Diotima: The Marist Undergraduate Philosophy Journal
that we regret either our decisions or events that happen because we care about
them or they matter to us in some sense. 2 To summarize, to feel regret, you must
think that the object of your regret (i.e., an event or your decision) is bad, wish it
had not happened, and care about it.
In this paper, I will focus on agent-regret for the following reasons. First, it
is intimately connected with our evaluations of ourselves. As I mentioned earlier,
there are some decisions we might regret for the rest of our lives.Second, there is
an important philosophical puzzle about agent-regret. 3 In section 2, I will discuss
what it means for an emotion to be rational. In sections 3-5, I will analyze when
agent-regret is rational. In section 6, I will expand my analysis to the nature of
emotions in general.
Evaluating Emotions
What does it mean for an emotion to be rational? This question is hard to answer
because the term ‘rational’ is vague. By saying that it is rational to experience an
emotion in certain circumstances, we might be claiming different things. Consider
two cases:
Rattlesnake : Your fear of a rattlesnake paralyzes you, and you get bitten.
Crayons : You fear a box of crayons.
In both cases, fear seems irrational but for different reasons. What explains this
difference? In Rattlesnake , your fear is prudentially irrational. That is, it is in
your best interest to run away, and your fear stopped you from doing this. In
Crayons , your fear is instead what philosophers call unfitting. 4 There is nothing
about a box of crayons that merits or is worthy of being feared. Your fear is out of
2 R. Jay Wallace, On Affirmation, Attachment, and the Limits of Regret, (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013) 24-32. 3 For the sake of brevity, I will sometimes use “regret” to mean “agent - regret” for the re st of this paper. 4 Justin D’Arms and Daniel Jacobson, “The Moralistic Fallacy: On the 'Appropriateness' of Emotions,” Philosophy and Phenomenological Research61 , no. 1 (2000): 65.
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