Emotions are constitutive conditions giving acts their excellence, not just causes.
Evidence
Notably, the understanding that the emotion of fear motivates a person to act accords with the belief in certain cultural traditions that emotions are causative of action, an understanding that has been analyzed in considerable detail by some historians and anthropologists of emotion (James 1997; Lutz and White 1 986; Rosaldo 1980). What is signifi here, however, is that the emotion of fear not only propels one to act, but is also considered to be inte.. gral to action. Thus, fear is an element internal to the very structure of a pious act, and as such it is a condition for (to use J. L. Austin’s terms) the “felici.. tous” performance of the act. In other words, what this understanding draws attention to is not so much how particular emotions as modes of action con.. stitute different kinds of social structure ( Abu.. Lughod 1986; Caton 1 990; Myers 1986), but more how particular emotions are constitutive of specifi ac.. tions and are the conditions by which those actions attain their excellence. — Saba Mahmood, Politics of Piety, 1004
Categorization
- DEEPTHINKING: The claim that emotions are internal to acts — felicity conditions rather than motives — inverts the standard Western causal picture of emotion-before-action.
- XREF: The Austin ‘felicity conditions’ graft connects to speech-act theory in ” + “communication-as-culture” + ” and to virtue-as-habituation models. — connects to: Anger is a meaningful act in situation, not a hidden inner event — Jean-Paul Sartre, Being and Nothingness: An Essay on…, 904