It is a commonplace that emotions are characteristically passive. As we ordinarily think of them, emotions are ways in which we are acted upon, that is, moved or affected by aspects of our environment. Moreover, we have no voluntary control over whether we feel them. In this paper, I call attention to a much-neglected respect in which emotions are active, which is no less central to our pretheoretical concept of them. That is, in having emotions, we are engaged with the world insofar as we respond to aspects of our environment. In this context, to say that an emotion is a response to x is tantamount to saying that x is a reason for which we have it. Elaborating this claim in light of a historically prominent conception of the active/passive distinction, I will argue that emotions are a form of spontaneity in virtue of their responsive character and contrast in this respect with perceptions, which are fundamentally receptive. While this proposal is prima facie opposed to the ordinary image of emotions as passive, I will show that it actually allows us to make proper sense of it.

中文翻译：

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情绪的自发性

情绪通常是被动的。正如我们通常认为的那样，情绪是我们受到影响的方式，即受到环境方面的影响或影响。此外，我们无法自愿控制我们是否感觉到它们。在这篇论文中，我提请注意一个被忽视的方面，即情绪是活跃的，这对于我们的前理论概念来说同样重要。也就是说，在拥有情感的过程中，只要我们对环境的各个方面做出反应，我们就会与世界互动。在这种情况下，说一种情绪是对x的反应，就等于说x是我们拥有它的一个原因。根据历史上对主动/被动区别的突出概念来阐述这一主张，我将论证情绪是一种自发性形式，因为它们具有响应性特征，并且在这方面与感知形成对比，感知从根本上是接受的。虽然这个提议表面上反对将情绪视为被动的普通形象，但我将证明它实际上让我们能够正确理解它。