Dr Hetta Howes is a Lecturer in English at City University. After studying for her BA and MPhil at the University of Cambridge, she joined Queen Mary in 2012 to begin her doctoral thesis on the role of water as a literary … Continue reading
This week is #BadFeelings week on the History of Emotions Blog. We’ll be publishing a series of guest posts arising from a fascinating recent conference where a group of philosophers got to grips with the nature and significance of a range … Continue reading
This is a guest post by Merrilees Roberts and the second in this week’s ‘Romantic Voices’ series. Merrilees is a second year PhD Student in English at Queen Mary. Her thesis explores ‘Reticence in the Poetry of Percy Shelley’ and … Continue reading
Paul Strohm was the speaker at our regular lunchtime seminar today and generously agreed to write up a version of his talk as a blog post too, ranging from St Augustine to Albert Camus, via Calvin, Dostoyevsky and Freud. Paul … Continue reading
When did you last feel shame? Today? Yesterday? Last week? Last year? In my case, I reckon the answer is 1983. Now, there may be many reasons why I have felt no shame for the last twenty-nine years. It could … Continue reading
In our fourth post in Shame Week, Dr Katherine Angel of Warwick University’s Centre for the History of Medicine considers Steve McQueen’s new film, Shame. She argues that McQueen’s recent interviews characterising the work as ‘a film about sex addiction’ … Continue reading
Rebecca Kingston is Associate Professor of political science at the University of Toronto, and the editor of Bringing the Passions Back In: The Emotions in Political Philosophy (2008). She recently visited the Centre to give one of our lunch-time seminars, … Continue reading
As part of #shameweek, I want to sketch a theory of shame’s crucial place in liberalism and in critiques of liberalism. Secular liberalism, which was born in Athens in the fifth century BC, replaced the gods of Olympus with the … Continue reading
An intriguing new book about the philosophy of the emotions has just been published by Oxford University Press. It is not only a study of shame, but also a spirited defence of that emotion, co-authored by three philosophers: Julien Deonna, Raffaele Rodogno, … Continue reading
Which emotion links some people’s attitudes to the banking bonuses, journalists hacking the voicemail of Milly Dowler’s parents, our reaction to eating bitter lemons, the smell of Hydrogen Sulphate, and the Holocaust? The answer is disgust. Disgust is a powerful … Continue reading