Night vision: seeing ourselves through dark moods

"The state of the world makes it difficult to look on the bright side. If there is a bright side perhaps it is that we have come to see the virtues of previously taboo emotions such as anger, sadness, anguish, anxiety, and grief. According to philosopher Mariana Alessandri, we're beginning to see that they are not evils to be avoided but valuable and sometimes even productive states. Many of us are coming to see that our darker feelings have something to teach us about ourselves, others, and what it is to be human. However, many of us don't know how to feel about what we're beginning to let ourselves feel. She asks: Is it (still) wrong for women to be angry? Is anxiety something we talk about openly now? Can we cry without apologizing yet? Our emotional landscape has been shifting, but no one's guiding us. As Alessandri says, "we need someone to help us grope around in the dark until our eyes adjust." In this book, Alessandri aims to explore these emotions and use philosophy to remove the stigma that still attaches to dark feelings. When we embrace our difficult feelings, she argues, we realize that hidden within them can be found wit and humor, closeness and warmth, connection and purpose, mission and motivation, empathy and self-knowledge, accuracy and communion. Drawing on philosophers and thinkers from Aristotle to Kierkegaard and Miguel de Unamuno to C.S. Lewis as well as contemporary philosophers such as Gloria Anzaldúa, Maria Lugones and bell hooks (as well as Fred "Mister" Rogers; more below!), Alessandri aims show how these thinkers helped to restore dignity to these feelings. Like them her aim is not to correct us but to help us feel, understand, and honor our sometimes painful emotions"--