2.1 Philosophical and Psychological Views on Mood and Emotion

To get a better grasp of what philosophical mood might be, let's first look at the general concept of mood, as it is discussed in philosophy and cognitive science. In this literature, a distinction is drawn between mood and emotion. Robert Roberts (Reference Roberts2003, p. 112) argues that moods, unlike emotions, do not have clear propositional content; they are not ‘about’ something. You can be depressed or elated, without having a definite object to be depressed or elated about. Roberts argues that we have reasons for our emotions (e.g., a gift makes us grateful or joyful). On the other hand, moods tend to have causes rather than reasons, e.g., a happy tune puts us in a happy mood, but the tune doesn't give us a reason to feel a happy mood, unlike the gift. Adam Morton (Reference Morton2013, pp. 29–36) also distinguishes moods and emotions based on their content. Emotions are about things that happen or that we imagine might happen. In Morton's view, an emotion might be the fear that your house will burn down or that you might catch a deadly disease. Moods, by contrast, are not tied to concrete situations or imaginings, but are diffusely in the background. Take the mood of fearfulness, a mood that is in the vicinity of the emotion of fear. Consider a mother in the US who brings her child to school in the days after a school shooting once again made the national news. The first days, she might feel fear the same thing might happen at her child's school. Gradually, the fear ebbs away as it usually does. But the mood, which persists for much longer, does not. Lodged in her stomach remains an inchoate sense of dread, an uneasy feeling she cannot seem to shake, even as she cheerfully bids the other parents good morning.

What is the inspiration for these distinctions? Both Roberts and Morton draw on the folk concept of mood. Morton (Reference Morton2013, p. 32) distinguishes between emotion and mood ‘on intuitive grounds, without experimental evidence’. He notes that emotion researchers have not carefully distinguished mood from emotion. Until the late 1990s, psychologists indeed used ‘mood’, ‘emotion’, and ‘affect’ interchangeably. However, contemporary psychologists distinguish between mood and emotion. According to a standard distinction (see Ekkekakis, Reference Ekkekakis, Tenenbaum, Ecklundt and Kamata2012, for an overview), emotions are a complex set of interrelated sub-events. They involve a core affect (e.g., feeling sad), associated behaviors such as smiling or crying, heightened attention toward that object, and neural and endocrine changes. Moods, by contrast, are longer lasting, and are ‘about nothing specific or about everything—about the world in general’ (Frijda, Reference Frijda, Sander and Scherer2009, p. 258). They influence our global appraisal of situations and specific events, without being specifically directed at events or objects.

The distinctions between moods and emotions in philosophy and psychology remind us of how those words are used in everyday contexts. Beedie, Terry, and Lane (Reference Beedie, Terry and Lane2005) compared the usage of the word ‘mood’ of authors of psychology textbooks with non-specialist English sources, such as cooking books and novels. Both groups distinguished moods from emotions as follows: moods are longer-term, more nebulous, less intense, less focused, and less tied to specific situations than emotions. Given how well folk psychology and psychology textbooks agree on this, I take moods to be a kind of feeling that is not situationally specified, can persist over long periods, and that do not have a clear target. The distinction between moods and emotions is not absolute and admits of degrees. Many philosophers use ‘mood’ and ‘emotion’ interchangeably. To ensure some uniformity, I will treat as philosophical mood affective states that are not emotions (i.e., not clearly directed) and that are elicited in readers or listeners when they engage with philosophical works.

2.2 Nietzsche and Carnap: Two Examples of Mood in Philosophy

Here are two examples of philosophical mood in two very different philosophers: on the one hand, Friedrich Nietzsche, filled with pathos, verve, concerned with the brilliant individual in a faceless mass. On the other, lucid, clear Rudolph Carnap, worried about the ascent of the far right, concerned with working-class people and their rights. In spite of their differences, both philosophers were faced with a similar problem: what if your philosophical outlook is radically different from the mainstream, particularly the political mainstream? How do you convince your audience? Friedrich Nietzsche makes mood (Stimmung) central to his critique of the prevailing morality of his time, particularly in Daybreak (also sometimes translated as ‘Dawn’, originally Morgenröte – Gedanken über die moralischen Vorurteile, Reference Nietzsche, Clark, Leiter and Hollingsdale1881 [1997]). Rebecca Bamford (Reference Bamford, Meyer and Loeb2019) argues that mood plays a central role in Nietzsche's overarching philosophical project. Mood is not incidental to his work, but serves to ‘identify, and counter, the highly problematic and deeply entrenched authority of the morality of mores’ (Bamford, Reference Bamford2014, p. 56). In Daybreak 9, Nietzsche argues that people obey the morality of customs (or mores) out of a society-wide prevailing sense of fear. This mood of fearfulness has two bad consequences: it further entrenches the customs, and it discourages people from innovating in the moral domain.

Anticipating research on the psychology of mood (as we will see in the next section), Nietzsche argues that the mood of fearfulness stultifies our appetite for action. We need to feel in a positive mood, we need to rid ourselves of this background sense of dread, in order to do something that goes against the grain, to pull ourselves together and become truly innovative, original thinkers. For Nietzsche, joyous moods were crucial: ‘The good mood was placed on the scales as an argument and outweighed rationality’ (D 28).

Nietzsche harnesses mood as a counter-attack against the dominant dread that entrenches our customs. He notes that we have words for extreme emotions such as love, dread, compassion, and pain, but not for milder, more diffuse moods (D 115). This makes it hard to coin new words that would help us to break free of customary morality and the implicit moods it drives on. The moods Nietzsche evokes in his philosophical works serve to counter the entrenched mores of his time. We should counter the fearful mood of customary morality with a mood of ‘cheerful resolution’ (D 28), a mood that engenders within us a joyful resolve to act (Ansell-Pearson and Bamford, Reference Ansell-Pearson and Bamford2021, pp. 57–58).

Indeed, Nietzsche goes as far as to recommend deliberate mood-management: ‘“Create a mood!” – one will then require no reasons and conquer all objections!’ (D 28), i.e., we must counter mood with mood when we engage in ethical theorizing. Nietzsche's appeal to mood is primarily strategic: if philosophical works are to challenge entrenched ideas, and moods are an important part of the entrenchment, then incorporating a countervailing mood can be beneficial. However, this tactic leaves open the question of whether moods are also beneficial to help us think. I'll return to this in section 4.

Rudolph Carnap's Preface to the first edition of The Logical Structure of the World (Carnap, Reference Carnap and George1928 [2003]) shows a different mastery of philosophical mood. Carnap was a proponent of logical positivism and a member of the Vienna Circle. Its members regularly met at the University of Vienna in the 1920s to discuss fundamental questions on the nature of science, how logic could improve our thinking, the limits of reason, and what makes a statement meaningful. They were strongly committed to clarity of thought. Many of them were left-leaning and concerned with improving the lives of working-class people. During this period, Austria increasingly came in the grip of emotionally charged Nazi propaganda, populism, and antisemitism. This rhetoric had no basis in fact but was very effective in stirring people's emotions. Carnap, like other members of the Vienna Circle, wanted to counteract this propaganda, but interestingly, he did not want to do away with mood. Rather, like Nietzsche, he wanted to fight mood with mood. In his Preface, Carnap states that a ‘requirement for justification and conclusive foundation of each thesis will eliminate all speculative and poetic work from philosophy’ (p. xvii) – eliminating metaphysics from philosophy is an important element of his overarching project, which aims to engineer concepts with utmost precision and clarity (Dutilh Novaes, Reference Dutilh Novaes2020). At the same time, Carnap acknowledges that philosophers are emotional beings, and that emotions – like purely intellectual rationality – will always play a part in how we engage with philosophy:

So, in Carnap's view, the thirst for clarity is part of a distinctively philosophical mood. This mood ‘demands clarity everywhere, but […] realizes that the fabric of life can never quite be comprehended’ (Carnap, Reference Carnap and George1928 [2003], p. xviii). We can see this mood expressed in other areas of human creativity, such as music and architecture. Carnap had a strong connection with Bauhaus, a modernist architectural movement that prized functionality, rationality, order, and the use of technology to help organize life (Potochnik and Yap, Reference Potochnik and Yap2006). In a guest lecture he gave at Bauhaus Dessau (the Bauhaus school of art, design, and architecture) on 15 October 1929, he argued that philosophy of science and architecture are two manifestations of a single way of life. Logical positivists and Bauhaus architects shared the same opponents: members of the religious right, nationalists, nativists, and Nazis (Galison, Reference Galison1990). Carnap characterizes this philosophical Bauhaus mood as follows:

What is this Bauhaus mood in the Logical Structure of the World? It is not just a mood of clarity and dispassion, nor merely achieving a balance between analytic and synthetic styles of thinking. It is also, and perhaps more importantly, a mood of fellow-feeling, cooperation, and optimism about modernism and the positivist research agenda. This mood is not just dispassionate. Rather, it involves an active rejection of passion. It encourages composed coolness, lucidity, and level-headedness that helps to ground readers and prevents them from being swept away by grand and vague rhetoric, such as that of the Nazis.

Nietzsche and Carnap both hold that philosophical mood matters. They recognize that their philosophical work has a distinctive mood, and that these moods contribute to it. Both compare the mood of their philosophies with that of their intellectual opponents: the joyful resolve versus the dread and fear of custom in Nietzsche, and the clear and dispassionate internationalist mood against the opacity and wild appeal to emotions by members of the political right in Carnap. Carnap also held that his philosophical mood fits within a broader intellectual climate, which, if implemented, would ameliorate the political situation as well (Dutilh Novaes, Reference Dutilh Novaes2020). He further hints at a function of mood in our thinking: it makes us ‘pay careful attention to detail and at the same time recognizes the great lines which run through the whole’ (p. xviii). As we will see in the next section, Carnap's remarks prefigure cognitive psychological findings that indicate that mood indeed influences cognitive processing styles. Feel a different mood, and you will process information differently.

3.1 Two Hypotheses on Mood and Cognitive Processing

As we saw previously, moods are not clearly directed at objects or events. A nostalgic mood does not mean we are nostalgic for something, we just feel a vague sense of longing for we-know-not-what. Nevertheless, mood has a strong influence on our motivations and on our evaluation of situations and ideas. For example, it influences our appraisal of the difficulty of a task and our ability to succeed in it. A chore that might seem insurmountable when we are in a negative mood can look eminently feasible when we are in a positive mood (Gendolla and Brinkmann, Reference Gendolla and Brinkmann2005).

Mood has a significant influence on our evaluation of persuasive communications, a finding that is of interest to marketing specialists as well as philosophers. A happy mood tends to make participants more vulnerable to accepting weak arguments. Participants in a sad mood give lower ratings to weaker arguments than happy participants; sad people can differentiate better between stronger and weaker arguments than happy people (Bless, Bohner, Schwarz, and Strack, Reference Bless, Bohner, Schwarz and Strack1990). Negative moods tend to enhance both attention to detail and critical thinking. But positive mood also has positive aspects. For example, positive moods enhance creativity and focus, and increase cognitive flexibility (Baas, De Dreu, and Nijstad, Reference Baas, De Dreu and Nijstad2008).

How does mood influence cognitive processing styles? This is a matter of continued debate among cognitive scientists. An influential proposal (Blanchette and Richards, Reference Blanchette and Richards2010) holds that positive moods promote big-picture appraisals of a situation, and hence lead to schematic, goal-oriented, global thinking, whereas negative moods help us to focus on details, and to resolve specific problems.

Cognitive psychologists have offered two main hypotheses on how mood and evaluative attitudes relate, and why positive mood promotes schematic and global thinking, and negative mood encourages paying attention to details. The affect-as-information hypothesis states that ‘affect assigns value to whatever seems to be causing it’ (Clore and Huntsinger, Reference Clore and Huntsinger2007, p. 393). Differently put, cues from the environment influence our mood, and that mood gives us affective and valuable information about our surroundings. For example, if we are in an environment that induces a mood of fearfulness (even if we can't quite identify the specific triggers for why we should be afraid), that mood provides valuable information that we are in a dangerous situation. Applied to evaluative attitudes in philosophy and other contexts: if an argument puts us in a positive mood, we are more likely to evaluate it positively than if it puts us in a negative mood. Our current feelings guide cognitive processing, with positive feelings promoting greater reliance on accessible information. For example, an atheist scholar reads a paper that tells her that atheists are better at analytic thinking than theists. Because the paper makes her feel good about herself, she does not critically look at potential weaknesses in the experimental design of the study.

The alternative mood-as-priming hypothesis (Bower, Reference Bower1981) states that moods prime us to recall information stored in long-term memory that is relevant for the given situation. A sorrowful mood focuses us on negative memories that elicited those moods in the past, whereas a joyful mood makes us think of earlier positive occasions when we felt happy that are similar to the situation we are confronted with. Here the link with the environment and our moods is less direct than in the previous hypothesis. If, for some reason, a feature in our environment triggers a memory that evokes a mood, that mood will colour our evaluation of our current situation. For example, you sit in a restaurant eating escargots and you suddenly feel sad, without knowing why. The escargots bring to memory the last time you ate them (years ago), which was when your boyfriend texted you to break up with you.

These two hypotheses point at potential pathways through which mood can influence our evaluation of philosophical ideas. The affect-as-information hypothesis indicates that mood tends to influence our judgments directly, by serving as experiential and bodily information regarding how one feels about the object of judgment. The mood-as-priming hypothesis also points to the value of mood, but in this case the mood depends less upon the object and more upon analogous situations in the past. One could simply evoke a positive or negative evaluation of an object by inducing the relevant mood. At present, the affect-as-information hypothesis enjoys better empirical support (Clore and Huntsinger, Reference Clore and Huntsinger2007). For this reason, I use this hypothesis as the psychological theoretical background to think about the importance of mood in philosophy, though many of the claims I will make would stand with the mood-as-priming hypothesis as well.

3.2 Heidegger's Stimmungen

The affect-as-information hypothesis has a striking parallel in Martin Heidegger's work on mood (Stimmung) and its ability to shape our sense of being in the world. Lauren Freeman (Reference Freeman2014, p. 446) characterizes Heideggerian Stimmungen, or moods, as follows:

Heidegger holds that human beings are not impartial spectators who can gaze upon the situations they find themselves in from an idealized perspective. We never hold a view from nowhere, but are always situated, fully immersed in the world. Some things present themselves to us because of their practical significance, whereas others remain irrelevant and invisible. This practical significance is a holistic web of significance relations – things are not significant or insignificant to us in isolation. This web of significance depends on mood. For Heidegger, moods are like lenses through which we see the world. They are not some colourful add-on or extra, but are a part of how we are basically constituted (Freeman, Reference Freeman2014). We are always in some mood. With his account of Stimmung, Heidegger rejects the commonplace view that mood merely colours our experiences.

For Heidegger, finding ourselves in a world is a precondition for having objects of experience, and we would not find ourselves in a world without mood (Ratcliffe, Reference Ratcliffe and Wrathall2013, p. 159). Mood is an essential element of being-in-the-world, ‘It comes neither from ‘outside’ nor from ‘inside’, but arises out of Being-in-the-world, as a way of such Being’ (Heidegger, Reference Heidegger, Macquarrie and Robinson1927 [1962], 29, p. 176). Differently put, there is a dynamic interaction between an agent and her environment, and mood arises because of that interplay.

Through mood, we get attuned to our environment. This shapes our experiences, thoughts, and beliefs. In this respect, mood is more fundamental than even beliefs or desires, as moods shape what beliefs and desires we might form in a given situation. Freeman (Reference Freeman2014) observes that this embodied framework of mood is largely missing in contemporary cognitive psychology. Nevertheless, there are important ways in which Heidegger's account resonates with findings in cognitive psychology. Take the observation that our appraisals of the difficulty of a task and probability of success are influenced by mood. It's so much easier to get anything done when you're in a happy mood than when you feel a bit down. When you are depressed, tasks that are trivial for others, such as filling in a form, answering an email, or putting a letter in the mail, can become formidable. Mood is contagious: Kramer, Guillory, and Hancock (Reference Kramer, Guillory and Hancock2014) showed how affects can be transmitted through social networks such as Facebook, even in the absence of direct verbal cues and direct interaction.

The Heideggerian picture of mood also agrees with the extensive literature on mood management and on mood disorders, such as bipolar depression. In neurotypical people, mood varies throughout the day and shapes their engagement with the world. They scaffold moods using music (Krueger, Reference Krueger2014), listening to epic orchestral music, light classical music, or hip-hop as they go through their everyday tasks. Somewhat surprisingly, people sometimes deliberately seek out fictions and music with a negative mood, such as tragedies and sorrowful music even when they don't feel happy (Mar, Oatley, Djikic, and Mullin, Reference Mar, Oatley, Djikic and Mullin2011). Perhaps it is because we feel the mood of tenderness when we listen to sad music, and we find comfort and solace in that feeling (Oliver, Reference Oliver2008). However, mood disorders disrupt this mood management. In bipolar depression, for example, patients experience swings between elevated moods and depressed moods, with depression being the hallmark of the disorder. As one patient describes his periods of low mood (cited in Mitchell and Malhi, Reference Mitchell and Malhi2004, p. 531):

This mood disorder has a wide range of effects. It leads to low self-perception, inability to get simple tasks done, negative evaluation of neutral social interactions, among many others. Sometimes people who suffer from mood disorders are told by unsympathetic acquaintances to ‘just pull yourself together’. But, using Heidegger's framework, we can say that this doesn't work. Mood constitutes a way of being, it fundamentally preconditions how we experience the world.

4.1 Better Control of Background Mood

As we saw, moods can influence thinking styles (global and schematic versus attention to detail and critical), and this influences the appraisal of philosophical texts. We come to a philosophical text, like we come to anything, while we are in a particular mood. For example, you might be in an anxious mood because of many teaching and administrative tasks ahead, or in a nostalgic mood because you were just reminded of a happy school day. This baseline mood that we bring to the text will influence how we appraise it. It will make some aspects of the text more salient, and help us make certain connections. Since, as an author, you have no control over the background mood readers bring to the text, the influence of the initial moods of the readers on their initial appraisal of your text is unpredictable and variable. However, if you write a text in such a way as to instill a mood that is congruent with the aims of your paper, this can help to draw the reader's attention to relevant aspects of your argument.

The affect-as-information hypothesis helps us see why: an appropriate mood allows us to better attend to the author's intent. Moods point us to relevant aspects of the text and draw our attention to it. Philosophy texts tend to be obtuse. For example, a recent quantitative study found a higher number of hedge words (probably, possibly, etc.) in philosophy compared to other disciplines, and these words hinder comprehension (Hartley, Sotto, and Fox, Reference Hartley, Sotto and Fox2004). An appropriate mood can help the reader grasp the main lines of an argument better. Since we also pay attention to other aspects that help the reader grasp the argument, such as clarity of structure and sentence-level prose, we should pay attention to mood as well, for example, by ditching hedge words and using more evocative examples.

4.2 Giving a Sense of Why a Philosophical Position Would Matter to Us

Intellectually grasping an idea is not the same as fully grasping why it matters or why we should care. As Heidegger suggested, moods are prior to desires and beliefs. They shape which desires, beliefs, and appraisals we form in a given situation. An appropriate philosophical mood puts us in a better position to fully appreciate a philosophical position and its wider ramifications by shaping our beliefs and appraisals. This allows countercultural gadflies such as Nietzsche to counteract prevailing moods that a reader is subject to, such as the background sense of dread that stifles creativity, or an internationalist positivist such as Carnap to counteract the emotionally-charged propaganda of the Nazis.

We can see the persuasive function of mood in the method of cases in recent analytic philosophy. The method of cases involves writing vivid thought experiments that help a reader see how an abstract point can play out in different situations, thus eliciting intuitions. Why do philosophers rely on fanciful scenarios to make philosophical points, rather than laying it out straight (e.g., Norton, Reference Norton1996)? While Herman Cappelen (Reference Cappelen2012) has argued that thought experiments and their appeal to intuitions are merely a form of hedging, other authors (e.g., Nersessian, Reference Nersessian1992) argue that thought experiments can stir our imagination and help us construct mental models. If these latter authors are right, the moods thought experiments evoke is not incidental, but central to the overall argument. Take the mood evoked in Judith Jarvis Thomson's people-seeds thought experiment:

This is one of three vivid thought experiments to get us to think about the ethics of abortion. They evoke a mood of horror and disquiet which is in tune with the sense of horror one might feel at the prospect of an unplanned, perhaps unwanted, pregnancy. These weird fictions help to set the mood, and the mood helps the reader to grasp the argument. Crucially, none of the arguments require the reader to have the biological characteristics to become pregnant. Any reader can appreciate the dark, uncanny mood of these pieces. This helps to scaffold the reader's mood, and in this way, shapes his attunement to the paper he's reading, and through this, his appreciation of Thomson's argument in favor of abortion. Paying attention to mood and making mood consonant with the point one makes thus increases the effectiveness of the way we communicate philosophical ideas.

4.3 Mood and Philosophical Self-Transformation

Think about works of fiction you have read that have transformed how you think, that have deeply influenced you and resonate with you long after you put them down. Such works are transformative, to use L.A. Paul's (Reference Paul2014) terminology. Reading them is a transformative experience: they change both who we are and what we know. How does this transformation happen? A large literature indicates that narratives can radically change their readers’ outlook on life. For example, nineteenth-century novels by authors such as Charles Dickens and Harriet Beecher Stowe were able to help overcome stubborn empathic bias against people from different social classes and racial groups. They have helped to overcome prejudice and effect societal change (Harrison, Reference Harrison2011). Can we discern whether mood played a role in this? Experimental studies have attempted to tease out the importance of mood (as evoked by the quality of writing, the effectiveness of setting, the atmosphere of the text) versus the pure effect of the plot itself in such personal transformative situations. In one study, participants read either Chekhov's short story The Lady with the Toy Dog or a control text with similar plot, length, and complexity, but without the artistic qualities of the original story (Djikic, Oatley, Zoeterman, and Peterson, Reference Djikic, Oatley, Zoeterman and Peterson2009). Participants who read Chekhov's original short story experienced greater changes in personality (as assessed by a ‘Big Five’ questionnaire before and after the study). Moreover, they reported feeling more moved than control participants.

In a similar vein, mood in philosophy can help us to achieve self-transformation. But for that, we need to have a philosophical practice that allows us to shape the moods of our readers. The remarks about professional philosophy that Arthur Danto made in his presidential address to the Eastern APA in 1984 still ring true today. Philosophy, he pointed out, has become homogenized and standardized in academic papers and monographs, at the expense of a plenitude of genres that all come with their own, distinctive moods. We used to have dialogues, genealogies, pensées, ramblings, rants, letters, essays, autobiographies, aphorisms, plays. Now, most we have is 8,000-word papers and 80,000-word monographs. (Indeed, I am aware of the irony of writing this within the limits of an 8,000-word paper.) The peer review process, meant to make the evaluation of philosophy less prone to bias, also dampens our writing, turning it into cookie-cutter philosophy, devoid of mood and personality. As Danto complained,

Yet, as Danto goes on to point out, this author-effacing vision of philosophy is an illusion, because it discounts the fact that philosophy texts are being read. Reading is not a passive process of absorption; we're not sponges soaking in philosophical knowledge. Rather, we actively think along with the author. As we think and read along with a work such as Descartes’ Meditations, we identify not with the protagonist of a fiction that we are in the thralls of an evil demon, but with the author who carefully devised this thought experiment. Through this identification, we can become transformed in our philosophical outlook.

As Richard Pettigrew (Reference Pettigrew2020) points out, when we choose to transform ourselves, we will seek out a social environment that is conducive to this change. Although we do not meet the authors of philosophical texts that transform us in the flesh (at least, not in the moment of reading), we can be transformed by identifying with them through their writing. Mood can facilitate this process of identification, and thus deepen our understanding of a philosophical work. Pettigrew provides some examples of how self-transformation works in typical cases where we consort with people we wish to emulate. Take, for example, the case study of Giang, a man who values seriousness but who would like some levity and light-heartedness in his life. To become more frivolous, he hangs out more with his friend Gail, whom he feels strikes the right balance (Pettigrew, Reference Pettigrew2020, p. 5). This is achieved in part through social contagion of moods: the playful mood of Gail can help Giang become more attentive to fun and frivolous situations in his life. In a similar vein, imagine a philosopher who, for many years, has deepened her expertise in analytic philosophy, but who would now want to work more in continental philosophy. She might do well to seek out continental works that aid her self-transformation, and that, through their specific moods, get her more into the mindset of continental philosophy in the specialization she is interested in (e.g., phenomenology) and less in the analytic tradition she usually works in (e.g., philosophy of mind). This shows how mood-management in philosophical texts is a bidirectional process. The author can frame the work's mood such that the reader becomes more receptive to her arguments. The reader can deliberately seek out works with a particular mood to facilitate her self-transformation.

My remarks are tentative and speculative. Future experimental philosophical studies may allow us to see if mood indeed aids personal transformation. I predict that a text by Nietzsche or Zhuangzi has a greater transformative effect upon the reader than a control text with similar philosophical content, length, and complexity that is devoid of mood. Philosophical mood helps to countervail existing moods and tendencies that a reader might be subject to. The joyous and irreverent mood of Nietzsche's Daybreak and other works counters the mood of fearfulness and dread invoked by custom, and makes us braver, hence better able to take his radical ideas serious, rather than dismiss them out of hand. Zhuangzi seeks to free his readers from the earnestness of Confucianism. His playful and cheeky scenarios, such as the expert butcher who cuts up an ox in front of an impressed king, help readers to free themselves from the rigid demands of living up to one's social role. The mood that Nietzsche and Zhuangzi evoke in their work frees the imagination from the grip of customary morality and makes freer thought possible. This helps their readers become different people who walk through life with a lighter step (Moeller and D'Ambrosio, Reference Moeller and D'Ambrosio2017).