Abstract

I examine LeDoux’s cognitive account of emotions in The Deep History of Ourselves and raise two questions about it. First, LeDoux argues that emotions are autonoetic conscious experiences grounded in episodic memories. I argue that this overlooks the existential emotions, which represent facts about human conditions in a general rather than an episodic fashion. Second, LeDoux suggests that emotions engage the self-schemas and are concerned with one’s own flourishing. I argue that this overlooks the non-eudaimonistic emotions, such as surprise, wonder, and awe, which respond to the pull of the objects but do not view them through the lens of one’s own scheme of ends.