Sentiment and Sentimentality: Affective Attachment in Life and Art

The received view holds that to judge something or someone as sentimental is to condemn. This account holds that an emotion is sentimental where it is excessive, misjudges its object and involves savouring a positive self-image. This paper presents two different challenges to the received view. First, the positive idealizations of sentimentality are no worse than other cognitive biases pervasive in our ordinary mental life. Moreover, where, as is often the case, sentimentality is good for our well-being, sentimentality looks broadly rational. Second, and more radically, sentimentality is not always to be evaluated in epistemic terms. Rather, sentimentality, often at least, is a matter of reminding us of or re-orientating our non-cognitive affective attachments. Sentimental works can renew or revolutionize our affective attachments for the good, whether that be towards love, family, causes, or the oppressed. Hence, in both art and life, sentimentality is sometimes a very good thing.