Abstract
John Deigh’s (1992) collection of essays stands as a challenge to the longstanding tradition of philosophical inquiry that favours Kantian rationality in ethical deliberative processes. Through the arrangement of philosophical articles that sweep from the bases of moral deliberation, including the valuable emotional components of conscience, guilt and shame, to the destructiveness in social life caused by the presence of unrestrained emotions, Deigh builds the underpinnings of his own logical perspective. For Deigh, the traditional prescriptions of over-rationality, or in the use of limited reason without a balance of an individual’s affective psychological resources, will ultimately lead to a society that is vulnerable to the social-psychological fragmentation that diminishes care and connection to others and breeds psychopathic behaviour.
This paper seeks to summarize Deigh’s selected essays and to analyze the flow of logic inherent to the text, in the choosing of its selected works, to conclude on the essence of Deigh’s message and the value of emotionality and moral psychology in philosophical inquiry.
