Gratitude

Passages

Every passage tagged with this emotion in the Vela corpus. Search the body text, narrow by source or register, click through to a book’s profile to see how the passage sits with the rest of the work.

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• From Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity (1989)

  So we should ask what could move pe o ple in the religious outlook we fi n d expressed in Hutcheson or, mo r e radically perhaps , in Tindal. What wo u l d lead one to praise and be thankful to G od, if one saw hi s work t h e way th e y did? The answer is obviously his goo dness, his benevolence. And thi s w a s expressed in his having made a world in whi ch t h e purp oses of the di ffe re n t beings inhabiting it, and particularly of the rational being s, so perfe c tly .266 The Providential Order • 2 6 7 i nte rlock. The world was designed so that each in seeking his or her good will also serve the good of others. The fullest human hap piness, on Hutcheson's v ie w, is attaine d when we gi ve full reign to o ur moral sentiments and feelings o f benevolence. But it is just then that we do most to c ontribute to the general h appiness. God's goodness thus consists in his bringing about our good. Hi s be nefi cence is explained partly in terms of our happin ess. But what is striking about these Deist views is that the converse relation, so central to the religiou s tradition, seems to be lacking. It is after all a central tenet of the J udaeo Christian religious tradition that G od loves and seeks the good of his creatures. But this good in turn has always been defined as consisting in some relation to God: in our loving him, serving him, being i n his presence, contemplating him in the beatific vision, or somethin g of this kind . What is striking about Deist views is that the human good in terms of w hich God's benev o lence is defined is so self-contained . It is not that the reference to God is wholly absent, but it seems to be subordinate to a c o nception of happiness which is defined purely in creaturely terms. Happi ness is the attaining o f the things we b y nature desire, or pleasure and the absence of pain . The rewards of the next life seem to be considered just as more intense and longer-lasting versions of the pleasures and pains of this.

• From The Great Transformation (2006)

  Heaven, the High God, had humanlike characteristics, but never ac-quired a distinct personality or gender. He did not thunder commands from mountaintops, but ruled through his representatives. Heaven was experienced in the king, the son of Heaven, and the princes, each of whom was the son of Heaven in his own domain. Earth had no human counterpart, but every city had two Earth altars: one south of the palace near the ancestral temple, the other in the southern suburbs, beside the harvest altar. Location was everything in Chinese religion. The position of the Earth altar showed that the cultivation of the soil and the harvesting of crops put people directly into contact with the ancestors, who had tilled the ground before them, and thus established the Way of Heaven. Before and after the harvest, hymns of gratitude were sung around the Earth altar; the Way (dao) of Heaven was “delectable,” linking past and present in sacred continuity: It is the glory of the region . . . It is the comfort of the old! It is not just here that things are as they are here! It is not just today that things are as they are today! Among our most ancient forefathers it was so! 40 When people worked the land, they were not simply interested in their own individual achievements, “as they are today.” Their efforts had united them to the ancestors, the archetypal human beings, and thus with the Way things ought to be. Without the work of human beings, Heaven could not act. 41 Ordinary earthly actions were therefore sacramental, sacred activities, which enabled people to share in a divine process. When they had cleared the forests, pacified the countryside, and built roads, the Zhou kings had completed the creation that Heaven had begun. In the Classic of Odes, the poet used the same word to describe the divine work of Heaven and the earthly activity of human beings. Kings Tai and Wen had become Heaven’s partners, and now their living descendants must continue this holy task: Heaven made [zuo] the high mountain. King Tai enlarged it; He cleared [zuo] it. King Wen made it tranquil, He marched [about] And Qi had level roads. May their sons and grandsons preserve it! 42 Instead of seeing a gulf between Heaven and Earth, the Chinese saw only a continuum. 43 The most powerful ancestors were now with Tian Shang Di, the supreme ancestor, but they had once lived on earth. Heaven could communicate with earth through oracles, and human beings, the inhabitants of earth, could share a meal with the ancestors and gods in the bin ritual.

• From Between Us

  Hazel Markus, my mentor and cultural psychologist at Stanford University, sandwiched her critical feedback on every single chapter with love. She encouraged me to reach out to my American audience, and to connect my research with real societal questions and problems. Gert Storms, linguistic psychologist at my own university, read every chapter, offering reassurance in his understated European way, and pointing out my inconsistencies and errors (as Europeans do when they feel close enough to care). Finally, Owen Flanagan, philosopher of mind at Duke University, generously shared his astute mind, his incredible command of the literature, and his wisdom about the process of writing books. Our continued dialogue and friendship sustained me during the writing of this book and gave me confidence. I thank my parents for teaching me the vital importance of accommodating a diversity of perspectives. Their personal histories showed me that intolerance can kill, and they carried the value of tolerance close at heart, practicing what they preached. I thank them for encouraging me to be an independent, critical thinker. I would have liked to show my dad, Albert Gomes de Mesquita, “that book of yours”; he did not live to see it. I thank my mom, Lien de Jong, for her sustained support, her unconditional love, her interest and involvement in the book, and for showing vicarious pride. I thank my family and close friends for having been not only supportive and curious, but also patient during the writing of this book. I specifically thank Mat Aguilar, Ton Broeders, Sytse Carlé, Waldo Carlé, Ulli D’Oliveira, Debbie Goldstein, Daniël Gomes de Mesquita, Diane Griffioen, Mieke Hulens, Roos Kroon, Renée Lemieux, Arjeh Mesquita, Ada Odijk, Jacqueline Peeters, Reshmaa Selvakumar, Paul Van Hal, Ewald Verfaillie, Michael Zajonc, Daisy Zajonc, Donna Zajonc, Jonathan Zajonc, Krysia Zajonc, Lucy Zajonc, Peter Zajonc, and Joe Zajonc. All my love and gratitude goes to Benny Carlé, who has been on my side during the ups and downs of the writing process. He is not the fictive husband I describe in Chapter 4, who was late for dinner without notifying me. Instead, Benny spiced up my days with delicious dinners and conversations about the world beyond the book. I dedicate this book to my children, Oliver and Zoë Zajonc. I love you so much. The future is yours, and I hope this book can help, if even just a little, to help build a better future—one that accommodates diversity. NOTES PREFACE vii my parents survived the Holocaust in hiding: My mom’s biography is The Cut Out Girl (Bart van Es, The Cut Out Girl: A Story of War and Family, Lost and Found [New York: Random House, 2018]). My dad was a classmate of Anne Frank’s and is mentioned in her diary; some of his memories have been recorded in We All Wore Stars (Theo Coster, We All Wore Stars, trans.

• From The Erotic Mind (1995)

  women: and casual sex, 53; cultural constraints on, 164; and fantasy, 137, 149, 160; high value of relationship among, 62; increased assertiveness of, 316; love/lust fusion, 193; and orgasm, 234, 292; resonance m, 334–335; and sexual assault, 314–316; and sexual security, 101 yearning, unfulfilled, 183 Zilbergeld, Bernie, 2, 367n4 ACKNOWLEDGMENTSOnce in a while I hear of a book moving from conception to fruition with enviable rapidity and ease. The Erotic Mind has never been such a project. More than a dozen years have elapsed between the first realization that I had to write this book and its eventual completion. I only hope that the many phases of my work have ultimately added to its depth and usefulness. This much I know: without the encouragement, steadfast support, penetrating insights, and constructive criticisms of a remarkable group of people, I would never have persisted. So it’s especially gratifying to be able to thank them now. I’ll forever be grateful to my clients who courageously examined their eroticism with me in psychotherapy. I also feel profound appreciation for the hundreds of people I don’t even know who responded to my anonymous survey about peak erotic experiences. The willingness of clients and respondents alike to reveal what most people keep hidden made it possible for me to develop a new way of understanding erotic life. As my ideas crystallized I received sustenance from colleagues and friends who seemed to grasp immediately the implications of my viewpoint and pushed me to take it further—especially Toni Ayres, Joani Blank, and Michael Graves, all of whom also gave invaluable assistance in the development of the Sexual Excitement Survey. In addition, Michael focused his impressive analytical skills on at least two versions of the entire book and contributed greatly to its final structure. I also benefited from frequent talks with Marty Klein about the intricacies of both writing and sexuality. Janice Epp, LouAnne Cole, and Gary Zinik probably don’t realize how much I’ve valued their ongoing resonance with my work. Gary also helped me work out some tricky aspects of thematic analysis. And Lonnie Barbach read much of the manuscript and offered many helpful suggestions. I found a consistently challenging forum for presenting my ideas at meetings of the Society for the Scientific Study of Sex, an international association of sexologists. Questions, critiques, and long conversations with dozens of colleagues influenced my work more than they can possibly know. Their interest buoyed me, especially during several years of struggle with an unrelenting case of writer’s block. Had I been unable to articulate my thoughts and findings in these lively discussions, I might have given up.

• From Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity (1989)

  Moreover , God's having set up this system of recomp e nse in the next world seems to be d esigned at least partly to underpin the interlocking system in this one. Humans are indeed moved to the height of goodness, on Hutcheson's view , o nly by a sense of love and grat i tude to God: Thus as the calm and most exte nsive determination of the soul toward s the universal happiness can have no other center o f rest and joy than the original independent omnipoten t Goodness; so without the knowledge of it, and the most ardent love and resignation to it, the soul cannot attain to it s own most stable and highest perfection and excellence. 1 S o the soul needs God t o be inte grally g o od. This is an entirely traditional v ie w. But what our goodness seems to consist in is a "deter mination ... t o ward s the universal happiness"; and what God's goodness consists in s ee ms t o be his fostering this s ame end. A purely self-contained, non-theocentric n ot ion o f the g ood, happiness, play s a central role in this outlook; an d the lin eament s of our right relationship to God-gratitude , lo ve, resignation a r e al J d efined in terms of it. A similar point should be made about the crucial virtue on Hutcheson's v ie w, namely benevol ence. This takes the place and c o ntinues the function of t h e earlier theol ogical virtue of charity. The notion that the godly pers o n is o ne who gives of himself or herself is continued in thi s new ethic, in which all 2.6 8 • THE AFFIRMAT I ON OF ORD IN ARY LI FE the traditio nal virtues are redefin ed, as we s aw above , and r elat ed to benevolenc e. 2 But the content of this disposition is defined in terms of hu m an happiness. The crucial thing here is thus the focus on the human. It i s hu m a n happin ess that really matters in the universe. It is this which i s the objec t o f God's prodigious efforts (or at least part-object: he is concerned with his other creatures a well}. This is s h eer presumptuo u sness from the st andpoi n t of one important strand of Christian thought-and there were lots of peop le in this century who were more than willing to point this out. Human s a r e there for Go d, not vice versa. 3 In this respect, Deism seems a total br eak w it h the religious tradition.

• From The Great Transformation (2006)

  Aryan life was becoming more settled. The economy was beginning to depend more upon agricultural produce than raiding, and even though we have no documentary evidence, it seems that there was a growing consensus that the destructive cycle of raid and counterraid had to stop. The traditional rites not only legitimized this pattern but gave it sacred significance. The rituals themselves often degenerated into real fighting, and one aggressive sacrifice led inexorably to another.59 The priestly experts decided to make a systematic appraisal of the sacrificial liturgy, taking out any practice that was likely to lead to violence. Not only were they able to persuade the kshatriya warriors to accept these expurgated rites, but their reform led to a spiritual awakening.60 At first sight, it seems that no texts could be further removed from the spirit of the Axial Age than the Brahmanas, which seem obsessed with liturgical minutiae. How could these stultifying discussions of the type of ladle that should be used for a particular oblation or how many steps a priest should take when he carried the firepot to the altar have inspired a religious revolution? Yet the Brahmanas were making a courageous attempt to find a new source of meaning and value in a changing world.61 The ritualists wanted a liturgy that would not inflict harm or injury on any of its participants. The climax of the old sacrifices had been the dramatic decapitation of the animal victim, which reenacted Indra’s slaying of Vritra. But Indra was no longer the towering figure that he had been when the Aryans first arrived in India. His importance had been steadily declining. Now, in the reformed ritual, the victim was suffocated as painlessly as possible in a shed outside the sacrificial arena. “You do not die, nor do you come to harm,” the ritualists assured the beast; “to the gods you go, along good paths.”62 In these texts, the killing of the animal was frequently described as “cruel,” an evil that had to be expiated. The victim should sometimes be spared, and given as a gift to the officiating priest. Already, at this very early date, the ritualists were moving toward the ideal of ahimsa (“harmlessness”) that would become the indispensable virtue of the Indian Axial Age.63

• From The Great Transformation (2006)

  To find that our own faith is so deeply in accord with others is an affirming experience. Without departing from our own tradition, therefore, we can learn from others how to enhance our particular pursuit of the empathic life. We cannot appreciate the achievements of the Axial Age unless we are familiar with what went before, so we need to understand the pre-Axial religion of early antiquity. This had certain common features that would all be important to the Axial Age. Most societies, for example, had an early belief in a High God, who was often called the Sky God, since he was associated with the heavens. 2 Because he was rather inaccessible, he tended to fade from the religious consciousness. Some said that he “disappeared,” others that he had been violently displaced by a younger generation of more dynamic deities. People usually experienced the sacred as an immanent presence in the world around them and within themselves. Some believed that gods, men, women, animals, plants, insects, and rocks all shared the same divine life. All were subject to an overarching cosmic order that kept everything in being. Even the gods had to obey this order, and they cooperated with human beings in the preservation of the divine energies of the cosmos. If these were not renewed, the world could lapse into a primal void. Animal sacrifice was a universal religious practice in the ancient world. This was a way of recycling the depleted forces that kept the world in being. There was a strong conviction that life and death, creativity and destruction were inextricably entwined. People realized that they survived only because other creatures laid down their lives for their sake, so the animal victim was honored for its self- sacrifice. 3 Because there could be no life without such death, some imagined that the world had come into being as a result of a sacrifice at the beginning of time. Others told stories of a creator god slaying a dragon—a common symbol of the formless and undifferentiated—to bring order out of chaos. When they reenacted these mythical events in their ceremonial liturgy, worshipers felt that they had been projected into sacred time. They would often begin a new project by performing a ritual that re-presented the original cosmogony, to give their fragile mortal activity an infusion of divine strength. Nothing could endure if it were not “animated,” or endowed with a “soul,” in this way. 4 Ancient religion depended upon what has been called the perennial philosophy, because it was present, in some form, in most premodern cultures. Every single person, object, or experience on earth was a replica—a pale shadow—of a reality in the divine world. 5 The sacred world was, therefore, the prototype of human existence, and because it was richer, stronger, and more enduring than anything on earth, men and women wanted desperately to participate in it.

• From Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity (1989)

  It is based on "the palpable truth, that the m ass of ma nkind h a s not been bor n with saddles on their backs, no r a favourf"d few b ooted a nd s pu rred, ready to ride them legitimat e ly, by the grace of God" . 4 396 • SUBTLER LANGUAGES However unsuccessful mankind has been in attaining "the blessings and security of self-government", no other aspiration ultimately incompatible with this is now avowabl e. All these ideas seem to have come into their full force in the twentieth century. They were clearly at work in the Anglo-Saxon societies, however� from the beginning of the last century, Consider the great crusade in Englan <I for the suppression of the slave trade, and later for the abo li tion of slavery itself. The first objective was achieved in I 807, and the second in 1 8 3 3. One has to r ec ognize that the timing of these measures also depended on economi� developments, that Britain benefited from its self-appointed position as guardian of international morality in giving a free hand to its navy to intervene in Africa and Latin America. But takin g all this into account, we still should remark the arrival of a quiet ne w phenomenon which has become almost banal in our contemporary world: the mobilizing of a large- scale citizens' movement around a moral issue, with the intent of effecting political ch ange. People were well aware at the time that something ne w w as happening. In a statement of 182.3, the recently founded Liverpool Society for the Abolition of Slavery attributed its unprecedented succ ess in achieving moral "improvement" to "th e practice of combining society itself in intellec tu al masses, for the purpose of attaining some certain, defined, and acknowl edged good, which is g enerally allowed to be essential to the well-being of the whole". 5 This is a formula which has been repeated continually, through t he U.S. abolitionist crusade, countle ss te mperance movements, to the great American civil rights movement of the 196o's and beyond. These movements reflect, and have helped to propagate and intensify, the imperatives of universal benevolence and iustice and th e sense that a recognition of these is integral to our civilization. This recognition is of great importance, because it appears that the new moral consciousness has been inseparable from a certain sense of our place in history.

• From The Great Transformation (2006)

  In all these cities, life was entirely dominated by religion.39 The cult centered on the person of the king, the son of Heaven, who had inherited the mandate and had been born with a magical power, which he transmitted to the feudal lords of the principalities. Like most other religious systems at this time, that of the Chinese was preoccupied with preserving the natural order of the universe by rituals (li), which would ensure that human society conformed to the Way (dao) of Heaven. The ceremonial actions performed by the king, it was thought, could control the forces of nature and ensure that the seasons followed one another in due succession, rain was sent at the correct time, and the celestial bodies stayed on their prescribed courses. The king was, therefore, a divine figure, because he was the counterpart of the High God on earth. But there was no ontological separation between Heaven and Earth. The Chinese would never be interested in a god who transcended the natural order. Elijah’s experience of a god who was entirely separate from the world would have puzzled them. Heaven and Earth were complementary: divine and equal partners. Heaven, the High God, had humanlike characteristics, but never ac-quired a distinct personality or gender. He did not thunder commands from mountaintops, but ruled through his representatives. Heaven was experienced in the king, the son of Heaven, and the princes, each of whom was the son of Heaven in his own domain. Earth had no human counterpart, but every city had two Earth altars: one south of the palace near the ancestral temple, the other in the southern suburbs, beside the harvest altar. Location was everything in Chinese religion. The position of the Earth altar showed that the cultivation of the soil and the harvesting of crops put people directly into contact with the ancestors, who had tilled the ground before them, and thus established the Way of Heaven. Before and after the harvest, hymns of gratitude were sung around the Earth altar; the Way (dao) of Heaven was “delectable,” linking past and present in sacred continuity: It is the glory of the region . . . It is the comfort of the old! It is not just here that things are as they are here! It is not just today that things are as they are today! Among our most ancient forefathers it was so!40 When people worked the land, they were not simply interested in their own individual achievements, “as they are today.” Their efforts had united them to the ancestors, the archetypal human beings, and thus with the Way things ought to be.

• From Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity (1989)

  There is a revealing cri de coeur of Bentha m : "Is there one of th ese my pages in which the love of humankind has for a moment bee n forgotten? Sho w it me, and this h and shall be the first to tear it out". 24 A close connection between ben e volence and scientific reason isn't particularly evident to us in the latter half of the twentieth century. But w e h av e to remember how much easier it was t o believe in i t in the eighteenth. We have to recover the emotional force of Voltaire' s repeated injunction, " Ec rasez l'infame"; to recall the cruelties inflicted by persecutors in the name of religion; and not to forget tho s e inflicted in the draconian punishment s imposed by law in the n ame of or der. In g ivi ng central s ignificance to sensual pleasure and pa in, and in challenging all the different conceptions of order, the utilitaria n s made it possible for the first time to put the relief of suffering, human but also a nimal, at the centre of the social agenda. This has had truly r ev ol utio nary effects in modern society, tr a n s f ormin g not onl y our legal s y st em but the whole range of our practices and concerns. 25 Ano t her ins ig h t, too , seemed to su ppo rt th e conn ect ion be tw e en bene v ol e nc e and sci entific reason. Dis engaged ra ti ona lity seems to sepa rate us from o ur o wn n a rro w, eg oi stic standpo int and ma ke us capable of gra sping the w h ole pi ctu r e. It is wh at allows us t o become "i mpartial spe ctato rs " of t h e h u m a n s ce ne. Th e growth of scie n ti fic ra tio nali ty can theref o r e be experienced a s a kin d of victory over egoism. We ar e no longer imprisoned in the self ; w e a re fre e to p ursue the universal good.

• From The Erotic Mind (1995)

  It was Hal Bennett, a talented writer, editor, and book consultant, who helped me resolve my blockage with his gentle wisdom. He also showed me how to shape complex material into a cohesive, accessible whole. When I ran into snags, he always knew how to nudge me back on track. Then Hal introduced me to Fred Hill, who became my agent. He was another find, a fact I realized when I overheard him describing the book far more succinctly than I could have done myself. Fred thought he knew exactly who would want to publish the book: HarperCollins’s editor-in-chief, Susan Moldow. Indeed she did and proceeded to perform editorial magic with uncommon understanding and respect for an author’s sensitivities. She also selected Nancy Nicholas, a gifted line editor from whom I learned so much about unnecessary words. As we were nearing the final round of revisions, Susan left HarperCollins and entrusted the book to Gladys Carr and Cynthia Barrett, both of whom made an eleventh-hour transition that could easily have been a nightmare into an opportunity. Their suggested refinements were right on the mark. Throughout it all I was blessed with cherished friends and family who, miraculously, maintained enthusiasm for my work in spite of the fact that I was often unavailable or preoccupied. My dearest friend, Scott Madover, both gave and endured the most. I doubt I can ever repay him adequately. Jack Morin, Ph.D. San Francisco ABOUT THE AUTHORJack Morin, Ph.D., has been studying the mysteries of Eros for nearly two dacades. He is a diplomate of the American Board of therapist in the San Francisco Bay Area. Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins authors COPYRIGHTA hardcover edition of this book was published in 1995 by HarperCollins Publishers. THE EROTIC MIND. Copyright © 1995 by Jack Morin, Ph.D. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this ebook on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins ebooks. First HarperPerennial edition published 1996. The Library of Congress has catalogued the hardcover edition as follows: Morin, Jack. The erotic mind: unlocking the inner sources of sexual passion and fulfillment / Jack Morin—1st ed. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-06-016975-3 1. Sexual excitement. 2. Sex (Psychology). I. Title. HQ21.M7945 1995 155.3’1—dc20 95-4944 ISBN-06-098428-7(pbk.) 04 05 06 07 08 [image file=image_rsrc3FK.jpg] /RRD 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 EPub Edition © OCTOBER 2012 ISBN: 9780062267474 ABOUT THE PUBLISHERAustralia HarperCollins Publishers (Australia) Pty. Ltd. Level 13, 201 Elizabeth Street Sydney, NSW 2000, Australia http://www.harpercollins.com.au Canada HarperCollins Canada 2 Bloor Street East – 20th Floor Toronto, ON, M4W, 1A8, Canada http://www.harpercollins.ca

• From The Strange Order of Things: Life, Feeling, and the Making of Cultures (2018)

  I am prepared to defend my current views on the biology of feelings, consciousness, and the roots of the cultural mind, but I am aware that those views may need to be revised before too long. Second, it is apparent that we can talk with some confidence about the traits and operations of living organisms and of their evolution and that we can locate the beginnings of the respective universe about thirteen billion years ago. We do not have, however, any satisfactory scientific account of the origins and meaning of the universe, in brief, no theory of everything that concerns us. This is a sobering reminder of how modest and tentative our efforts are and of how open we need to be as we confront what we do not know. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The development of a book is a long process of planning and reflecting, but the day does come when one needs to sit down and write. I tend to remember vividly when that happens, for each book, and what were the circumstances. I also tend to return to such memories as if they revealed the key on which the text should be written. In the case of this book, it happened in Provence, at the home of our friends Laura and Emanuel Ungaro, and it followed a conversation with Emanuel on the issue of how specific wounds are often prompts for one’s creations. We were talking about a curious book (L’Atelier d’Alberto Giacometti) written by Jean Genet, a book that Picasso considered the best ever written about artistic creation. Genet’s words—“Beauty has no other origin but the singular wound, different for each person, hidden or visible”— connected well with the idea that feeling is a key player in the cultural process. Now writing could begin in earnest and one year later, in the very same surroundings, I recall explaining the first draft to another friend, Jean-Baptiste Huynh. I wrote early sections of the book elsewhere in France, at the home of Barbara Guggenheim and Bert Fields. I thank all these friends for the inspiration that they and the places they have invented provide so naturally. This is also the place to mention a disclaimer on the book’s title. On first hearing it, several people have asked me if it refers to Michel Foucault. It certainly does not although I know why they ask: Foucault wrote a book whose original French title is Les Mots et les Choses (The Words and the Things), which became, in its English version, The Order of Things.

• From The Strange Order of Things: Life, Feeling, and the Making of Cultures (2018)

  Jane A. Foster and Karen-Anne McVey Neufeld, “Gut-Brain Axis: How the Microbiome Influences Anxiety and Depression,” Trends in Neurosciences 36, no. 5 (2013): 305–12; Mark Lyte and John F. Cryan, eds., Microbial Endocrinology: The Microbiota-Gut-Brain Axis in Health and Disease (New York: Springer, 2014); Mayer, Mind-Gut Connection . 27. Doe-Young Kim and Michael Camilleri, “Serotonin: A Mediator of the Brain-Gut Connection,” American Journal of Gastroenterology 95, no. 10 (2000): 2698. 28. Timothy R. Sampson, Justine W. Debelius, Taren Thron, Stefan Janssen, Gauri G. Shastri, Zehra Esra Ilhan, Collin Challis et al., “Gut Microbiota Regulate Motor Deficits and Neuroinflammation in a Model of Parkinson’s Disease,” Cell 167, no. 6 (2016): 1469–80. 29. Sadness can certainly disturb health, but positive states such as gratitude appear to have the opposite effect. Gratitude is induced when we receive meaningful aid or support that is motivated by compassion and is associated with significant positive effects on health and quality of life. Recently, an fMRI study by my colleague Glenn Fox defined the neural correlates of gratitude, revealing that the reported experience of meaningful gratitude is correlated with brain activity in regions conventionally recognized as central to stress regulation, social cognition, and moral reasoning. This finding supports previous research showing that developing gratitude as a mental habit can improve health, which in turn underscores the idea of continuity between the mind and the body. See Glenn R. Fox, Jonas Kaplan, Hanna Damasio, and Antonio Damasio, “Neural Correlates of Gratitude,” Frontiers in Psychology 6 (2015); Alex M. Wood, Stephen Joseph, and John Maltby, “Gratitude Uniquely Predicts Satisfaction with Life: Incremental Validity Above the Domains and Facets of the Five Factor Model,” Personality and Individual Differences 45, no. 1 (2008): 49–54; Max Henning, Glenn R. Fox, Jonas Kaplan, Hanna Damasio, and Antonio Damasio, “The Positive Effects of Gratitude Are Mediated by Physiological Mechanisms,” Frontiers in Psychology (2017). 30. Sarah J. Barber, Philipp C. Opitz, Bruna Martins, Michiko Sakaki, and Mara Mather, “Thinking About a Limited Future Enhances the Positivity of Younger and Older Adults’ Recall: Support for Socioemotional Selectivity Theory,” Memory and Cognition 44, no. 6 (2016): 869–82; Mara Mather, “The Affective Neuroscience of Aging,” Annual Review of Psychology 67 (2016): 213–38. 31. Daniel Kahneman, “Experienced Utility and Objective Happiness: A Moment-Based Approach,” in Choices, Values, and Frames, eds. Daniel Kahneman and Amos Tversky (New York: Russell Sage Foundation, 2000); Daniel Kahneman, “Evaluation by Moments: Past and Future,” in ibid.; Bruna Martins, Gal Sheppes, James J. Gross, and Mara Mather, “Age Differences in Emotion Regulation Choice: Older Adults Use Distraction Less Than Younger Adults in High-Intensity Positive Contexts,” Journals of Gerontology Series B: Psychological Sciences and Social Sciences (2016): gbw028.

• From The Strange Order of Things: Life, Feeling, and the Making of Cultures (2018)

  Nothing to do with my title whatsoever. — My intellectual home is the Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences at the University of Southern California. A number of colleagues at our Brain and Creativity Institute were patient enough to read the entire manuscript and discuss several passages in detail. I gained a lot from their comments and I thank them all deeply, but none more than Kingson Man, Max Henning, Gil Carvalho, and Jonas Kaplan. Others whose readings, comments, and encouragement were important are Morteza Dehghani, Assal Habibi, Mary Helen Immordino-Yang, John Monterosso, Rael Cahn, Helder Araujo, and Matthew Sachs. Another group of colleagues, representing a wider roster of disciplines, was just as generous and made many valuable suggestions. They are Manuel Castells, an exceptional scholar who has accompanied the development of my ideas for several years; Steve Finkel; Marco Verweij; Mark Johnson; Ralph Adolphs; Camelo Castillo; Jacob Soll; and Charles McKenna. I thank them for their exceptional scholarship and intelligent advice. Still another group kindly read parts of the manuscript or helped answer specific questions. They are Keith Baverstock, Freeman Dyson, Margaret Levi, Rose McDermott, Howard Gardner, Jane Isay, and Maria de Sousa. Finally, some very patient friends read and commented on versions of the book and listened to my musings on the always vexing issue of preparing epigraphs. They are Jorie Graham, Peter Sacks, Peter Brook, Yo-Yo Ma, and Bennett Miller. The research on which so much of this book is based has been possible only because of the support of two foundations: The Mathers Foundation, which has for decades been exemplary in backing research in biology, and the Berggruen Foundation, whose president, Nicolas Berggruen, is unendingly curious about human affairs. I thank both foundations for their trust. Dan Frank, at Pantheon, is a learned, wise, and disarmingly calm voice, the person you need by your side when you come to a fork in the road and cannot take both options. My gratitude is heartfelt. I also thank Betsy Sallee, in his office, for her attentive help. Michael Carlisle has been a close friend for over thirty years and my agent for about twenty-five. He is a consummate professional and has a heart. I thank him and his team at Inkwell, especially Alexis Hurley. I owe a debt of gratitude to Denise Nakamura, whose attention to detail, reliability, and patience are a model, and to Cinthya Nunez who makes the Administrative Office of the Brain and Creativity Institute run smoothly and is always ready to take on a problem at a moment’s notice. The manuscript owes a lot to their dedication. I also thank Ryan Veiga, who typed portions of the manuscript and assisted me with the preparation of the bibliography. Last, I need to say that Hanna reads everything I write and is my best—by which I mean worst—critic. She contributes at every step of the way and in every way imaginable.

• From The Strange Order of Things: Life, Feeling, and the Making of Cultures (2018)

  This is also the place to mention a disclaimer on the book’s title. On first hearing it, several people have asked me if it refers to Michel Foucault. It certainly does not although I know why they ask: Foucault wrote a book whose original French title is Les Mots et les Choses (The Words and the Things), which became, in its English version, The Order of Things. Nothing to do with my title whatsoever. — My intellectual home is the Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences at the University of Southern California. A number of colleagues at our Brain and Creativity Institute were patient enough to read the entire manuscript and discuss several passages in detail. I gained a lot from their comments and I thank them all deeply, but none more than Kingson Man, Max Henning, Gil Carvalho, and Jonas Kaplan. Others whose readings, comments, and encouragement were important are Morteza Dehghani, Assal Habibi, Mary Helen Immordino-Yang, John Monterosso, Rael Cahn, Helder Araujo, and Matthew Sachs. Another group of colleagues, representing a wider roster of disciplines, was just as generous and made many valuable suggestions. They are Manuel Castells, an exceptional scholar who has accompanied the development of my ideas for several years; Steve Finkel; Marco Verweij; Mark Johnson; Ralph Adolphs; Camelo Castillo; Jacob Soll; and Charles McKenna. I thank them for their exceptional scholarship and intelligent advice. Still another group kindly read parts of the manuscript or helped answer specific questions. They are Keith Baverstock, Freeman Dyson, Margaret Levi, Rose McDermott, Howard Gardner, Jane Isay, and Maria de Sousa. Finally, some very patient friends read and commented on versions of the book and listened to my musings on the always vexing issue of preparing epigraphs. They are Jorie Graham, Peter Sacks, Peter Brook, Yo-Yo Ma, and Bennett Miller. The research on which so much of this book is based has been possible only because of the support of two foundations: The Mathers Foundation, which has for decades been exemplary in backing research in biology, and the Berggruen Foundation, whose president, Nicolas Berggruen, is unendingly curious about human affairs. I thank both foundations for their trust. Dan Frank, at Pantheon, is a learned, wise, and disarmingly calm voice, the person you need by your side when you come to a fork in the road and cannot take both options. My gratitude is heartfelt. I also thank Betsy Sallee, in his office, for her attentive help. Michael Carlisle has been a close friend for over thirty years and my agent for about twenty-five. He is a consummate professional and has a heart. I thank him and his team at Inkwell, especially Alexis Hurley.

• From The Strange Order of Things: Life, Feeling, and the Making of Cultures (2018)

  Nothing to do with my title whatsoever. — My intellectual home is the Dornsife College of Letters, Arts and Sciences at the University of Southern California. A number of colleagues at our Brain and Creativity Institute were patient enough to read the entire manuscript and discuss several passages in detail. I gained a lot from their comments and I thank them all deeply, but none more than Kingson Man, Max Henning, Gil Carvalho, and Jonas Kaplan. Others whose readings, comments, and encouragement were important are Morteza Dehghani, Assal Habibi, Mary Helen Immordino-Yang, John Monterosso, Rael Cahn, Helder Araujo, and Matthew Sachs. Another group of colleagues, representing a wider roster of disciplines, was just as generous and made many valuable suggestions. They are Manuel Castells, an exceptional scholar who has accompanied the development of my ideas for several years; Steve Finkel; Marco Verweij; Mark Johnson; Ralph Adolphs; Camelo Castillo; Jacob Soll; and Charles McKenna. I thank them for their exceptional scholarship and intelligent advice. Still another group kindly read parts of the manuscript or helped answer specific questions. They are Keith Baverstock, Freeman Dyson, Margaret Levi, Rose McDermott, Howard Gardner, Jane Isay, and Maria de Sousa. Finally, some very patient friends read and commented on versions of the book and listened to my musings on the always vexing issue of preparing epigraphs. They are Jorie Graham, Peter Sacks, Peter Brook, Yo-Yo Ma, and Bennett Miller. The research on which so much of this book is based has been possible only because of the support of two foundations: The Mathers Foundation, which has for decades been exemplary in backing research in biology, and the Berggruen Foundation, whose president, Nicolas Berggruen, is unendingly curious about human affairs. I thank both foundations for their trust. Dan Frank, at Pantheon, is a learned, wise, and disarmingly calm voice, the person you need by your side when you come to a fork in the road and cannot take both options. My gratitude is heartfelt. I also thank Betsy Sallee, in his office, for her attentive help. Michael Carlisle has been a close friend for over thirty years and my agent for about twenty-five. He is a consummate professional and has a heart. I thank him and his team at Inkwell, especially Alexis Hurley. I owe a debt of gratitude to Denise Nakamura, whose attention to detail, reliability, and patience are a model, and to Cinthya Nunez who makes the Administrative Office of the Brain and Creativity Institute run smoothly and is always ready to take on a problem at a moment’s notice. The manuscript owes a lot to their dedication. I also thank Ryan Veiga, who typed portions of the manuscript and assisted me with the preparation of the bibliography. Last, I need to say that Hanna reads everything I write and is my best—by which I mean worst—critic. She contributes at every step of the way and in every way imaginable.

• From The Strange Order of Things: Life, Feeling, and the Making of Cultures (2018)

  It seems to reserve its most dramatic impact for the ancient, unmyelinated C-type neurons that form most of our interoceptive pathways and are likely to play a role in the generation of feelings. See Damasio and Carvalho, “Nature of Feelings”; Björnsdotter, Morrison, and Olausson, “Feeling Good”; Gang Wu, Matthias Ringkamp, Timothy V. Hartke, Beth B. Murinson, James N. Campbell, John W. Griffin, and Richard A. Meyer, “Early Onset of Spontaneous Activity in Uninjured C-Fiber Nociceptors After Injury to Neighboring Nerve Fibers,” Journal of Neuroscience 21, no. 8 (2001): RC140; R. Douglas Fields, “White Matter in Learning, Cognition, and Psychiatric Disorders,” Trends in Neurosciences 31, no. 7 (2008): 361–70; McKenzie et al., “Motor Skill Learning Requires Active Central Myelination”; Julia J. Harris and David Attwell, “The Energetics of CNS White Matter,” Journal of Neuroscience 32, no. 1 (2012): 356–71; Richard A. Meyer, Srinivasa N. Raja, and James N. Campbell, “Coupling of Action Potential Activity Between Unmyelinated Fibers in the Peripheral Nerve of Monkey,” Science 227 (1985): 184–88; Hemant Bokil, Nora Laaris, Karen Blinder, Mathew Ennis, and Asaf Keller, “Ephaptic Interactions in the Mammalian Olfactory System,” Journal of Neuroscience 21 (2001): 1–5; Henry Harland Hoffman and Harold Norman Schnitzlein, “The Numbers of Nerve Fibers in the Vagus Nerve of Man,” Anatomical Record 139, no. 3 (1961): 429–35; Marshall Devor and Patrick D. Wall, “Cross-Excitation in Dorsal Root Ganglia of Nerve-Injured and Intact Rats,” Journal of Neurophysiology 64, no. 6 (1990): 1733–46; Eva Sykova, “Glia and Volume Transmission During Physiological and Pathological States,” Journal of Neural Transmission 112, no. 1 (2005): 137–47.25.Emeran Mayer, The Mind-Gut Connection: How the Hidden Conversation Within Our Bodies Impacts Our Mood, Our Choices, and Our Overall Health (New York: HarperCollins, 2016).26.Jane A. Foster and Karen-Anne McVey Neufeld, “Gut-Brain Axis: How the Microbiome Influences Anxiety and Depression,” Trends in Neurosciences 36, no. 5 (2013): 305–12; Mark Lyte and John F. Cryan, eds., Microbial Endocrinology: The Microbiota-Gut-Brain Axis in Health and Disease (New York: Springer, 2014); Mayer, Mind-Gut Connection.27.Doe-Young Kim and Michael Camilleri, “Serotonin: A Mediator of the Brain-Gut Connection,” American Journal of Gastroenterology 95, no. 10 (2000): 2698.28.Timothy R. Sampson, Justine W. Debelius, Taren Thron, Stefan Janssen, Gauri G. Shastri, Zehra Esra Ilhan, Collin Challis et al., “Gut Microbiota Regulate Motor Deficits and Neuroinflammation in a Model of Parkinson’s Disease,” Cell 167, no. 6 (2016): 1469–80.29.Sadness can certainly disturb health, but positive states such as gratitude appear to have the opposite effect. Gratitude is induced when we receive meaningful aid or support that is motivated by compassion and is associated with significant positive effects on health and quality of life. Recently, an fMRI study by my colleague Glenn Fox defined the neural correlates of gratitude, revealing that the reported experience of meaningful gratitude is correlated with brain activity in regions conventionally recognized as central to stress regulation, social cognition, and moral reasoning.

• From Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity (1989)

  Moral reactions can't by their definition be furth er explained. This is perhaps a dangerous way to attain this end. By grounding moral judgements in brute data, Hutcheson opens the possibility, of treating them li ke any other de facto reaction, of disengaging from them and considering them mere projections. This kind of account could be grist to the mill of a p rojectivist theory, where moral properties would be assimilated to seconda ry p roperties, unanchored in reality, but a regular part of ou r experience in virtue of our constitution. This assimilation has been the basis for a p rojectivis t 'error' theory in our day, as I described in Part I. 5 6 And Hutcheson himself at times seems to be espousing the analogy. 5 7 A standard feature in the analysis of secondary properties is that they are correlated with primary qualities and thought to be part of the subjective 'colouratio n ' a ttending our experience of these latter. What makes them ' s ub j ective ' o n th i s view is that they depend on our mak e-up, and might just as well be qu it e different, if our senses were differently constituted. Hutcheson, seemingly following some such analogy, allows that the mo r a l sen se can be seen as equa lly adven titio us l y hoo ked up to the wor ld . H e al lo w s the supp osit io n that God co uld ha ve hooked us up diffe re ntly , e .g ., so as n o t to fe el ben evo lently towards othe rs 5 8 or eve n to take delight in th ei r torm en ts. 59 Hutc heson int r oduces the s e p os sib ili ties in order to laud t h e M oral Sentiments • 2 6 I g oodness of God for having chosen the existing dispensation-proving God's b e nign providence is one of his principa l goals. But h e fails to see how wide t h is ope ns the door to relativi sm, an d how problematic this makes his j u dgement about the m oral goodness of the Deity. 60 However muc h this psychology may op en the door to relativism and n a turalism-an avenue which Hume perhaps began to exp lore-this is cl e arly no t the way intended by Hut cheson. Whether he has a r ight to it or n ot, he has a very clear and stron g ide a of the goodness of the Deity, anteri or to h is choice of senses to endow u s with. W ha t is good is the way it w o rks out fo r us. We are beings who seek happiness, and this is defined in the standard Lockean way, more or less i n ter ms of pleasure.

• From The Strange Order of Things: Life, Feeling, and the Making of Cultures (2018)

  I owe a debt of gratitude to Denise Nakamura, whose attention to detail, reliability, and patience are a model, and to Cinthya Nunez who makes the Administrative Office of the Brain and Creativity Institute run smoothly and is always ready to take on a problem at a moment’s notice. The manuscript owes a lot to their dedication. I also thank Ryan Veiga, who typed portions of the manuscript and assisted me with the preparation of the bibliography. Last, I need to say that Hanna reads everything I write and is my best—by which I mean worst—critic. She contributes at every step of the way and in every way imaginable. I always try to convince her to be a coauthor, but to no avail. The largest share of thanks go to her, of course.

• From Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity (1989)

  7 2 But if seein g the . good in ourselves and in others releases this good and int e nsifies it, the effect will be all the greater if we ext end our gaze and see that the whole univers e is good and springs from the all-embracing benevo lence of the creator. In the passage I quoted above about the harmonious order o f the wor ld, in which Hutcheson remarks on the "generous Sympathy, Compassion and Congratulation with each other" we see in it, he continues: "Does not even the flourishing State of the inanimate Parts of Nature, fill us wit h joy? Is not thus our Nature Admonished, exhort e d and commanded to cultivate universal Goodness and Love, by a Voice heard thro' all the Earth, and Words sounding to the Ends o f the World?" 7 3 But most of all, A constant regar d to God in all our actions and enjoyments, will gi v e a new beauty to every vi rtue, by making it an act of gratitude and lo v e to hi m ; and increase our pleasure in every enjoyment, as it will appear a n evidence of his goodness; it will give a diviner purity and simplicity of heart, to conceive all our virtuous dispositions as implanted by God in our - hearts, and all our beneficent offices as our proper work, and the natural duties of that station we hold in this universe, and the services we owe to this n ob ler co untry .7 4 264 · THE AFFIRMATION OF ORDINARY LI FE Thus for Hutcheson our moral sources-the goods reflection on which morally empowers us-are first, our own benevolence, and then the source in tum of this, the universal benevolence of God-"the AlITHOR of our Nature", as Hutcheson often styles him. For all hi s acceptance o f Lockean psycholog ical terms, his inspiration is clearly Shaftesbury, and through him his roots g o back to the Erasmian tradition of the Cambridge school. He shares their fierce opposition to an ethic of extrinsic law. But with Hutcheson, this tradition has gone through the two transformations which were only hinted at in Shaftesbury's language: Our bent towards the good (1) is tho r oughly internalized in sentiment and (2) takes the form above all of universal be n evolence. These two changes bring him closer th an Shaftesbury to Lockean Deism. Th e internalization to sentiments is what allows him to couch his theory in Lockean psychology. The stress on bene vo l e nce places him in a line that runs from the Puritans through Bacon and Locke to the utilitarians. Indeed, Hutcheson often sou'nds like a utilitarian, and he plainly did a lot t o pr�pare the ground for this school. "That action is best,,, he declares, "which accomplishes the greatest Happiness for the greatest N um hers,,.