Overview

"Just as a garden needs worms, we need bad feelings....We tend to think about bad feelings--feelings like anger, envy, spite, and contempt--as the weeds in life's garden. You may not be able to get rid of them completely, but you're supposed to battle them as best you can. The best garden is one with no weeds. The best life is one with no bad feelings. But this isn't quite right, according to philosopher Krista K. Thomason. Bad feelings are the worms, not the weeds. They're just below the surface, and we like to pretend they aren't there, but they serve an important purpose. Worms are just as much a part of the garden as the flowers, and their presence means your garden is thriving. Gardens aren't better off without their worms, and neither are we. The trick is learning how to enjoy our gardens, worms and all. Thomason draws on insights from the history of philosophy to show what we've gotten wrong about bad feelings and to show readers how we can live better with them. There is nothing wrong with negative emotions per se. Their bad reputation is undeserved. Negative emotions are expressions of self-love--not egoism or selfishness, but the felt attachment to ourselves and to our lives. We feel negative emotions because our lives matter to us. After explaining this, Thomason helps us look at individual bad feelings: anger, envy and jealousy, spite and Schadenfreude, and contempt. As she demonstrates in this tour of negative emotions, these feelings are valuable parts of our attachment to our lives. We don't have to battle negative emotions or ""channel"" them into something productive. Bad feelings aren't obstacles to a good life; they are part of what makes life meaningful."

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9780197673287

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Reviews

"""What do envy, contempt, anger, and Schadenfreude have in common? According to Krista K. Thomason, we think they are the weeds in our garden, there to destroy life instead of encouraging growth. Thomason argues that this is the wrong way to think about bad feelings. In this accessible apologia, she offers up a defense of negative emotions. Using the work of philosophers like Mary Wollstonecraft, Nietzsche, and Confucius as a guide, she claims we should resist trying to control bad feelings and instead listen to and interrogate them. If we do so, we will discover that bad feelings can aid rather than inhibit a flourishing life. This is a book that skillfully convinces us to celebrate our wild emotions."" -- Myisha Cherry, author of The Case for Rage ""Anger, envy, spite, and contempt: You won't find many defenders of these 'negative' emotions in the history of philosophy or in today's self-help aisle. But Krista Thomason's humane and creative Dancing with the Devil incisively shows why we shouldn't try to squelch or even tame them. Join Thomason on an enlightening journey toward making peace with our 'wild' feelings.""-- Michael Cholbi, author of Grief: A Philosophical Guide ""Bad feelings have a bad reputation. We are surrounded by advice to let go of our anger, contempt and envy in order to live a more flourishing life. Krista K. Thomason's Dancing with the Devil, is a wonderfully written and well-argued book that challenges this conventional thinking about our negative feelings and makes a compelling case for the valuable role these feelings play in our lives. Drawing on an impressively diverse range of philosophical thinking, as well as insights from literature and psychology, Thomason clearly articulates the essential role that unpleasant feelings play in a good life."" -- Alfred Archer, Author of Honouring and Admiring the Immoral: An Ethical Guide and Why It's OK to be a Sports Fan"

Author Information

Krista K. Thomason is an Associate Professor of Philosophy at Swarthmore College. In 2021-2022, she was the Philip L. Quinn Fellow at the National Humanities Center. Her areas of expertise include philosophy of emotion, moral philosophy, history of philosophy, and political philosophy. Some of her publications appear in Philosophy and Phenomenological Research, European Journal of Philosophy, Kantian Review, and The Monist. She is the author of the book Naked: The Dark Side of Shame and Moral Life, which was published with Oxford University Press in 2018. She has been interviewed by the Wall Street Journal, NBC News, and CNN.

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