The Universality of Emotions: What I think about what I Feel about what Cultural Relativists Think about what they Feel about Emotion

In an attempt to somewhat focus my reflection, I will confine my random ruminations to the tension between relativism and universality that pervades academic discourse on emotion. I must confess that it never occurred to me that emotions were socially derived, but rather, I viewed it self-evident that emotions are universally integral to the (cross-cultrual) “human experience”. Having completed this week’s reading, I find my thoughts on the matter much more nuanced with regard to the extent to which ‘emotion’ may be characterized as culturally dependent. There is much food for thought in these writing, too copious and complex to be digested in one sitting; however, the notion that emotion is contingent upon culture is still somewhat unsettling to me. It seems intuitive to me that emotions are universal, but the line between intuition and folly is quite fine, so I suppose I must identify and articulate my reasons for believing so. I am not sure if this clarifies of complicates, but I perceive a disjunction between what I refer to as ‘emotion’ and what these writers refer to in their discussion. Clearly there is an element of identification, justifications, rationalization, etc. intimately intertwined with the experience of emotion, and this element is indisputably culturally-relative. However, when I refer to emotion, what I mean is the experience of grief, anger, joy, etc. itself, and not our ideas pervading the social circumstances cradling these emotional experiences. The ‘why we feel’, ‘how we feel’, ‘when we feel’, ‘should we feel’, etc are culturally contingent, but WHAT we feel, in my opinion, is universal. Perhaps then the extent to which I disagree with these writers is largely attributable to a different definition of ‘emotion’.

John Corrigan, in his introductory essay (“Introduction: Emotions Research and the Academic Study of Religion”), outlines several arguments in support of emotion being a universal phenomenon. The evidence cited by Corrigan upholding the thesis of the universality of emotion range from: i) the Darwinian assertion that emotion is a necessary, species-wide mode of expression, as species; ii) the linguistic commonality in reference to emotions cross-culturally; iii) the cross-cultural performative dimension of emotion; iv) the theological/philosophical assertion that emotion is universally ‘mysterious’; and, lastly, v) the cross-cultural commonality of neurological/physiological functioning during emotional experiencing (9-10). I will sidestep Corrigan’s questions as to whether such inquiry concerning emotion is reductionistic, etc. My interest here is whether or not emotion is universally experienced. Emotion may in fact be irreducible and/or inexplicable, but I don’t see these issues as directly related to the universality thereof. These categories are not mutually exclusive in that emotional response may be universal and explicable, universal and inexplicable, universal and reducible, universal and non-reducible, etc. In any case, I find the five arguments cited compelling, particularly the linguistic one. We all refer to emotions, cross-culturally, without an anxiety to define exactly what experience we are referring to. They appear to be presumed as self-evident. Anger is anger and grief is grief, etc. This is the case from Shakespeare, to Aristophanes, to Kalidasa. Although clearly the circumstances and norms pervading the social and cultural contexts to some extent dictate the justification, impetus, penchant, etc. of the emotion experience, the fact that we can read and relate to the characters so widely dispersed over culture, space, and time, suggest to me that their emotional experiences aren’t so removed from ours so as to be eclipse by the cultural shifts intervening between composition and reception. Our appreciation of various literary works from various cultures across various times, for me, suggests a somewhat archetypal element to emotional experiencing. Despite the VASTLY different circumstances in works of literature across the ages, across cultures, the classics survive because of their ability to invoke emotion that is basic to all human beings. To what, otherwise, may we attribute the timeless accessibility and appeal of ‘classics’? Why else are we still studying Elizabethan drama and classical Sanskrit kavya alike? The same came be said, I would argue, for visual arts and performing arts. Although they employ the syntax of their culture, they tell the tale of humankind to some degree.

I am not certain that I can articulate this in a sufficiently sensible fashion (since it is intuitive to me, of the same Intuition that dangerously borders Error), but my reflection on the emotion/state of Compassion seems to me to support the universality of emotion. Compassion, to me, appears to be esteemed and extolled cross-culturally, whether embodied in Christ, the Buddha, or the sages of ancient India. But I invoke compassion here not merely because it occurs cross-culturally, or that it is extolled cross-culturally, but because of its nature. And now, what could I possibly mean by that? Thank goodness for the license afforded by Blogging. What I mean is that Compassion is based on an empathetic feeling of concern for the welfare of others. This to me presupposes the emotional likeness among all human beings, all suffering from the same emotional demons. How could I hope to have empathy for others if they are fundamentally different in their emotional experience and emotional requirements? Perhaps I am not articulating this as well as I should for it to be compelling, but the enterprise of compassion (whether by a religious practitioner, a secular humanist, a philanthropist, a civil servant, etc.) seems somehow hollow and futile in the absence of emotional universality. If our emotional experience is discreet and culturally-dependent, the same as our ideas, behaviors, etc., then what comprises this notion of “the human experience”? If not emotion, what, then serves as the common thread constituting the human tapestry? Perhaps the whole notion of there being a common link to human beings (and terms such as ‘humanities’, ‘humankind’, etc.) are conceits, as artificial as the term ‘religion’ itself. It could be the notion of ‘humanity’ as a whole exists only in the realm of the conceptual. However, if this is not the case, and there is such a thing as humanity, then emotional experience would undoubtedly contribute to our universal innate human-ness.

Clifford Geertz writes that “non only ideas, but emotions, too, are cultural artifacts” (13). Is he referring to ideas about emotions, ideas prompting emotions, or emotions themselves? Although I feel that the experience of emotion is one of the commonalities of human beings, I could not uphold the view that social conditioning plays no role in emotional expression. Emotional activity possesses a culturally-contingent dimension. Indeed “highly complex social codes governing such things as…birth, death, marriage” are necessarily dependent upon cultural values and thus differing from one context to another. However, are these highly complex social codes emotions themselves? Are they not mere stimuli for emotional response, catalysts and conduits merely channeling the experience of emotion? Why we feel what we feel is dependent, but what it is that we actually feel, in my opinion, is universal. If the experience of an emotion is intrinsically tied to the ‘reason why’ we feel an emotion, then how can we account feeling a certain emotion (e.g., anger), without knowing why? Social “feeling rules” can’t always apply, if so, we would always feel justified in feeling a certain way, but we don’t. There are many situations where we experience a certain emotion in tandem with the acknowledgement that we have no ‘right’ to feel so, yet we feel so nonetheless. The ‘right to feel a certain way’ is inevitably cultural and thus relative; the ‘feeling a certain way’ appears on some level to be uninfluenced by cultural norms. If, for example, we feel irritable, we may in fact be angered by a stimulus that isn’t culturally sanctioned as justification for anger. Our provocation may not in fact exist under other circumstances, but given our culturally independent irritability we are nevertheless provoked into a heightened state of anger. Of course, such issues depend largely on individual constitutions and predilections towards anger, etc. Such predilections often outweigh cultural sanctions for emotions, else there would be no danger of ‘road rage’ or need for ‘anger management’ instruction. One emotional response often exhibits an independence from (and even rebellion against) social dictates.


Catherine Lutz and Geoffrey M White report that “emotions are a primary idiom for defining and negotiating social relation of the self in a moral order” (14), in other words “moral emotions are moral judgments”. In order to bolster this claim, they invoke the sensation of shame/embarrassment. Their study was based on the Newar inhabitants of Nepal, among whom “hot, flushes red-faced feelings of embarrassment, and cold, metaphorically deathlike, empty feelings of shame, embody moral evaluations” (14). I find it interesting that shame differs from guilt in that for shame to take place, others must be present, while one experiences guilt in the presence of others and in solitude alike. Shame, then, necessarily involves a societal dimension. Shame no doubt is a useful tool for crafting and maintaining social norms, but it is the only type of emotion? What about emotions that occur in solitude, or even at a stage of development prior to the inculcation of social values. Take for example a young child in the toy department. She sees a toy and is instantly gleeful as she reaches out for it. Her parent allows her to play with it. Joy ensues. For thinkers like Michael Stocker, emotions (like the child’s, too, presumably) are not emotions, but rather are “emotionally held thoughts”, akin to Robert M Gordon’s claim that emotions bear a strong functional resemblance to belief. I wonder whether either of these individuals (no doubt fine scholars) have ever had such an experience with a child in the toy department. I wonder if they are able to attribute the child’s enthusiasm regarding Toy-Q to some sort of belief system. Also, I wonder whether or not the grief experienced by the child once confronted with the painful separation from Toy-Q at some point en route to the checkout counter could possibly be accounted for on the basis of indoctrination or cultural bias. My experience as a sales rep at Wal-Mart’s toy dept seven years ago counsels me otherwise.


In Christian’s “ Provoked Religious Weeping in Early Modern Spain”, we are presented with one specific form of piety – a sixteenth-century Catholic Spanish weeping, a clearly ‘learnt behavior’, dependent upon specific prescriptions of religiosity of a specific social context, seeking a specific outcome. May we regard this as representative of all weeping and indeed for grief itself? Does the fact that it was ‘learnt’ and non-spontaneous diminish its status as a bona fide emotional experience? I would like to applaud Ebersole for the extent to which the approach employed in his work “The Function of Ritual Weeping Revisited: Affective Expression and Moral Discourse” is non-reductionistic and intriguingly nuanced. As you are aware, Ebersole, too, shares in the culturally relativistic impulse to derive social significance from emotional response in the context of religion (specifically ritual). He in no way holds the view that ‘a tear is a tear is a tear’, and thus searches after the meaning associated with the shedding of tears, meaning which, invariably varies from one cultural, social, religious context to another. With respect to the actual emotional response, however, he exposes the extent to which our privileging of emotional spontaneity (as corroborative of authenticity, suggested by, e.g., by Durkheim, 204) is largely prejudicial. With regards to ritually/socially ‘scripted’ tears, Ebersole appears to uphold the notion, albeit implicitly, that ‘grief is grief is grief’, whether socially contrived or interpersonally inflicted. The experience, i.e., the feeling of grief, would be the similar (and probably comparable) regardless of the cause, context, or stimulus. On this basis, I hold that the social cues about how to be emotional shed no light on the emotional experience that those cures incited. The ‘feeling rules’ of a culture as represented in art, bureaucracy, family, dress, courtship, language, music, etc (18) is, for me, distinct from the actual feelings proper. Perhaps this is the distinction that accounts for why I cannot relate to cultural relativism with respect to emotional experience. I am referring to emotion, not the rules and representations thereof. The key word here is perhaps representation. All we can study are the representations, articulations, and expressions of emotions, which are necessarily culturally dependent to some degree. How may we as scholars enter into, or study the emotional experience itself? And yet again we find ourselves at the bottom of the slippery slope of experience…