Emotions and Human Flourishing

Abstract This chapter takes up the question, ‘Why does it matter which way we negotiate the BED framework (therein pathologizing distressing emotions or otherwise)?’ Here, I consider two very different conceptions of flourishing: on one conception (which I call the ‘health-based conception of flourishing’ (HF)), it doesn’t make much of a difference either way. However, on an altogether different conception of flourishing (termed the ‘excellence-based conception of flourishing’ (EF)), I argue that it makes all the difference which way we negotiate the BED framework. What the EF conception of flourishing helps us to recover is a distinctly agential dimension in the human experience of emotions—a dimension that is obscured by the pathologization of distressing emotions, and the HF more broadly.