Interpreting the Personal: Expression and the Formation of Feelings

Rating:
Summary: A Complex, Exciting, Challenging Book
Review: Like all good philosophy books, this book is not a quick read. However, it is a book well worth spending time on if you are interested in philosophy, aesthetics, or expression. Campbell argues that our standard way of looking at the relationship between expression and emotions is wrong. We think we have an emotion and can then either express it or keep it to ourselves but whatever we do with it, it is still the same emotion. Instead, she argues that emotions are formed partly through their expression and partly through the way they are responded to by others (which means that there are political dimensions to this whole thing). Maybe I am making this sound a lot drier than the book does but she deals with things as diverse as Cyrano de Bergerac (a beautifully argued chapter), Kris Kristoferson, and Sylvia Plath and a number of philsophers to make a compelling case for rethinking what emotions are. Not many books force you to think hard about commonplace things to see that they are not so commonplace after all. This is such a book and I urge people to take up the challenge.