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Emotions, Education, and Time

[Published in Metaphilosophy 21:434-446 (1990)]

An exploration of some aspects of the temporality of emotion. Emotions take shape in "paradigm scenarios": we cannot respond emotionally to present situations without being in a special relation to a certain privileged set of past experie nces. By the same token the paradigm scenarios are liable to act as screens, ("transference"), concealing from us the reality of the particular present with the shadow of the past. In the light of these psychological constraints, a central problem for emo tional education is to find a way in which we can achieve both flexibility and growth in our repertoire of paradigm scenarios.
 

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