Mastering Disgust: Macabre Visualizations and Retrofitted Emotions

Meditative visualization of corpses, cremation grounds, and the incorporation of foul bodily substances pervades the history of Indian Buddhism. Some of these macabre visualizations aim to cultivate disgust (aśubha bhāvanā) for benign objects; others, rooted in Tantric traditions, invoke similar imagery to eliminate disgust for foul, putrid objects. If disgust is fitting when it accurately evaluates its object as contaminating or putrid, both types of visualization seem to generate misfit emotions. Yet philosophers who discussed these practices saw the resulting emotions as fitting and rational. Taking their justifications seriously can inform contemporary philosophical conversations around emotional cultivation and rationality. I argue that some cultivated emotions are best understood as “retrofit” emotions with a complex structure, and that imaginative simulation has an important role to play in emotional retrofitting.