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Articles

Emotions: A Defence of Irrationality

Carole Haynes-Curtis on stuffed tigers, pink elephants and Mr. Spock.

Ever since Anna Karenina was written, people have been deeply moved by the fate of Tolstoy’s heroine. In a paper in a learned journal1, Dr. Colin Radford asked how this was possible. Radford didn’t deny that at least some of us are moved by Anna Karenina’s fate, but correctly asserted that this raises a problem. For the object of this emotion doesn’t exist outside Tolstoy’s story and, most importantly, the people moved know she is non-existent.

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