If one means by 'emotional infidelity' feeling attracted to another person than the one to whom is committed, or to feeling enmity or having bad thoughts towards someone towards to whom one is committed in friendship, than the phenomenon seems very possible indeed. Consider the following case, which I think is not idiosyncratic: something bad happens to a friend, and instead of sympathizing with that person--at least in one's thoughts--one takes pleasure in that friend's misfortune. (In German, this is called ' Schadenfreude '.) In taking pleasure in the misfortune of a friend, one is being emotionally unfaithful to that friendship--which, I think, in principle requires in principle that one sympathize and commiserate with the misfortunes of one's friend. The deep question, however, is why, if cases such as these are indeed correctly characterized as cases of emotional infidelity, why such emotional infidelity is as common as I think it is: one explanation, deriving from Christianity, is that human...

You raise a fascinating issue: Menand's thought experiment grabbed my attention when the article was published, and I've since discussed it with friends and family. For what it's worth, while I myself would have no hesitation in taking the pill, when I've discussed this case, I've found that most people are, disinclined to take the pill, and even find something troubling about the very idea of doing so. Sometimes they claim that feeling the pain of grief is essential to being human. To which I've responded that it's not clear to me that feelings are essential to emotions, and so while the capacity to experience grief may be part and parcel of the human condition, it's not clear that it is the pain of grief that is important; moreover, I've asked those who resist taking the pill how the pain of grief is different from the pain of a headache (which is natural for us in certain states). If one takes aspirin in the latter case, then it would seem that one should be willing to take Menand's pill. In what...

This is a deep and important question, that goes to the heart of both our understanding of emotions and of responsibility. There seem to be conflicting intuitions about this question. On the one hand, it seems natural to think that an agent is only responsible for what she does, or for what is under her control, yet emotions--often also known as passions--seem to be events that happen to us, and therefore are not under our control, and so it would seem that we are not responsible for our emotions. On the other hand, we often do hold ourselves and other responsible for their emotions: one might worry about the fact that one is happy about a friend's failure, or that one laughs at a sexist joke, and we often expect others to feel certain ways. In this respect, emotions are very different from sensations, such as pain or hunger. Although one can cause oneself to feel pain--say, by deliberately striking one's hand with a hammer--normally, pain is a natural response to damage to one's body. ...

This question points to a tension in our pre-theoretical views aboutemotions. On the one hand, they seem to be mental states with respectto which we are passive, and over which we have no control. Thisreflects the phenomenology of emotional experience. On the other hand,we sometimes expect people to have certain emotions, and criticizepeople for having certain emotions. If, as many philosophersbelieve, responsibility presupposes control, given that emotions seemto be states over which we have no control, it would seem, then, thatwe cannot be responsible for our emotions. So, on the one hand, itwould seem that we ought not to be responsible for our emotions, whileon the other hand, we do hold people responsible for their emotions. Isthere any way to resolve this tension? I think that this tensionmay be resolved by reconceiving the notion of control at issue here.Rather than locating the control necessary for responsibility indecision, it could be relocated in rationality. So instead of requiringthat...