Access the full text.
Sign up today, get DeepDyve free for 14 days.
References for this paper are not available at this time. We will be adding them shortly, thank you for your patience.
Downloaded from http://read.dukeupress.edu/common-knowledge/article-pdf/27/1/109/867394/0270109.pdf by DEEPDYVE INC user on 30 March 2022 Frans de Waal, Mama’s Last Hug: Animal Emotions and What They Tell Us about Ourselves (London: Granta Books, 2019), 326 pp. The first step of de Waal’s argument that animals have emotions is empirical. With his acute talent in observing behaviors in primates and other animals, he provides a wealth of anecdotes, controlled observations, and psychological expe- r iments. In one instance, he recalls Borie, a chimp grandmother at the Yerkes Field Station, who frowned while staring at him because he had unintention - ally just sprayed a little chimp with a water hose. Instead of speaking of animal “anger” (in Borie’s example), of “fear,” or of “love” (in other situations), many scientists suggest focusing only on the functions of the related behaviors: “group survival,” “individual survival reaction,” “reproductive bond,” and so forth. But why this terminological restriction? the primatologist asks. If those behaviors were human, they would be explained by emotions. How could similar behav - iors, linked to similar neuronal activation, in one case arise from emotions, and in the other case not? Evolutionary theory supplies a further reason to think that humans and other animals share some basic emotions. If not, how could we explain the abrupt emergence, in evolutionary history, of human emotions? The ethologist concludes that “all the emotions we are familiar with can be found one way or another in all mammals. . . . The variation is only in the details, elaborations, applications, and intensities.” Even if de Waal’s argument is convincing, I think he sometimes pays too much attention to the first part of this conclusion, the similarity part, at the expense of the variety part. In my view, the author is, for instance, too critical of ethological analyses of emotions that try to define cultural differences in “our emotional makeup” (which is the title of a book, on this topic, by Vinciane Despret). Such emotional variety exists, to be sure, in nonhuman animals as well. The elaborations, applications, and intensities of emotions are never mere details; they are essential and should be described in parallel with, and afforded as much importance as, the similarities. — Thibault De Meyer doi 10.1215/0961754X-8723129 L i t t l e R e v i e w s 10 9
Common Knowledge – Duke University Press
Published: Jan 1, 2021
You can share this free article with as many people as you like with the url below! We hope you enjoy this feature!
Read and print from thousands of top scholarly journals.
Already have an account? Log in
Bookmark this article. You can see your Bookmarks on your DeepDyve Library.
To save an article, log in first, or sign up for a DeepDyve account if you don’t already have one.
Copy and paste the desired citation format or use the link below to download a file formatted for EndNote
Access the full text.
Sign up today, get DeepDyve free for 14 days.
All DeepDyve websites use cookies to improve your online experience. They were placed on your computer when you launched this website. You can change your cookie settings through your browser.