Introduction

According to Nussbaum's account, emotions pose three problems. Firstly, insofar as they involve acknowledgement of neediness and lack of self-sufficiency, they reveal us as vulnerable to events that we do not control; and one might hold that including a large measure of noncontrol in one's conception of a good life compromises too deeply the dignity of one's own agency. Secondly, emotions focus on our goals and they represent the world from the point of view of those goals and projects, rather than from a strictly impartial viewpoint. Emotions thus seem to be partial or unbalanced and one might suppose that we could do better with the guidance of more detached forms of reasoning. We need to attend to this issue, since we do want to provide a basis for respect for the dignity of agency and for concern about human need. Thirdly, emotions seem to be characterised by ambivalence towards their objects. There lurks a morally subversive combination of love and resentment, which springs directly from the thought that we need others to survive and flourish, but do not at all control their movements. This notion may give us some reason not to trust the emotions in the moral life, but rather, the more impersonal guidance of rules of duty. Nussbaum thus believes that, at this point, the role of the emotions in the good ethical life remains unclear. She, therefore, sets out to discuss two emotions that she regards as pertinent in crafting a reply, namely, compassion and love. Nussbaum's definition of compassion as ‘an emotion that has often been relied on to hook our imagination to the good of others and to make them the object of our intense care’ has specific reference to the main thrust of this book, namely, that in order to sustain the transformation of the South African society, individual citizens need to transform at a profound level and become truly compassionate citizens. This, I believe, is education’s primary task.

Emotions and ethical norms

The emotions the child developed in infancy will affect its actions in the world. We need to note that the child's dependency can bring about a paralysing shame and destructive resentment, which can jeopardise future ethical development and distort perceptions of other objects.