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Emotion Review
DOI: 10.1177/1754073909103597
2009; 1; 281 Emotion Review
Robert C. Roberts
Emotional Consciousness and Personal Relationships
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Emotional Consciousness and Personal Relationships
Robert C. Roberts
Department of Philosophy, Baylor University, USA
Abstract
Three kinds of emotional consciousness are distinguished in this article: feeling awareness, intellectual awareness, and bare aware-
ness. All are important to three moral properties that emotions may have: epistemic, practical, and relational. The bulk of this
article is devoted to the third dimension of moral value, that emotions are constitutive of personal relationships such as friendship,
enmity, good and bad parenthood, and collegiality. The conception of emotions as concern-based construals (Roberts, 2003) is put
to work to explain how felt and intellectually conscious emotions are constitutive of the qualities of such relationships. The
relational value of emotions interacts with their epistemic and practical values.
Keywords
consciousness, emotions, envy, personal relationships
Emotion Review
Vol. 1, No. 3 (July 2009) 281288

2009 SAGE Publications and

The International Society
for Research on Emotion
ISSN 1754-0739
DOI: 10.1177/1754073909103597
http://emr.sagepub.com
Emotions are modes of consciousness that bear, in various ways,
on the moral life. I begin by distinguishing three kinds of con-
sciousness, all relevant to the moral life as broadly conceived.
Then I briefly apply this distinction to two ways emotional con-
sciousness bears on the moral life, the epistemic and the practi-
cal. After that, I illustrate and explore at somewhat greater length
a third way, the relational: the way emotions contribute to the
constitution of personal relationships between persons.
Three Kinds of Emotional Consciousness
Let us begin with three ways that emotions can be states of
consciousness, proceeding from the strongest way to weaker
ones. First, emotions can be felt. Here the subject is immedi-
ately (perceptually) aware of being in an emotional state as a
particular emotional state. Notice that perception of x as such
must satisfy two conditions, the immediate presentation condi-
tion and the recognition condition. Thus, to perceive a beer
bottle visually, Paul must have a visual impression of a beer
bottle (such as he will have if he has good vision and looks at
the bottle in adequate light). But in addition, he must be able to
recognize beer bottles. If Paul is an aborigine from Borioboola-
Gha, he might have the visual impression without the capacity
to recognize it, in which case he would not in the fullest sense
perceive a beer bottle, despite having a visual impression like
that of someone who could perceive it. He will see the beer bot-
tle, but not as a beer bottle. In an extreme case of this kind of
consciousness, if Paul feels envious of Peter for the abundance
of Peters academic invitations, not only is he envious of Peter
for that reason, but he is immediately aware of being envious of
Peter for that particular reason. In less paradigmatic cases, Paul
might feel envious of Peter without knowing exactly why, but to
do so he has to have some concept of envy as an emotion type,
and this will involve his ability, at least implicit, to identify
some of the marks of envy in his own emotional state (just as
his ability to see the beer bottle as such requires him to be able
to identify some of the marks of a beer bottle). In this kind of
emotional consciousness, Paul perceives his own emotion not
inferentially, but directly. The emotion appears to him in feel-
ing. Let us call this kind of consciousness feeling awareness.
Second, Paul may be conscious of being envious, but not
immediately. Perhaps he is aware that he is envious of Peter
because he notices that he feels an urge to diminish Peter and
that he feels repugnance for Peter, especially when Peters
excellences are saliently in view, and knows that such urges and
discomforts are symptoms of envy. So he infers that he is envi-
ous. Or perhaps his therapist tells him he is suffering from envy,
and he trusts this expert testimony. Call such consciousness of
being envious intellectual. It contrasts with the first type,
because Peter is aware that he is envious, but without feeling
Author note: Thank you to bo Akademie University in Turku, Finland, where David Cockburn, Lars Hertzberg and Robert Solomon gave helpful reactions to an earlier draft of
this paper, and to Nico Frijda and Peter Goldie for Emotion Review for comments and questions that improved the paper.
Corresponding author: Robert C. Roberts, Baylor University, Department of Philosophy, Waco, Texas 76798, USA. Email: Robert_Roberts@Baylor.edu
by Andreina Fagndez on February 18, 2010 http://emr.sagepub.com Downloaded from
282 Emotion Review Vol. 1 No. 3
envious. Notice that in this kind of emotional consciousness,
the subject may be immediately (perceptually) aware of some-
thing, and this awareness may be a feeling, without his feeling
envy as such. Paul, for example, feels the urge to put Peter
down, and feels uncomfortable when Peter is being praised.
One might be inclined to say that in feeling this urge and this
discomfort, Paul is really feeling envy; but the point is that he
is not feeling it as envy. He is feeling the symptoms as symp-
toms of envy, and then inferring the envy. Call such conscious-
ness intellectual awareness.
Both of the first two kinds of emotional consciousness are
consciousness of being conscious in a certain way, so they have
a reflexive structure. The first is immediate consciousness of
being conscious in the way characteristic of some emotion; the
second is intellectual (say, inferential or testimonial) con-
sciousness of being conscious in the way characteristic of some
emotion. Reflexive consciousness is not quite the same as reflec-
tive consciousness (Lambie, 2009), which requires explicit
reflection (thinking about). Feeling awareness is always reflex-
ive, but only sometimes the result of reflection. That the first two
kinds of consciousness have a reflexive structure becomes clearer
when we consider a third kind of emotional consciousness, the
kind that the first two kinds are consciousness of.
The third kind of emotional consciousness is not conscious-
ness of being envious, but a consciousness of ones situation in
the terms characteristic of envy. This kind of consciousness is
necessary if either of the first two kinds of consciousness is
veridicalthat is, if what one is conscious of is a real emo-
tional state that one is in. For analysis of false feelings, see
Roberts (2003, chap. 4). If Paul is envious without being con-
scious in either of the first two senses, he must still be reading
Peter as his rival and thus wanting to see him diminished. If he
isnt conscious of the situation in this way, then he simply isnt
envious. This is how it comes that quite unconscious emo-
tions are states of consciousness. We might call this functional
access consciousness, since Paul accesses the situation func-
tionally (exhibiting symptoms of envy that are to be explained
by reference to how he sees the situation), even though without
feeling envious or otherwise being aware that he is envious. The
other two kinds of consciousness have been called phenome-
nal, because in one way or another (immediately or mediately)
the subject accesses not just the object, but his own mental state.
For the purpose of this paper, I will call functional access con-
sciousness bare awareness.
The passage from Tolstoys Anna Karenina in Lambie
(2009) is an especially pure example of bare emotional aware-
ness in the absence of the other two kinds. When Tolstoy (1877/
2000) comments that Levin had lived unconsciously all that
night and morning, he does not mean that Levin was uncon-
scious of anything (as if he were in a coma), but rather that he
was unconscious of the joy that was dominating his conscious-
ness (of his environment). In ordinary speech we might, admit-
tedly, say that Levin felt joy, and we would mean that he felt
(that is, was emotionally conscious) toward the world in certain
ways so well described by Tolstoy, yet without feeling himself
as in a state of joy, or even intellectually attending to that fact.
Thus one might say that he felt joy without feeling joyous. It
seems to me that cases like this are the ones that best fit Peter
Goldies description of emotions as feeling towards (Goldie,
2000), and I think this example nicely shows that feeling towards
is not the same as feeling an emotion. Levin does not feel his joy,
despite feeling towards the world in the ways characteristic of
joy. Goldie is certainly right (Goldie, 2009) that feeling an emo-
tion is not identical with feeling the bodily sensations that often
accompany emotions; after all, feeling an emotion is feeling an
emotion, and no bodily sensation is in itself an emotion.
When the subject of an emotion is completely unconscious
of being in the emotional state, he is analogous to a victim of
blind sight, the condition of persons with certain brain lesions
that deprive them entirely of phenomenal (subjectively experi-
enced) visual impressions, while still allowing them to perform
certain tasks that depend on the reception of visual data. As in
unconsciousness of emotion, in blind sight too the evidence for
the visual receptivity is behavioral. The disanalogy with blind
sight is that Paul (if hes normal) might well be brought to note
that he did feel those urges and discomforts characteristic of
envy (he was at least peripherally aware of them, and so they
can be brought to his attention), whereas the victim of blind
sight presumably has no phenomenal access at all to the visual
data on which his performances depend.
For the purposes of this article, then, let us distinguish three
kinds of emotional consciousness, calling them feeling aware-
ness, intellectual awareness, and bare awareness (which, unlike
the first two kinds, is not consciousness of emotion, but emo-
tional consciousness of ones situation).
Normal people are not only aware (more or less accurately)
of their own emotions; they are also aware (more or less accu-
rately) of one anothers, and this awareness itself can be either
felt or intellectual. People are not all equally good at reading
either their own emotions or other peoples (Marcel, 2003).
Autism is an obvious disability in reading others emotions and
ones own (Sacks, 1996). But self-knowledge and sensitivity to
others depend not only on normal neurology, but also on moral
development, as moral development depends on them. One of
the dimensions of maturity is accuracy in the reading of ones
own and others emotions. This paper is about the constituting
function that consciousness of ones own and anothers emo-
tions has in personal relationships. It is one of the moral dimen-
sions of emotions. I will now briefly mention and illustrate two
others, both to put the topic of this paper in a somewhat broader
perspective and to supply some of the explanation of the impor-
tance of emotions in interpersonal relationships.
Epistemic and Practical Moral Dimensions
An extremely important moral dimension of emotions is the
epistemic. Emotions contribute a kind of immediate access to
moral knowledge that can be had in no other way. Consider two
white persons watching a television documentary on the history
of the civil rights movement in the latter half of the 20th cen-
tury in the United States. The video shows the horrors experi-
enced by blacks in Mississippi and Alabama in the 1950s and
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Roberts Emotional Consciousness and Personal Relationships 283
1960s, but also documents the real progress that has been made
in some parts of the black community over the last six decades.
One of the watchers tracks the narrative with the following
emotions: he responds to the clips of church bombings, mourn-
ing of the victims, and fire-hosing of the crowds by feeling such
uncomfortable emotions as guilt, compassion, and indignation;
and he tracks with pleasant emotions of hope, joy, and gratitude
the later clips of prosperous middle class black families enjoy-
ing family fun. The other watcher is amused by the sight of the
protesters being scattered pell-mell by the powerful streams of
water turned on them but feels nothing much in response to the
later scenes of family happiness. The emotions of the first
watcher might well be symptoms of virtues, two in particular: a
sense of justice, and compassion for fellow human beings who
suffer. His emotions are not just feelings added onto morally
correct thoughts about the injustice and suffering, and the jus-
tice and wellbeing that by turns are presented on his TV screen,
but a kind of perception or immediate impression of the moral
values involved, a way of tasting the evil of injustice and suffer-
ing, and the goodness of justice and wellbeing.
In other writing (Roberts & Wood, 2007, chap. 2), a colleague
and I have identified acquaintance as one of three major aspects
of knowledge. Acquaintance is direct experiential awareness of
some truth. The emotions of our more mature watcher illustrate a
moral kind of acquaintance. He does not just know the values
involved in the scenes, but experiences them. By contrast, the
watcher who is amused by the fire hosing and indifferent to the
scenes of family happiness is missing something in the way of
moral knowledge. There is a truth about these scenessomething
of a moral-evaluative sort, namely that terrible injustice was
donethat he is not getting. He may very well be able to make
the correct judgment about the value involved in the various
cases: if asked whether the scenes from Mississippi are scenes of
injustice perpetrated against the black population, he may be able
to give the right answer, and muster the proper justificatory con-
siderations (evidence). Thus he may have justified true belief.
But still, he is missing something epistemic that the person with
the correct emotional responses grasps. The epistemic value of an
emotion depends on what DArms and Jacobson call fit
(DArms & Jacobson, 2000) and what Zagzebski (2004, chap. 2)
calls the emotions intrinsic value. Fit is the relation to reality
that we would call truth if we were talking about beliefs.
Indignation against the perpetrators of injustice fits their action;
it is a perception of the moral truth that their action is unjust.
Acquaintance will not be worth much if what the impression
presents is an illusion.
I constructed the illustration using the word feeling.
Applying the distinctions with which we began, it is possible
that the first watcher might experience guilt about the abuse of
the black protestors without feeling the guilt. Perhaps he
represses it because he doesnt quite want to admit that he or his
ancestors were so vile. But it seems important for the advantage
of epistemic acquaintance that the observer feel the penitence
about the abuse, because without the direct, perceptual con-
sciousness that the emotion provides, the distinctive epistemic
advantage is lost (see Zagzebski, 2004, p. 61). I tried to convey
this advantage with the word tastes. Just as a kind of knowl-
edge would be lost from the aesthetic experience of tasting a
fine wine if one made all the right functional discriminations,
and was even aware, intellectually, that they obtained, but was
not directly aware of the taste, so a dimension of moral knowl-
edge would be missing if the observers anger were not felt.
Admittedly, intellectual awareness is epistemically better than
bare awareness, even if it is not ideal in this case.
Emotions can also have moral value by constituting the
moral value of actions. I am walking down the sidewalk beside
a companion, and suddenly I shove him hard into the street
where he sprawls between two parked cars. Was my action mor-
ally good or bad? Well, we cant tell until we know more about
it. Lets tell a couple of stories, to show how an emotion may
make the difference. First story: as we were walking along, my
companion said something that reminded me of an old offense,
and suddenly anger welled up in me and I shoved him into the
street out of anger. So my shove was an act of vengeance. If we
think I should have forgiven him by now, we will be inclined to
say that my act was morally bad. And its morally bad because
it came from inappropriate anger. Second story: out of the cor-
ner of my eye, I thought I saw a piece of crockery falling from
a window high above the street, and, out of love for my com-
panion and fear that he would be injured by it, I shoved him into
the street. Here the very same action is morally excellent (even
if I was wrong about the falling crockery and my companion
suffered a few bruises because of my ill-advised kindness), and
it is morally excellent because of the compassion in which it
originated. Thus, the second way that emotions can be morally
good or bad is by constituting good or bad actions.
What shall we say about consciousness here? Clearly the
agents consciousness, in the sense of bare awareness, is what
makes the basic or structural difference between the cases: he
perceives the situation in two very different ways, even though
both lead to the same behavior. Would it make any moral differ-
ence if I had only bare awareness, or only intellectual aware-
ness, of the motivating emotions? I think so, and for a reason
similar to that in the epistemic case. In the epistemic case, the
contribution of feeling awareness makes a difference in what
the subject knows. In the present case, the difference is in the
character of the motivationnot in what we might call its struc-
ture, but in its ownership. In virtue of feeling awareness, the
motivation belongs more intimately to the agent than it does in
either intellectual or bare awareness without feeling awareness.
The person who feels his emotion is more in touch with it, more
present to it. The question of the agency of an action is about its
origin or cause. To what (or whom) shall we causally attribute
it? Since knowledge is one of the ways an agent is connected to
(made responsible for) his action (Aristotle, 1934, 3.1, espe-
cially pp. 123127), I think we can see that the three grades of
awareness that I have distinguished fall on one of the dimen-
sions of agent attributability. People are less responsible for
actions of which they are less conscious. Thus if the agents
emotion determines the nature of his action, then the closer
the agent is, as an agent, to his emotion, the more agency he has
in the action. For example, as taking revenge on his friend, one
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284 Emotion Review Vol. 1 No. 3
who feels the emotion as he acts is more involved in taking
revenge than the person who is merely intellectually aware that
his action is motivated by vengeance, and the latter is more
involved in taking revenge than the person who is neither intel-
lectually aware nor aware by feeling that he is taking revenge.
We turn now to a third moral dimension of emotionstheir
role in constituting good and bad personal relationships. As we
will see, this dimension exploits the other two moral dimen-
sions that we have briefly considered.
Relationships and Emotions
Gareth Matthews offers the following example, which he says
is puzzling on the assumption that emotions are an invisible
inner motion:
Suppose my sister has foregone a chance to hear a concert so that I
could hear it. Suppose . . . it is important to her that I be at least mini-
mally grateful to her for what she has done. What exactly is . . . impor-
tant to her? That I have a certain feeling, a certain mental datum? And
how can that be seriously important to her? Or is what is important to
her that I act toward her in a grateful way? But acting toward her in a
grateful way may not please her at all, may even upset or annoy her, if
she discovers that no feeling of gratitude accompanies my actions. So
we are back to the feeling of gratitude. And how can it be important to
her that I have a certain feeling? (Matthews, 1980, p. 345)
Matthews goes on to say that to explain the importance of this
emotion in this context, we must get beyond thinking of it as a
mere inner motion and notice that it involves ascriptions,
evaluations, and motivations of various sorts: gratitude carries
with it the recognition of what one takes to be a benefaction and
a disposition to look favorably on ones putative benefactor
(Matthews, 1980).
To put the explanation in terms of my account of emotions
(Roberts, 2003, chap. 2), the importance that the one persons
emotion has for the other is a function of how the one person is
perceiving the situation, including both himself and the other,
with a certain kind of concern. In wanting Matthews to be grate-
ful to her, his sister wants him to construe her as his benefactor
in this particular matter and so to see her and what she has done
for him as goodand not merely to construe her and it in these
terms, but to do so in a heartfelt (concerned) way. An action
could issue from the emotion, but Matthews points out that the
action is desired by the other person only if it is an expression
of the emotion; his merely going through the motions of say-
ing thank you is not adequate, and may even be offensive.
Furthermore, it is often not necessary to perform the action at
all, if the other person knows how one feels. The emotion might
be expressed in an inflection of voice or a look; or the other
might be satisfied that it is there just by knowing Matthews. In
such cases of personal interaction, the really crucial thing seems
to be the emotion itself and the consciousness of it on the part
of both parties. The action often functions as a token or expres-
sion of the felt emotion.
The relational character of the emotion is indicated by the
relations that are identified in the sentence in which we describe
his emotion, especially by the prepositions. We say Matthews is
grateful to his sister for giving up her concert seat for him, and
because he appreciates her for what she did, he desires to make
some return to her for the gift. His emotion is about her as the
agent with certain definite attitudes and about the gift she has
given to him. It is a concerned acknowledgment of the relations
among these three things: himself (his indebtedness), his sister
(her benevolence), and her gift (something good). She responds
to his gratitude by acknowledging his acknowledgment and his
desire. She is gratified by his gratitude. His gratitude fulfils her
concern that he be gratified by what she has given him and that
he acknowledge her as his benefactor. And he may in turn be
gratified that she is gratified by his gratitude. This brothersister
relationship seems to be going on swimmingly.
The relationship-constituting emotion on Matthewss side is
emotionally acknowledged by his sister, completing the rela-
tionship through communication of emotion. Some authors
stress the communicative function of emotions in morality (see
Sherman, 1997, pp. 4042, 152153), and this might be taken
as stressing the importance of felt awareness, or at least intel-
lectual awareness, on the part of both parties to the relationship.
No doubt felt awareness of the relationship-making emotion in
both parties is required for the fullest moral relation between
persons, in both cases because of the epistemic and the agential
ownership functions of felt awareness. But I think some exam-
ples show that the communicative function is subordinate to the
relational one: the substance of the relationship is in the emo-
tions, and the communication between the persons is typically,
but not always, required for the emotion to be deployed in this
substantive role. I turn now to a couple of cases in which these
features are absent or compromised.
The old Prince Bolkonski lies paralyzed and on the verge of
death for three weeks, during which time his daughter Princess
Maria begins to dream of the freedom that will be hers when he is
gone. When she looks in on him she finds herself, to her horror,
hoping to see signs of decline (Tolstoy, 1869/2007, Book 3, part 2,
chap. 8). She is horrified at her hope, not because it is inaccu-
rate (her father has been beastly to her, despite an underlying
love for her of which she is aware, and his continued existence
does restrict her freedom, and her freedom would be a good
thing for hershe later finds happiness in marriage), nor
because of any action that it might move her to perform (she is
not at all inclined, for example, to do something to hasten his
death). She is horrified at her hope because of its meaning for
her relationship with her father. Her hope is a spiritual betrayal
of him, a degradation of her love and loyalty to him, a rupture
of the bond between them. Because of his paralysis, there is no
question of the relationship degenerating because the old prince
becomes aware of Marias hope, is offended, feels betrayed, and
gets angry. Communication of the emotion is out of the case;
the rupture is all from her side.
What about her own consciousness of her emotion? What if
she does not feel her hope for his decline, but infers it from
some behavioral cue? It seems to me that she might still be hor-
rified by this realization, though perhaps a little less than if she
remembered actually feeling the anticipatory pleasure of hope.
But the horror about the hope (a different emotion, of course,
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Roberts Emotional Consciousness and Personal Relationships 285
from the hope) needs to be felt for her to have a full realization
of the trouble in her relationship with her father.
I noted earlier that the epistemic value of an emotion
depends on its fitting its object. Some recent philosophers have
rightly emphasized the importance of fit among the ways in
which an emotion can have value (DArms & Jacobson, 2000;
Zagzebski, 2004). But it would be wrong to reduce the rela-
tional value of emotions to their fit or truth. Justin DArms and
Daniel Jacobson call our attention to the following rather
common case:
Mother has grown older, and grown mentally ill. She makes increasingly
exigent demands on the family. Her illness is degenerative. She always
feared being put away; you know she wants to stay at home, but you
have real doubts about your ability to care for her. And you also see the
effects of the tension, pity, and finally resentment on your family. . . . On
any plausible normative picture, there are ample reasons for the conclu-
sion youve been avoiding. In the end, you decide to put her in a nursing
home. Youre convinced this is the right thing to do, though you know
youll feel guilty for doing it. (DArms & Jacobson, 1994, p. 743)
This case suggests that the relational value of an emotion can
diverge from both its fit-value and its value in motivating action.
It seems morally right to feel guilty about putting mother in the
nursing home, yet not all of the propositional content of that
emotion is true, and it would be wrong to refrain from the action
of putting her in the nursing home, as the emotion seems to
dictate. The propositional content of the emotion has to be
largely true, however, if it is to be morally right to feel guilty.
To feel guilty in this case is to construe the situation somewhat
as follows:
For the sake of our own comfort and well-being we are choosing to do
something contrary to the strongest wish of Mother, to whom we owe
honor and nurture; in putting her in the nursing home, we are know-
ingly bringing her to suffer an injustice.
This much is true, let us say; if something like it is not true, it
is hard to see how the emotion can be relationally good. But this
guilt also ascribes blameworthiness and moral disfigurement to
oneself, on account of putting mother in the nursing home; and
this is false, since one is making the best of a bad situation.
Now we might say, Why not just suppose that we simply
ought not to feel guilty about this? Why not try to make our-
selves feel good about it, since it is the overall right thing to
do? We could emphasize the positive, and rejoice that the fam-
ily has been spared the decline that Mothers continued pres-
ence would have occasioned. Or we might feel neither good nor
bad about it, but just do coldly what we take to be right. Or we
might regret that it had to be done, without feeling guilty about
it. Why should we feel guilty? Yet many morally sensitive peo-
ple will endorse this emotion, while knowing that it neither
fully fits the situation nor should be acted on. Why? The answer
must refer to our relationship with Mother.
Simply to rejoice and feel relief that the best thing overall
has been done, or even to regret doing so while eschewing all
feeling of guilt, is to neglect seeing the situation from Mothers
point of view. She is angry. Her anger is, admittedly, not fully
fitting, since anger, like guilt, ascribes blameworthiness to its
object, and we are doing our best, even though it is an injustice.
So mothers anger is a partial misconstrual of the situation; but
there it is, for us to respond to. We might say: Mothers anger
is wrong; she shouldnt be angry, but only sad and disappointed;
and so we should feel not guilt, but regret. But this seems cal-
lous. One way that it is preferable for us to feel guilt, and not
merely regret, is that guilt on our side more accurately reflects
and thus respects mothers point of view. If we refuse to feel
guilty when she feels angry, we create a disharmony in the
relationship. Our refusal is supercilious. Furthermore, our
motives may be questionable. Is our refusal ungenerously self-
protective? Does it express epistemic fastidiousness at mothers
expense? Such fastidiousness seems ill-placed in any case. The
epistemic deplorableness of slightly inaccurate guilt in such a
situation is mitigated by the fact that the subject does not neces-
sarily believe its propositional content (see Roberts, 2003,
pp. 83106). Our emotion need not be a judgment. It is just a
way that we are seeing ourselves, and we may be clear that
though we feel guilty for putting mother in the home, we are not
guilty of this. If we are this clear intellectually about ourselves
and the situation, we will endorse the guilty feeling as a constitu-
tive requirement of our relationship with mother, while with-
holding endorsement of it as completely fitting the situation.
How Emotions Constitute Personal
Relationships
What kind of thing is a personal relationship? Examples of
personal relationships in the sense I intend are friendship,
enmity, collegiality, romantic love, partnership, and parenthood.
Some of these have impersonal versions: two people can be col-
leagues on the simple basis that they are employed by the same
firm, or partners without any but utilitarian interaction; and of
course one can be a parent in a purely biological and thus
impersonal sense. But I think there is a sense in which all these
relationship concepts are normatively interpersonal: so I am
speaking of good or bad parenthood, good or bad collegiality,
and so forth.
As a first approximation let us say that a personal relation-
ship is a disposition of both parties to think, act, and feel in
ways characteristic of the (good or bad) relationship. I will now
qualify one aspect of this remark and comment on a second and
third. The qualifier is that it is not quite right to say that a per-
sonal relationship is a disposition. A simple disposition can be
characterized by a merely potential narrative: to say that a seed
is fertile is to say that it will germinate if it is planted under
auspicious conditions. Similarly, to say that two persons are
friends is to say that if one of them has a significant success the
other will feel gratified, and if one of them is in need of help the
other will come to her aid. But an actual friendship cannot be
characterized by a merely potential narrative. The fertility of the
seed may be an actual fertility without its ever germinating, but
the friendship cannot be an actual friendship without the parties
ever having episodes of thought, feeling, and action character-
istic of friendship. Thus, while it is true that friendship is a
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286 Emotion Review Vol. 1 No. 3
disposition, on the part of two people, to act, think, and feel
with respect to one another in ways characteristic of friendship,
and the friendship is expressed in these episodes, the episodes
are also constitutive of the friendship, in the way that an episode
in a story is partially constitutive of the story. (An episode of
germinating expresses the seeds fertility, but is not constitutive
of it.) In this respect, friendship is more like a game of baseball,
which is constituted of various acts of hitting, running, catch-
ing, and so forth. Among the acts constitutive of friendship at
its best will be felt awareness of such emotions as joy in the
others successes, delight in the others presence, grief over the
others pains and losses, indignation at injustices perpetrated
against the friend, and felt awareness on the part of the friend of
these emotions in the other.
The first of my two comments on the formula at the head of
the preceding paragraph is about the relations among the three
kinds of episodes: actions, thoughts, and emotions. The emotions
are essential to the actions and thoughts. Without the right emo-
tions, neither the thoughts nor the actions would constitute a
friendship. Consider actions: a friendship is partially constituted
by a history of actions; doing this and that together, doing this and
that for one another. These actions will be aimed typically at the
benefit of the two persons involved or the benefit of some third
party or cause in which the two, or at least one of the two, have
some interest. But it seems that, however mutually beneficial
these actions may have been for the two, they will not contribute
to a friendship unless performed with good will, a non-
instrumental interest in spending time together, and concern for
one anothers wellbeing and the wellbeing of the friendship.
Imagine an unusually mercenary business partnership. For
each action the partners perform, either for one another or for
the sake of the business, it is clear that neither partner performs
it out of good will to his partner, and would not perform it if he
did not believe that doing so would serve his own eventual gain.
Such partners may perform thousands of acts, over the years,
that benefit one another, and these may benefit one another
splendidly, but the parties will never become friends. Or con-
sider a variant of the above, perhaps more usual for businesses.
The scenario is the same except that the partners make a show
of good will to one another. They play golf together, sometimes
without discussing business, and they exchange gifts at
Christmas. But each is aware that both he and the other do this
for the sake of business, and not really out of good will to the
other. They attended a seminar on business leadership, and are
following the instructions. This shows up in some of the emo-
tions. When one partner is sick, it is clear that the others worry
about him is really about who will bear his workload; when the
one is rejoicing over his newborn child, the others congratula-
tions are less than heartfelt because he is wondering how this
will affect the output. This relationship will have the feel of a
friendship sometimes, because, under the impression of the
show, the partners frequently construe one another as having
good will towards one another; but since they do not really
believe this, the feelings and thus the friendship will be shal-
low. Another possibility is that the show of good will toward
one another will be so taking that the two drift, as it were, into
a true friendship. Their motivations change as time goes by,
under the pressure of one anothers shows and their own. The
play-acting fades into real living. My first comment, then, is
that actions are not constitutive of a friendship proper unless
they express the emotions characteristic of friendship.
The formula that a personal relationship is a disposition of
both parties to think, act, and feel in ways characteristic of the
relationship also invites a second comment, this time on the
phrase both parties. In paradigm cases of friendship and enmity
both parties perform the actions and have the feelings character-
istic of the relationship, and each recognizes at least a portion
of the actions, thoughts and emotions of the other in their sig-
nificance for himself and the relationship. Personal relation-
ships are symbiotic, each of the partners feeding emotionally
and actively on the others emotions and actions. These are
features of the paradigm cases, but not all cases are paradig-
matic. Friendships and enmities are often unparadigmatic at the
beginning. One of the parties begins by expressing emotion and
performing actions to which the other responds. One might well
say that at this early, nonreciprocal stage the relationship is not
fully friendship or enmity. But some genuine friendships and
enmities deviate significantly from perfect reciprocity, most of
the emotional and active work being done by one of the parties.
One could argue, again, that this is not in the fullest sense
friendship or enmity: Slobodan Milosevic could not really have
been my personal enemy in the required sense because,
though I felt emotions towards him that approximate ones I
would feel towards an enemy, his actions and emotions were
not at all directed at me. On the other hand, given my attitudes,
if I had become important for him and he had become aware of
my attitudes, he would have had the attitudes of an enemy
towards me.
So far, I have claimed that personal relationships are consti-
tuted in large part by emotions, and in doing so I have clarified
in a general way what personal relationships are. But now we
must try to penetrate a little deeper into the emotional nature of
relationships. What is it about them that make emotions so cru-
cial? Why does it make such a difference to a friendship what
the friends feel about one another? Why is it crucial for them to
respect one another, to rejoice in one anothers successes and be
disappointed at one anothers losses and failures, and not to be
too often or too intensely angry with one another? Why do
friendships deteriorate when one of the parties begins to feel
contempt for the other? Why do friendships suffer when one
party fails to feel remorse for his offenses against the other, or
gratitude for benefits conferred by the other? Why is it impor-
tant to enmity that the parties to the relationship not begin to
sympathize with one another, to share one anothers concerns
vis--vis one another, to be angry for the same reasons at the
same offenses? Why does enmity deteriorate when the enemies
start forgiving one another, rejoicing in one anothers successes
and feeling respect or compassion for one another? Why is it
disastrous for enmity when the parties begin feeling gratitude to
one another?
Emotions constitute positive relationships by embodying
certain concerns about what the other cares about, and certain
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Roberts Emotional Consciousness and Personal Relationships 287
aversions to what the other is averse to, and/or by construing the
other person in some way that he wants to be construed or
refraining from construing him in a way that he is averse to
being construed. Emotions constitute negative relationships by
embodying concerns for what the other is averse to, or aversions
to what the other cares about, and/or by construing the other
person in some way that he is averse to being construed or fail-
ing to construe him in a way that he wants to be construed. As
social beings, humans are characteristically concerned with
how certain others are concerned, especially about themselves
and the things they most deeply care about. The interactions
(mutual awareness) of these concerns are a large part of what
personal relationships are made of. Obviously, we sometimes
go against our friends wishes, just as we sometimes go against
our own. This may create little tension in the friendship if our
friend understands that we have some deeper interest of his at
heart. The construals based on such concerns, along with the
mutual felt awareness or possible awareness of them by a rele-
vantly concerned other, are the major constituent of personal
relationships.
These concerns and aversions belong in a variety of contexts
and are backed by a variety of kinds of reasons (construals), and
this variety is reflected in the distinct emotion types. These
reasons or issues are ones that people care about and care about
other peoples caring about. Examples are successes and fail-
ures (envy/pride), grounds of personal worth (contempt/shame/
pity/respect), and offenses and benefits (anger/gratitude). I shall
illustrate and explore these phenomena by looking at a pair of
particular emotion types: envy and pride.
Envy/Pride
In Emotions (2003, p. 262) I formulated the defining proposi-
tion for invidious envy as:
It is important for me to have the personal worth that would be estab-
lished by my being or appearing to be equal or superior to R in respect
X; however, I am or appear to be inferior to R in respect X; may R be or
appear to be degraded in respect X.
A counterpart emotion that we might call invidious pride is
defined by a similar content:
It is important for me to have the personal worth that is established by
my being or appearing to be equal or superior to R in respect X; I have
that personal worth in some abundance because I am or appear to be
superior to R in respect X.
So envy and invidious pride are about issues of success and
failure construed in competitive terms and as bearing on com-
parative personal status or worth. People care about their own
successes and failures, and care about other peoples concerned
views of these; and if they are envious or invidiously proud,
they care about their own successes and failures in competitive
termsthat is, in comparison with certain other peoples simi-
lar successes and failures. These emotions undermine friend-
ship because they involve caring for what the other person is
averse to, and they involve construing the other in ways the
other desires not to be construed. Because of the relational nasti-
ness of envy and invidious pride, these emotions are especially
subject to degraded awareness, from feeling to intellectual
awareness, or even complete reduction to bare awareness. The
more aware a person is of his or his friends envy/invidious
pride, the more effectively he can combat it; but if he does not
combat it, or even personally endorses it, the more he feels it the
more it will damage his relationship. Envy and invidious pride
have a number of friendship constituting counterparts: admira-
tion, altruistic joy, gratitude, inclusive pride, and so forth.
The mutual consciousness, in situations of envy/invidious
pride, of one another as serious rivals (not playful rivals, as in a
thoroughly friendly game) such that As failing to get what A
wants is a condition of Bs getting what B wants, is the contrary
of the construal that characterizes friendship, based on As and
Bs mutual well-wishing so that As failing to get what is good
for A occasions discomfort (sadness, regret, disappointment,
and the like) for B, and vice versa. We can put the point also in
terms of consciousness of self, which in my analysis is crucial
to this kind of envy and pride. As invidious perception of him-
self as diminished by Bs enhancement, and Bs perception of
himself as enhanced by As diminishment, is the opposite of
friendship, in which A is gladdened by Bs enhancement and B
is saddened by As diminishment. (Note again that this kind of
consciousnesseven of selfcan be of the kind that I have
called bare awareness: a kind of nonconscious intentional
processing.) The point can also be put in terms of goodness and
badness of success. Each of the rivals sees the others (actual or
potential) success as bad and the others failure as good, so that
when B succeeds, A sees B as bad because Bs success dimin-
ishes A, and B sees A as good insofar as A fails and thus
enhances B. This is the opposite of friendship, in which each
sees the other as good regardless of success or failure, and sees
success as especially good because it belongs to the friend, and
failure as especially bad because it is the friends failure.
Envy and invidious pride undermine friendship in contexts of
success and failure. Other emotions maintain or enhance friend-
ship in such contexts. Where the success is an achievement of
some significance, friendship-enhancing emotions of the nonsuc-
ceeding friend are admiration, whose defining proposition shows
some kinship with envy, and inclusive pride (pride in the friend
and the friends achievement). It may also be triumph (think of
certain celebrations of a friends victory). Where the success is
more fortuitous, admiration is not in order and the friendship-
enhancing emotion will be joy in the friends success/good fortune.
Such joy will also be relationally appropriate where the success is
an achievement, if it is also some kind of gain for the admired one.
What is the friendship-enhancing emotion for the succeeding
friend? If the nonsucceeding friend has contributed to his friends
success, then gratitude for this contribution can powerfully reach
out to the other and include him in the success. In a similar vein,
a feeling of triumph, pride, or joy that include the friend (constru-
ing him as having some share in the achievement) can bond the
friends. In the healthiest friendships the achieving friend will look
generously for ways to credit his friends contribution or share in
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288 Emotion Review Vol. 1 No. 3
the success, and may even be prone to exaggerate it. Just as the
material generosity of a friend is not condemned for its variance
from strict justice, so her emotional generosity may be justified
despite its departure from strict truth.
Conclusion
Morally qualified relationships are made, in large part, of felt or
at least intellectually grasped representations of the other
(including representations of one anothers representations). I
have argued that the kind of representations in question is emo-
tions. Friends and enemies no doubt believe things about one
another, including about the others goodness or badness, but
beliefs are not themselves constitutive of such relationships.
Friendship is passionate: its construals of self and other are
based on concern for the relationship and for the other. And I
have argued that because of the epistemic and practical import
of consciousness of the emotions in question (feeling awareness
or intellectual awareness), it is crucial to the relationship-
constituting function of emotions that they be conscious; and the
more powerful kind of consciousness in this regard is feeling.
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