"Vices are often habits rather than passions." Antoine Rivarol
The spontaneous nature of emotions leads people to argue that we are not responsible for them and hence emotions are irrelevant to the moral domain.
This view is flawed as it assumes an overly simplistic view of both responsibility and emotions.
Paradigmatic cases of direct responsibility encompass (a) intending to do and doing X freely, (b) the ability to avoid X, and (c) the ability to foresee the consequences of X. These factors are important in describing the ideal situation for direct and full responsibility. It is hard to see how we can be directly responsible for something that we did not intend to do, were forced to do, were not able to avoid, or the consequences of which we could not predict. However, the ideal situation in which all three factors are fully present is rare. These factors are almost always present in different degrees, and it is impossible to find the highest degree in any given situation.
It is difficult to see how these factors are fully present in emotional behavior. This behavior does not seem to be fully free; our ability to avoid it is reduced; and foreseeing its consequences, which is so natural in the case of intellectual deliberations, are not so natural in emotional circumstances.
Responsibility is also assigned when these three factors are clearly absent at the time at which we perform the particular deed, but when they have been present at some time in the past. Here we assign indirect responsibility. A drunken driver who causes a fatal accident and a drug-addicted person who steals in order to get money for drugs are examples of such cases. Indirect responsibility is assigned when we are responsible for cultivating the circumstances that gave rise to the blameworthy deed or attitude.
Remarks such as "I couldn't help it, I was madly in love with her," or "Ignore his behavior, he was overcome with anger," indicate that we sometimes do not attribute responsibility (or at least, not full responsibility) to agents who have certain emotions or who are acting emotionally. However, it is obvious that there are many circumstances in which we do impute responsibility for emotions. We praise and criticize people for their emotions; we speak of appropriate reasons for being afraid, or inappropriate grounds for hating someone. We often advise others to desist from certain emotions as when we say: "You have no reason to be angry." We may also urge them to adopt emotions such as in the injunction: "Love your spouse." In this sense, we assume some degree of responsibility for the fact that we feel love.
Responsibility may be described as having two major aspects: causality and praiseworthiness (or blameworthiness). In terms of causality, Peter is causally responsible for the fate of Sharon if Peter is the cause of something that happened to Sharon. Thus, if Peter gives a glass containing poison to Sharon and she consequently dies, then although Peter is causally responsible for Sharon's death, he cannot be blamed if he did not know that the glass contained poison. Moral responsibility is not concerned with causal responsibility but with responsibility related to praise or blame.
In addition to indirect responsibility, legal and moral systems recognize partial responsibility. For example, provocation is understood as a partial defense in cases of murder, since it is seen as reducing the agent's responsibility: A successful plea based on grounds of provocation refutes the agent's full responsibility and instead provides the concession of partial responsibility-hence the conviction will be one of manslaughter, rather than of murder.
The view that denies our responsibility for our emotions often encompasses not just a narrow notion of responsibility, but also a narrow picture of emotions. Emotions are reduced to fleeting, unreliable feelings over which we have little control and for which we have no responsibility. In the same way that we do not choose to have a toothache and accordingly are not responsible for having it, it is assumed that we do not choose our emotions and are not responsible for them.
Contrary to this view, emotions are more complex than fleeting feelings. The presence of intentional components, and sometimes even intellectual deliberations, enable us to impute responsibility for emotions and consequently to criticize or praise them. The emotional attitude may also be regarded as appropriate or inappropriate to the given circumstances. Thus, we may criticize ourselves for grieving too much or too little. Emotions may also be experienced as inappropriate with regard to their timing.
We are often responsible for being in circumstances that are especially susceptible to the generation of certain emotions. Thus, if I know that every time I see a certain politician on television I become angry, and this is then expressed in my behavior toward my spouse or children, then I have the moral obligation to avoid those circumstances, for instance, by turning off the television. My responsibility regarding this anger refers to my failure to avoid the circumstances that generate it.
To sum up, both responsibility and emotions are complex phenomena admitting various degrees of intensity. Although emotional behavior bears less personal responsibility than intellectual behavior does, we still have some responsibility over our emotional behavior. This responsibility is mainly indirect and partial.
The above considerations can be encapsulated in the following statement that a lover might express: "Darling, although you are not fully responsible for failing to love me, please try to do so, as I am not such a bad or unattractive person."
