Emotions, I shall argue, involve judgements about important things, judgements in which, appraising an external object as salient for our own wellbeing, we acknowledge our own neediness and incompleteness before parts of the world that we do not fully control.

Seeing the emotions as forms of evaluative thought shows us that the question of their role in a good human life is part and parcel of a general inquiry into the good human life.

Introduction

In the previous chapter I argued that social transformation in South Africa requires modifications to the emotion objects of South African citizens. Individual, as well as collective anthologies need to change to fit the transformed nature of the new society. Yet, according to the neo-Stoic theory of emotions, an object does not constitute the emotion all by itself. Since the object is external, a link to the self is required. This connection between the object and the self is the particular thought or belief the self has about the object. The thought serves as a connecting cable communicating particularities regarding the object to the self. Without this cognitive action (the thought), there will be no emotion. Together with the object, the particular thought determines the identity of the emotion.

This thought is also in the form of a belief or a judgement, assenting instinctively or involuntarily to an appearance of the object. The thought serves to assess the value of the object in relation to the self. The process of assent itself involves two phases. First, there is the mere awareness of the appearance of the object, and then follows the second phase during which the appearance of the object can be accepted, repudiated or ignored. Should this thought assess that the object is insignificant or irrelevant, the object will be discarded, with no subsequent emotion. However, should the thought recognise the object as significant to the self, it will make a particular judgement that will relate the self to the object in a very specific way. In this sense, the thought can also be seen as a judgement or a belief.

In this chapter, ‘‘thought’, ‘judgement’ and ‘belief’ are used interchangeably. I examine the implications of this constitutive component of an emotion with regard to deep transformation in South Africa. I have argued that dramatic social transformation implies radical change to objects.