INTRODUCTION

Some emotions are essentially social: They are triggered only by beliefs that make a reference to other people. Nobody feels envious of birds for their ability to fly; “envy occurs only between man and man.” Other emotions are contingently social, in that the beliefs that trigger them may or may not contain a reference to other people. One may be afraid of an avalanche as well as of a bully. In this chapter I discuss some essentially social emotions: shame, envy, and the cluster of emotions related to the pursuit and defense of honor.

Because my aim is to discuss emotional patterns that are related to general features of social life, I try to go beyond individual reactions. I shall not consider idiosyncratic instances of raw emotions that make newspaper headlines, as when a high-school student sues her school for naming another student covaledictorian with herself, a college student disfigures a former roommate out of envy, or a woman solicits a man to kill the mother of her daughter's chief rival for the cheerleading team, hoping that the mother's death will distract the rival from the competition. By contrast, the Jacobins who wanted to destroy the cathedral spires of Chartres and Strasbourg because their “domination over other buildings was contrary to the principles of equality,” acted within a social system with strong norms that make their behavior intelligible.