Are emotions (or, at least, the most "basic" emotions)
universal phenomena, invariant from culture to culture? Do
the various names for emotions in different cultures simply
refer to the same phenomena or are they prone to those
extraordinarily difficult translation and mutual
understanding problems? Why does the universalist thesis seem
so appealing (apart from the uninspiring answer that people
simply assume what they do not know)? The metaphor that
people are "deep down" alike is itself tantalizing, as are a
great many metaphors concerning the emotions, but we
understand here clearly enough what is being asserted.
Stripping away the various layers of language and culture,
different terms, different modes of expression, different
idioms, different concepts and contexts, different religious
beliefs and practices, different rules about property and
propriety, different conceptions of right and wrong, and
different social "temperaments" that are cultivated through
breeding and upbringing, we seem to be left with a being that
is in some sense perfectly "natural," who has only the wiring
and the wisdom that God or nature provided, and whatever
emotions remain have no longer been determined by the
particularities of this or that culture or society. What
seems so plausible is the idea that there are such emotions,
although, to be sure, they will be (by their very nature)
rather crude and unsophisticated.