinsic motivation and theorising about the joy of doing and making are the antecedents of contemporary ideas of ‘flow’ and ‘achievement’ in positive psychology (Csikszentmihalyi 1990). Like Csikszentmihalyi, Arnold also wrote about how the ability to create, imagine, and discover plays a critical role in fostering the pursuit of self-ideal and giving life a sense of purpose. However, Csikszentmihalyi does not refer to her work.
Arnold introduces the technical use of appraisal in her groundbreaking work Emotion and Personality. She was the first theorist to use the term in the way we understand it today, although Grinker and Spiegel first spoke about it (1945). Nevertheless, in The Human Person, Arnold describes what appraisal is without using this term, calling it ‘value judgement’ or ‘evaluation.’ According to Reisenzein (2006), Arnold could have decided to use ‘appraisal’ since it is a broader term that includes factual beliefs, underlying emotions, and evaluations (both reflective and intuitive).
According to Kappas, the knowledge and recognition of Arnold’s original view—as involving automatic appraisal processes outside of our awareness that parallel reflective processes can modify—would have pre-emptively prevented the criticisms of the cognitive appraisal view. Kappas argues that the use of the term “cognitive appraisal,” together with the more considerable emphasis subsequently placed by Lazarus on reflective processes, has led to a series of misrepresentations of appraisal theory. Consequently, even modern appraisal theories that clearly emphasise the multiple-level nature of appraisal processes, as Arnold initially did, are being rejected or ignored by some theorists because they misunderstand what they are about. Kappas concludes that categorising Arnold’s theory as cognitive is, at some level, just as misplaced. Perhaps it should instead be called the Arnoldian perspective.
It includes the afferent connection from sensory receptors to the brain stem’s reticular formation, the intralaminar and midline thalamic nuclei, and the cortex of the limbic lobe. She proposed denominating this system of relays as the estimative system because it evaluates incoming sensations. This estimate becomes progressively more accurate as the relays reach the thalamus and limbic cortex.
This example refers to Fredrickson’s husband.
This characterisation of dialectic is reminiscent of the Socratic method as demonstrated in Plato’s dialogues: witness Aristotle’s emphasis on “the ability to raise searching difficulties on both sides of a subject [that] will make us detect more easily the truth and error about the several points that arise” (Topics 101a 35–36).
Arnold’s argumentation resembles Scheler’s thought. See M. Scheler, Formalism in ethics and non-formal ethics of values, M. Frings and R. Funk (trans), Northwestern University Press 1973.
From a personality psychology perspective, Brian Little develops a similar thought. See B. Little (2007) Personal Project Pursuit. Goals, Action, and Human Flourishing. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
It is not the place here to argue in favour of exemplarism. As said above (n. 1), exemplarism has limitations highlighted within this perspective's main criticisms. The most significant criticisms of exemplarism have to do with the issue of identifying moral exemplars (Szutta 2019), the socio-cultural factors that influence agents’ perception of moral excellence (Kotsonis 2020), the power of emotions other than admiration in moral formation (Kirkpatrick 2023).
References
Aquinas (1920/2017) Summa Theologica (ST) (Fathers of the English Dominican Province, Trans./ Kevin Knight, Online Edition. Edus. Canonicus Surmont, Vicarius Generalis. Westmonasterii.
Aristotle (1995) The Complete Works of Aristotle. J. Barnes (ed), two vv., Bollingen Series, Princeton University Press.
Arnold MB (1960) Emotion and personality, vol. 1–2. Columbia University Press.
Arnold MB (1968) Feelings and emotions as dynamic factors in personality integration. In: Arnold MB (ed) The nature of emotion. Middlesex, Penguin.
Arnold MB (1970) Perennial problems in the field of emotion. In: Arnold MB (ed) Feelings and emotions: The Loyola Symposium. Academic Press, pp 169–185
Arnold MB and Gasson J (1954) The human person: An approach to an integral theory of personality. The Ronald Press.
Cornelius R (2006) Magda Arnold’s Thomistic theory of emotion, the self-ideal, and the moral dimension of appraisal. Cogn Emot 20(7):976–1000
Croce M, Silvia Vaccarezza M (2017) Educating through exemplars: alternative paths to virtue. Theory Res Educ 15(1):5–19. https://doi.org/10.1177/1477878517695903
Csikszentmihalyi M (1990) Flow: the psychology of optimal experience. Harper & Row.
Curtis T, Arnaud A, Waguespack B (2017) Advertising effect on consumer emotions, judgements, and purchase intent. Asian Jf Bus Res 7(2):57–73. https://doi.org/10.1477/ajbr.170037
Fredrickson B (2013) Love 2.0. Hudson Street Press/Penguin.
Goldie P (2000) The emotions: A philosophical exploration. Clarendon Press.
Gross J (1998) The emerging field of emotion regulation: an integrative review. Rev Gen Psychol. https://doi.org/10.1037/1089-2680.2.3.271
Haidt J (2003a) The moral emotions. In: Davidson RJ, Scherer KR, Goldsmith HH (eds) Handbook of affective sciences. Oxford University Press, Oxford, pp 852–870
Haidt J (2003b) Elevation and the positive psychology of morality. In: Keyes CLM, Haidt J (eds) Flourishing: positive psychology and the life well-lived. American Psychological Association, Washington, D.C., pp 275–289
Han H (2023) Considering the purposes of moral education with evidence in neuroscience: emphasis on habituation of virtues and cultivation of phronesis. Ethic Theory Moral Pract. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10677-023-10369-1
Han H and Graham M (2023) Considerations for Effective Use of Moral Exemplars in Education: Based on the Self-Determination Theory and Data Syntheses. doi: 10.31234/osf.io/n6mkp . PPR: PPR667054. https://osf.io/sx92d/.
Hursthouse R (2007) Virtue Theory. In: Hugh La Follette, Ethics in Practice 53, Blackwell.
Kappas A (2006) Appraisals are direct, immediate, intuitive, and unwitting…and some are reflective… Cognition and Emotion 20(7): 952–975.
Kappas A (2013) Social regulation of emotion: Messy layers. Front Psychol 4(51):1–11. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2013.00051
Kirkpatrick K (2023) Existentialism and exemplars. Educ Theory 73:762–781. https://doi.org/10.1111/edth.12600
Kotsonis A (2020) On the limitations of moral exemplarism: socio-cultural values and gender. Ethical Theory Moral Pract 23(1):223
Kristjánsson K (2018) Virtuous emotions. OUP, Oxford
Kristjánsson K (2019) Flourishing as the aim of education. A Neo-Aristotelian view. Routledge.
Kristjánsson K, Fowers B (2022) Phronesis as moral decathlon: contesting the redundancy thesis about phronesis. Philos Psychol. https://doi.org/10.1080/09515089.2022.2055537
Kristjánsson K, Fowers B (2024) Phronesis: retrieving practical wisdom in psychology, philosophy, and education. OUP, Oxford
Kristjánsson K, Fowers B, Darnell C, Pollard D (2021) Phronesis (practical wisdom) as a type of contextual integrative thinking. Rev Gen Psychol 25(4):1–19. https://doi.org/10.1177/10892680211023063
Little B (2007) Personal Project Pursuit. Goals, Action, and Human Flourishing. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Malo A (2004) Antropología de la afectividad. EUNSA, Pamplona.
Mercado JA (2020) Harmonising reason and emotions: common paths from Plato to contemporary trends in psychology. In: Bosch M (ed) Desire and human flourishing. Perspectives from positive psychology, moral education and virtue ethics. Springer, Cham, pp 89–105
De Monticelli R (2018) Sensibility, values and selfhood. For a phenomenology of the emotional life. The New Yearbook for Phenomenology and Phenomenological Philosophy 16: 195-211
Mortari L and Valbusa F (2017) The reflective thinking workshop: a tool for teacher education. Proceedings of INTED2017 Conference, pp. 6147–6152.
Mullins AP(2012) An investigation into the neural substrates of virtue to determine the key place of virtues in human moral development (Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)). University of Notre Dame Australia. https://researchonline.nd.edu.au/theses/78.
Neacsiu AD, Eberle JW, Kramer R, Wiesmann T, Linehan MM (2014) Dialectical behavior therapy skills for transdiagnostic emotion dysregulation: a pilot randomized controlled trial. Behaviour Research and Therapy 59:40–51. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.brat.2014.05.005
O’Shaughnessy J and O’Shaughnessy N (2003) The Marketing Power of Emotion. OUP.
Paglieri F (2014) Accepted by whom? On the empirical roots of Aristotle’s dialectic. Rev Int Philos 4(270):393–402. https://doi.org/10.3917/rip.270.0393
Peterson C, Seligman M (2004) Character strengths and virtues: a handbook and classification. American Psychological Association, Washington
Petrova K, Gross J (2023) Emotion regulation in self and others. In: Roskam I, Gross J, Mikolajczak M (eds) Emotion regulation and parenting. Cambridge studies in emotion and social interaction. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, pp 35–54. https://doi.org/10.1017/9781009304368.004
Railton P (2006) Morality and prospection. In: Seligman MEP, Railton P, Baumeister RF, Sripade C (eds) Homo prospectus. Oxford University Press, Oxford
Rapp C (2022) Aristotle’s Rhetoric. The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Edward N. Zalta (ed.), https://plato.stanford.edu/archives/spr2022/entries/aristotle-rhetoric/.
Reeck C, Ames D, Ochsner K (2015) The social regulation of emotion: an integrative, cross-disciplinary model. Trends Cogn Sci 20(1):47–63. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2015.09.003
Reisenzein R (2006) Arnold’s theory of emotion in a historical perspective. Cogn Emot 20(7):920–951
Rimé B (2009) Emotion elicits the social sharing of emotion: theory and empirical review. Emot Rev 1(1):60–85. https://doi.org/10.1177/1754073908097189
Salas C, Castro O, Radovic D, Gross J, Turnbull O (2018) The role of inner speech in emotion dysregulation and emotion regulation strategy use. Rev Latinoam Psicol 50(2):79–88. https://doi.org/10.14349/rlp.2018.v50.n2.1
Scheler, M (1973) Formalism in ethics and non-formal ethics of values. Frings, M, Funk, R (trans). Northwestern University Press.
Sherman N (1989) The Fabric of Character. Aristotle’s theory of virtue. Clarendon Press
Sim, M (1995) Dialectic and Definition in Aristotle’s Topics. The Society for Ancient Greek Philosophy Newsletter. 326. https://orb.binghamton.edu/sagp/326.
Spalding TL, Stedman JM, Gagné CL & Kostelecky M (2019) The human person. What Aristotle and Thomas Aquinas offer modern psychology. Springer
Szutta N (2019) Exemplarist moral theory—some pros and cons. J Moral Educ 48(1):1–11. https://doi.org/10.1080/03057240.2019.1589435
Vaccarezza, M S, Croce, M, Kristjánsson, K (2023) Phronesis (Practical Wisdom) as a Key to Moral Decision-Making: Comparing Two Models. The Jubilee Centre for Character & Virtues Insight Series, 5. https://www.jubileecentre.ac.uk/wp-content/uploads/2023/07/PhronesisPractical-Wisdom3_03.pdf
Valbusa F (2019) Riflettere sulle proprie emozioni per imparare a comprenderle: una ricerca educativa nella scuola primaria. RicercAzione 11(2):121–144. https://doi.org/10.32076/RA11207
Valenzuela P (2024) The Value of Emotions Based on Magda B. Arnold and Barbara L. Fredrickson Theories, EDUSC, Roma
Zagzebski L (2013) Moral exemplars in theory and practice. Theory Res Educ 11(2):193–206. https://doi.org/10.1177/1477878513485177
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Ethics declarations
Competing interests
Non-financial interests directly or indirectly related to the work submitted for publication.
Additional information
Publisher's Note
Springer Nature remains neutral with regard to jurisdictional claims in published maps and institutional affiliations.
Rights and permissions
Springer Nature or its licensor (e.g. a society or other partner) holds exclusive rights to this article under a publishing agreement with the author(s) or other rightsholder(s); author self-archiving of the accepted manuscript version of this article is solely governed by the terms of such publishing agreement and applicable law.
