Date of Award
Spring 4-27-2026
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Department
Theology
First Advisor
Andrew Kim
Second Advisor
Jame Schaefer
Third Advisor
Kate Ward
Fourth Advisor
Mark Johnson
Abstract
In this dissertation, I examine how moral emotions feature within the habituation of virtues. I suggest that their primary role within the moral life is epistemic: emotions grant agents perceptual access to evaluative properties in the world. I argue that their perceptual function within habit formation is normatively indispensable. I proceed through five methodological movements. I begin by presenting the three historical accounts of emotion I take as most influential on contemporary Western beliefs about emotion and as most dominant within the philosophy of emotion. To that end, I trace Stoic and Kantian accounts of emotion as representative of the strong-cognitivist model and a sentimentalist Humean account as emblematic of the non-cognitivist model. I argue that both accounts fail to capture the complexity of emotions and their role in morality. I then turn to an Aristotelian-Thomistic account of emotion as a limited-cognitivist model which, when updated, supplies an auspicious model upon which emotions can be evaluated. After this historical survey, I sample empirical literature within cognitive science to support my claim that emotions are a central feature of morality and amenable to rational assessment. Subsequently, I turn to contemporary philosophical models of emotion, which are extensions of the historical accounts I traced in the first chapter. I analyze the judgmentalist account of emotion, represented by Robert Solomon and Martha Nussbaum, and non-cognitivist appraisal accounts of emotion found in Jesse Prinz, Justin D’Arms, and Daniel Jacobson. After rejecting these models as insufficient, I advance Robert C. Roberts’s perceptual account of emotion as concern-based construal, and I defend the perceptual account’s analogical salience. Next, I consider the justification of emotions and suggest that a virtue-epistemological framework ensures that emotions are reliable in the epistemic information they supply. Finally, I consider habituation by consulting psychological literature and returning to Aristotle and Aquinas, and I explore the connection between habituation and trait formation, and how emotional perception figures therein through vignettes of anger, compassion, guilt, hope, and religious awe.