Emotions are the focus of intense debate both in contemporary philosophy and psychology, and increasingly also in the history of ideas. Simo Knuuttila presents a comprehensive survey of philosophical theories of emotion from Plato to Renaissance times, combining rigorous philosophical analysis with careful historical reconstruction. The first part of the book covers the conceptions of Plato and Aristotle and later ancient views from Stoicism to Neoplatonism and, in addition, their reception and transformation by early Christian thinkers from (...) Clement and Origen to Augustine and Cassian. Knuuttila then proceeds to a discussion of ancient themes in medieval thought, and of new medieval conceptions, codified in the so-called faculty psychology from Avicenna to Aquinas, in thirteenth century taxonomies, and in the voluntarist approach of Duns Scotus, William Ockham, and their followers. Philosophers, classicists, historians of philosophy, historians of psychology, and anyone interested in emotion will find much to stimulate them in this fascinating book. (shrink)

This study addresses two desiderata of historical emotion research: reflecting on the interdependence of textual functions and the representation of emotions, and acknowledging the interdependence of studies on the premodern and modern periods in the history of emotion. Contemporary research on the history of emotion is characterised by a proliferation of studies on very different eras, authors, themes, texts, and aspects. The enthusiasm and confidence with which situations, actions, and interactions involving emotions in history are (...) discovered, however, has led to overly direct attempts to access the represented objects (emotions/feelings/affects); as a result, too little attention has been paid to the conditions and functions of their representations. That is why this study engages with the emotion research of historians from an unashamedly philological perspective. Such an approach provides, among other things, insights into the varied, often contradictory, observations that can be made about the history of emotion in modernity and premodernity. (shrink)

New materialism challenges conventional theories of understanding human being and subjectivity, which it regards as shaped by mechanistic models characteristic of early modern philosophy that regarded matter as largely passive. Instead it gives weight to topics often overlooked in such accounts: the body, the role of affect and the emotions, gender, temporality, agency and vitalism. This collection, which includes an international roster of contributors from philosophy, history, literature and science, is the first to ask what is (...) 'new' about the new materialism and place it in interdisciplinary perspective. Against current theories of new materialism it argues for a deeper engagement with materialism's history; questions whether matter can be 'lively'; and asks whether new materialism's wish to revitalize of politics and the political lives up to its promise. (shrink)

The history of emotions is one of the fastest growing fields in current historical debate, and this is the first book-length introduction to the field, synthesizing the current research, and offering direction for future study. This book is organized around the debate between social constructivist and universalist theories of emotion that has shaped most emotions research in a variety of disciplines for more than a hundred years: social constructivists believe that emotions are largely learned and subject (...) to historical change, while universalists insist on the timelessness and pan-culturalism of emotions. In historicizing and problematizing this binary, Jan Plamper opens emotions research beyond constructivism and universalism; he also maps a vast terrain of thought about feelings in anthropology, philosophy, sociology, linguistics, art history, political science, the life sciences - from nineteenth-century experimental psychology to the latest affective neuroscience - and history, from ancient times to the present day. (shrink)

Philosophical reflection on the emotions has a long history stretching back to classical Greek thought, even though at times philosophers have marginalized or denigrated them in favour of reason. Fourteen leading philosophers here offer a broad survey of the development of our understanding of the emotions. The thinkers they discuss include Aristotle, Aquinas, Ockham, Descartes, Malebranche, Spinoza, Hobbes, Hume, Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, Kant, Schiller, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, James, Brentano, Stumpf, Scheler, Heidegger, and Sartre. Central issues include the taxonomy of (...) the emotions; the distinction between emotions, passions, feelings and moods; the relation between the emotions and reason; the relationship between the self and the emotions. At a metaphilosophical level, the collection also raises issues about the value of historical study of the discipline, and what light it can shed on contemporary concerns. Thinking about the Emotions is a fascinating and illuminating collective study of how philosophers have grappled with this most intriguing part of our nature as beings who feel as well as think and act. (shrink)

Princess Diana’s death was a tragedy that provoked mourning across the globe; the death of a homeless person, more often than not, is met with apathy. How can we account for this uneven distribution of emotion? Can it simply be explained by the prevailing scientific understanding? Uncovering a rich tradition beginning with Aristotle, _The Secret History of Emotion_ offers a counterpoint to the way we generally understand emotions today. Through a radical rereading of Aristotle, Seneca, Thomas Hobbes, Sarah (...) Fielding, and Judith Butler, among others, Daniel M. Gross reveals a persistent intellectual current that considers emotions as psychosocial phenomena. In Gross’s historical analysis of emotion, Aristotle and Hobbes’s rhetoric show that our passions do not stem from some inherent, universal nature of men and women, but rather are conditioned by power relations and social hierarchies. He follows up with consideration of how political passions are distributed to some people but not to others using the Roman Stoics as a guide. Hume and contemporary theorists like Judith Butler, meanwhile, explain to us how psyches are shaped by power. To supplement his argument, Gross also provides a history and critique of the dominant modern view of emotions, expressed in Darwinism and neurobiology, in which they are considered organic, personal feelings independent of social circumstances. The result is a convincing work that rescues the study of the passions from science and returns it to the humanities and the art of rhetoric. (shrink)

This Handbook presents thirty-one state-of-the-art contributions from the most notable writers on philosophy of emotion today. Anyone working on the nature of emotion, its history, or its relation to reason, self, value, or art, whether at the level of research or advanced study, will find the book an unrivalled resource and a fascinating read.

Richard Sorabji presents a ground-breaking study of ancient Greek views of the emotions and their influence on subsequent theories and attitudes, Pagan and Christian. While the central focus of the book is the Stoics, Sorabji draws on a vast range of texts to give a rich historical survey of how Western thinking about this central aspect of human nature developed.

An exploration of emotional life in the West, considering the varieties, transformations and constants of human emotions over eleven centuries.

Discussions about the nature of the emotions in Hellenistic philosophy have aroused intense scholarly interest over the last few years. The topics covered by the essays in this volume range from the classical background of Hellenistic theories, through debates on emotion in the major Hellenistic schools, to discussions in later antiquity. Special emphasis is placed on the development of the Stoic views on the nature and value of the emotions. The essays are written with a high level (...) of philosophical and classical scholarship, but contain no exclusive technicalities. Audience: This first comprehensive treatment of the emotions in Hellenistic philosophy can be read with pleasure and profit not only by professionals in ancient philosophy but also all those who are interested in the philosophy of mind and its history. (shrink)

v. 1. The history of philosophy and science from ancient times to the present day -- v. 2. The origin of the mental capacities and dispositions of man and their normal, abnormal and supernormal manifestations.

The essay operates an itemisation of the three main streams in the history of emotions: the history of individual emotions, the study of the role that emotions have in historical processes, and the reflection on the influence of emotions on history writing. The second part of the article is devoted to the methodological and theoretical status of the study of past emotions. It highlights how many studies in the history of (...) class='Hi'>emotions remain heavily conditioned by an idea of culture typical of Western philosophy of history. (shrink)

Emotion and feeling have only in the last decade become analytic concepts in the humanities, reflected in what some have called an “affective turn” in the academy at large. The study of emotion has also found a place in science studies and the history and philosophy of science, accompanied by the recognition that even the history of objectivity depends in a dialectical fashion on a history of subjectivity. This topical issue is a contribution to this larger (...) trend across the humanities and the history of science, and yet is circumscribed by attention to a particular kind of emotion or condition for feeling: one centered not in an individual body, but in the interstices between bodies and things, between selves and others – what we call empathy. (shrink)

A comprehensive study of medieval and modern debates surrounding the nature of emotions, this book presents not just a single theory or tradition, but examines Aristotelian, dualist, monist, and even skeptical approaches to emotions. It discusses various cognitive therapies that help us to change or even overcome some emotions.

Why do people respond emotionally to works of fiction they know are make-believe? Boruah tackles this question, which is fundamental aesthetics and literary studies, from a totally new perspective. Bringing together the various answers that have been offered by philosophers from Aristotle to Roger Scruton, he shows that while some philosophers have denied any rational basis to our emotional responses to fiction, others have argued that the emotions evoked by fiction are not real emotions at all. In response (...) to this, Boruah contends that fictional emotions are rational because they are based on the same sorts of beliefs that we form about real situations and real people. He illustrates this argument with literary examples ranging from Shakespeare to Tolstoy. (shrink)

Looking back to the crisis of the Reformation and beyond, Unbelievers shows how, long before philosophers started to make the case for atheism, powerful cultural currents were challenging traditional faith. These tugged in different ways not only on celebrated thinkers such as Machiavelli, Montaigne, Hobbes, and Pascal, but on men and women at every level of society whose voices we hear through their diaries, letters, and court records. Ryrie traces the roots of atheism born of anger, a sentiment familiar to (...) anyone who has ever cursed a corrupt priest, and of doubt born of anxiety, as Christians discovered their faith was flimsier than they had believed. As the Reformation eroded time-honored certainties, Protestant radicals defended their faith by redefining it in terms of ethics. In the process they set in motion secularizing forces that soon became transformational. Unbelievers tells a powerful emotional history of doubt with potent lessons for our own angry and anxious age. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Philosophy of Emotion in Buddhist Philosophy (and a Close Look at Remorse and Regret)Maria HeimIt is an honor to guest-edit a special issue for the Journal of Buddhist Philosophy for its inaugural issue, and even more to be invited to write a somewhat longer article than is typically the privilege of the guest editor. It was thought that something of a broader statement of the (...) state of the field in this emerging subfield of philosophy might itself be useful in situating current work and aspirations for future endeavors.That the study of emotions in Buddhist philosophy is still in its infancy is somewhat surprising given that Buddhist texts offer 2,500 years of exceedingly fine-grained analyses and reflections on experience.1 It could be that scholars have been thrown off by the word "emotion" itself, given that the English term does not map easily onto Buddhist categories. No single term in any Buddhist language does exactly what "emotion" does. Of course, "emotion" does not map precisely onto premodern Western categories of experience (affections, passions, sentiments, and so on) either, and has a notably shallow history even in European contexts, dating in something like its current usage only to the early nineteenth century (see Dixon 2003 for this history). And if "emotion" fits only awkwardly with Buddhist categories, it should occasion no surprise that many of the debates and dichotomies preoccupying Western philosophy on emotions—is emotion affective or cognitive? Physical or mental? Socially constructed or universal? Are emotions feelings? Evaluations? Motivations?—ill fit the debates and discussions that Buddhist texts offer about experience. The modern [End Page 2] Western categories and terms of the discussion may well inhibit Buddhist philosophical participation in these debates.I have found that this predicament is best met by calling into question the putative universalism of the English term and the assumption that "emotion" names a natural or ontological category. Increasingly, philosophers and neuroscientists are casting doubt on the notion that emotion is a natural kind (Rorty 2004; Griffiths 2004; Barrett 2006, 2017). That emotion is not easy to distinguish from feelings, motives, moods, and propositional attitudes, and that lists of emotions, when elaborated, seem hardly to fall into a generic family of phenomena, suggesting that its boundaries and borders are not carved in nature. This has implications for how "emotions" are to be studied in the lab, as Lisa Feldman Barrett suggests; the natural-kind view "underlies the major questions, the experimental designs, and the interpretation of empirical findings that characterize emotion research as a domain of scientific inquiry," even while the empirical evidence increasingly suggests that this view is the "result of an error of arbitrary aggregation" (Barrett 2006). For reasons piling up in the empirical literature, it is coming to look less and less likely that the English term emotion carves nature at the joints.2This situation can help us shake free of "emotion" early on, even if we may not be able to part entirely with it. A special issue on "the philosophy of emotion" gestures toward the kinds of phenomena these papers take up, even if they vary in the extent to which they find "emotion" to be analytically useful when interpreting Buddhist texts. Indeed, stepping away from assumptions of English-language universalism clears the deck for looking at very different, but no less meticulous and reflective, ways of carving up experiences of the very sort we do get in Buddhist texts. The way forward, in my view, is to permit English words like emotion, affect, and feeling to open the door to the kinds of phenomena we might want to investigate. We can at the same time resist tightly defining what these English terms mean, defending the borders around them, or closely tethering Buddhist conceptions to them. Working with Buddhist categories and meta-categories suggests ways to treat experiences that are, from the ground up, different than the modern West. These in turn can interrupt its supposed universalism and offer fresh questions and interventions.For example, Emily McRae's paper in this issue on kleśas—dysfunctional mental states—offers a Buddhist intervention for how philosophers might reconfigure and aggregate experience differently... (shrink)

In his discussions of “sensibility” and “feeling,” Hegel has a compelling interpretation of the emotional foundations of experience. I begin by situating “mood” within the context of “sensibility,” and then focus on the inherently “outwardizing” or self-externalizing character of mood. I then consider the different modes of moody self-externalization, for the sake of determining why we express ourselves in language. I conclude by demonstrating why the notions of emotion and spirit are necessarily linked.

This volume is the result of a three-year collaboration (funded by the American Council of Learned Societies and the British Academy) between scholars of early China and of ancient/Hellenistic Greece to investigate the emergent discourses of emotions in philosophy, medicine, and literature from around the fifth century BCE to the second century CE. It brings together scholars working on the history and philosophy of emotions in the two ancient traditions, and with different areas of expertise, (...) to investigate the emotions and their conceptualization at a crucial period in the cultural and intellectual development of both cultures. The project was motivated by a desire to make an intervention in the existing scholarship on emotions in both fields, which stands to benefit from a greater methodological self-awareness about the category of emotions and the kinds of commitments it entails. The volume aims to explore how the tools of cross-cultural and cross-disciplinary investigation might be deployed to advance our understanding of the emotions in the two ancient societies and to use that understanding as a contribution to current research on the emotions more generally. (shrink)

ABSTRACTThe philosophers of the self-styled ‘revolution in philosophy’ that went on to become the contemporary analytic tradition started a rumour about the British Idealists that has persisted to this day. Finding neither the substance of the idealist case, nor the style of idealistic writing, congenial to their modern taste, these Edwardians hinted that their Victorian forbears had argued from emotion rather than reason. No single paper could address this accusation across the board, for the movement in its entirety, and (...) so in this essay I focus on just one case, that of F. H. Bradley. Specifically, I identify the role he allows to feeling, emotion and what he terms ‘satisfaction’ in the determination of metaphysical and moral principles, and further ask whether the critics of idealism were right that there was something untoward in his approach. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Bergsonism and the History of Analytic Philosophy by Andreas VrahimisLeonard LawlorAndreas Vrahimis. Bergsonism and the History of Analytic Philosophy. History of Analytic Philosophy. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2022. Pp. xix + 395. Hardback, $139.99.Bergsonism and the History of Analytic Philosophy is a great achievement in the history of ideas in general. The wealth of historical details that Andreas Vrahimis musters (...) indicates that he has a profound understanding of twentieth-century philosophy. More importantly, this book overflows with philosophical insights. The wealth of insights indicates that Bergsonism and the History of Analytic Philosophy is also a great achievement in philosophy as such. Andreas Vrahimis has written a remarkable book.Bergsonism and the History of Analytic Philosophy presents the origins of the division between analytic philosophy and continental philosophy. This story is familiar, with analytic philosophy siding with science and continental with poetry; with analytic philosophy being a kind of rationalism and continental a kind of irrationalism; with analytic philosophy using a writing style of dry, logical argumentation and continental using a writing style of images and emotions; and finally, with analytic philosophy writing only of what can be expressed and continental writing of the ineffable. Yet, Bergsonism and the History of Analytic Philosophy tells a story that is unfamiliar and even novel. The genealogy Vrahimis lays out is not of the rift between analytic philosophy and phenomenology (although this rift appears in the book's final chapters) but between analytic philosophy and Bergson. As Vrahimis clearly shows, the popularity of Bergson's thought at the beginning of the twentieth century caused the split, and even the hostility, between analytic and continental [End Page 332] philosophy. Therefore, Vrahimis does not title his book Bergson and the History of Analytic Philosophy, but Bergsonism and the History of Analytic Philosophy (2). Bergsonism is the popular view of Bergson's thought. It turned Bergson's thought into a "fad" (263). But Bergsonism contained many misunderstandings of Bergson. In the early twentieth century, Bergson was, in short, "a misunderstood celebrity." Unfortunately for Bergson's legacy, Bergson himself allowed Bergsonism to flourish as a cultural movement. Until The Creative Mind (published in 1934 in France as La pensée et le mouvant, after "the demise of Bergsonism"), Bergson never attempted to correct the misinterpretations of his thought that Bergsonism presented. Chapter by chapter, Vrahimis shows how the analytic philosophy criticisms leveled against Bergson are based in Bergsonism's distortions of Bergson's thought. The founding members of analytic philosophy aimed their attacks at a strawman Bergson.Bergsonism and the History of Analytic Philosophy's first three chapters set the stage for the analytic philosophers' attacks on Bergson. In fact, chapter 3 contains one of the clearest summaries of Bergson's thought I have ever read. Then, the book is arranged chronologically, starting with William James's 1905 "The Experience of Activity" in chapter 4 and ending with Ryle's 1958 "Phenomenology versus The Concept of Mind" in chapter 12. William James is not one of Bergson's critics. Chapter 4 shows how James praised Bergson's thought because of its similarity with pragmatism. This praise popularized Bergson's thought and thus led to Bergsonism. Chapters 4 through 12 (there is also a chapter 13 that serves as the book's conclusion) concern specific philosophers' criticisms of Bergson and then, in the final chapters, specific philosophers' criticisms of Lebensphilosophie and continental philosophy. There are chapters on Russell, Karin Costelloe-Stephen, L. Susan Stebbing, Neurath and the Vienna Circle (against Lebensphilosophie), Schlick (against Bergson as the originator of Lebensphilosophie), Carnap and Ayer (against Heidegger and Sartre), and Ryle (against Husserl). Most of the chapters concern the criticisms that resulted from Bergson's valorization of intuition as a source of knowledge. Bergson's definitions of intuition contribute to the belief that he is antiscience and an anti-intellectualist. Because intuition is introspection, it even suggests that Bergson's own philosophy is a kind of individualism. Because intuition is inexpressible, it also raises the problem that Bergson's own intuition of time as duration cannot be verified; rather, it can be challenged only by someone else's own intuition. Chapter 11 then shows how Heideggerian Angst challenges... (shrink)

Jesse Prinz argues that recent work in philosophy, neuroscience, and anthropology supports two radical hypotheses about the nature of morality: moral values are based on emotional responses, and these emotional responses are inculcated by culture, not hard-wired through natural selection. In the first half of the book, Jesse Prinz defends the hypothesis that morality has an emotional foundation. Evidence from brain imaging, social psychology, and psychopathology suggest that, when we judge something to be right or wrong, we are merely (...) expressing our emotions. Prinz argues that these emotions do not track objective features of reality; rather, the rightness and wrongness of an act consists in the fact that people are disposed to have certain emotions towards it. In the second half of the book, he turns to a defense of moral relativism. Moral facts depend on emotional responses, and emotional responses vary from culture to culture. Prinz surveys the anthropological record to establish moral variation, and he draws on cultural history to show how attitudes toward practices such as cannibalism and marriage change over time. He also criticizes evidence from animal behavior and child development that has been taken to support the claim that moral attitudes are hard-wired by natural selection. Prinz concludes that there is no single true morality, but he also argues that some moral values are better than others; moral progress is possible. Throughout the book, Prinz relates his views to contemporary and historical work in philosophical ethics. His views echo themes in the writings of David Hume and Friedrich Nietzsche, but Prinz supports, extends, and revises these classic theories using the resources of cutting-edge cognitive science. The Emotional Construction of Morals will stimulate and challenge anyone who is curious about the nature and origin of moral values. (shrink)

This book presents a comprehensive, accessible survey of Western philosophy of music from Pythagoras to the present. Its narrative traces themes and schools through history, in a sequence of five chapters that survey the ancient, medieval, early modern, modern and contemporary periods. Its wide-ranging coverage includes medieval Islamic thinkers, Continental and analytic thinkers, and neglected female thinkers such as Vernon Lee (Violet Paget). All aspects of the philosophy of music are discussed, including music and the cosmos, music's (...) value, music's relation to the other arts, the problem of opera, the origins of musical genius, music's emotional impact, the moral effects of music, the ontology of musical works, and the relevance of music's historical context. The volume will be valuable for students and scholars in philosophy and musicology, and all who are interested in the ways in which philosophers throughout history have thought about music. (shrink)

This chapter focuses on fundamental trends in the philosophy of emotion since the publication of William James’ seminal and contentious view. James is famous for his claim that undergoing an emotion comes down to feeling (psychological mode) specific changes within the body (content). Philosophers writing after him have also attempted to analyse emotional modes in terms of other psychological modes (believing, desiring, and perceiving) and to adjust their contents accordingly. The discussion is organized around a series of contrasts that (...) have played fundamental roles in shaping these approaches to the emotions. These contrasts are those between emotions and feelings, between specific and unspecific phenomenology, and between dependent and independent modes. Focus on these contrasts enables a review of some dramatic turning points in the recent history of theorizing about the emotions; it also serves to bring to light fundamental constraints bearing on emotion theory. (shrink)

Explores boredom's intellectual history from its early origins to the modern day. Essential reading for students and researchers in the history of philosophy, emotion studies, phenomenology, and moral psychology. It will also interest scholars in religion, classics, sociology, and the history of psychology.

In his new book Emotion: The Basics, Michael S. Brady introduces the fundamentals on the philosophical approach to emotions: by fleshing out these basic tenets Brady provides insight into a core component of all our lives and covers the nature of emotions, their relationship to knowledge and understanding, and their relationship to our moral and social selves. In my comments, I value the achievements of Brady's work as well as explore a critical approach to the book in which (...) I emphasise how the book deals with the dichotomy between emotions and reasons. I also engage with the limitations that emerge from a viewpoint of a scholar specialised on the history of philosophy and epistemology, and point towards some puzzles that ought to be further considered. (shrink)

“Studies on the emotions became popular in the analytically oriented philosophy of mind in the 1980s” , the author begins, but the status of emotion as reason’s rival or complement in the directing of human nature is, of course, of perennial interest to philosophy per se. True, the topic has acquired a certain prominence in recent decades, and this has led to useful historical investigations, although, as the author says, many more of them have been on (...) class='Hi'>emotions in ancient than in medieval philosophy . In four chapters, he presents a continuous history of philosophical reflection on emotion from Plato to the fourteenth-century Franciscan Adam Wodeham, and late medieval compendia. Along the way he summarizes and comments on a large number of texts in whole or in part, regularly quotes from them in English translation, and often supplies the more significant Greek and Latin terms. For discussion of ancient theories, he acknowledges reliance on works by Martha Nussbaum and Richard Sorabji, but his scholarship extends to a wide range of primary sources and other historical studies. His recognition of the bearing of both theological and medical works on his subject is noteworthy: it is a mark of the singularity of emotion—or, as it is. (shrink)

Ranging from Antiquity to contemporary analytic philosophy, this book provides a concise but thorough analysis of the arguments developed by some of the most outstanding philosophers of all times. Besides the aesthetics of music proper, the volume touches upon metaphysics, ethics, philosophy of language, psychology, anthropology, and scientific developments that have influenced the philosophical explanations of music. Starting from the very origins of philosophy in Western thought (Pythagoras, Plato, Aristotle) the book talks about what music is according (...) to Augustine, Descartes, Leibniz, Rousseau, Kant, Hegel, the Romantics, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, Wittgenstein, Susanne Langer, Bloch, Adorno, and many others. Recent developments within the analytic tradition are illustrated with particular attention to the ontology of the musical artwork and to the problem of music and emotions. (shrink)

In this paper, I focus on Edmund Husserl’s analyses of the act of approval and the role he attributes to it in his ethics. I show that we can deepen our understanding of both if we rely on his critical reflections on Shaftesbury’s theory of affections in his lecture course Einleitung in die Ethik. The sections of this course devoted to Shaftesbury are the only place in Husserl’s later philosophical production where he addresses the need to clarify the nature of (...) approval from a phenomenological point of view and provides precise indications about the role that such emotions play in our life. I thereby examine Husserl’s criticisms of Shaftesbury’s account of reflective emotions, and I compare these criticisms with Husserl’s account of approval in the texts from the Konvolut über Billigung collected in the Studien zur Struktur des Bewusstseins. I argue that, according to Husserl, approval is an essential but not sufficient component in the pursuit of virtue. The upshot is that crucial parts of Husserl’s ethics come from a radical and original reworking of central notions of the early modern sentimentalist tradition. (shrink)

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:The Secret History of Emotion: From Aristotle's ‘Rhetoric’ to Modern Brain ScienceMichael J. HydeThe Secret History of Emotion: From Aristotle's ‘Rhetoric’ to Modern Brain Science. Daniel M. Gross. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006. Pp. x + 194. $35.00, Hardcover.The twofold goal of this book is clearly stated by its author: "to reconstitute by way of critical intellectual history a deeply nuanced, rhetorical understanding of (...) emotion that prevailed until the triumph of psychophysiology; second, to show by way of literary and philosophical example how this rhetorical perspective helps us read anew the emotional complex of modernity, whether early or late" (8). Gross' appreciation of the function of emotion emphasizes a phenomenological orientation that is inspired by Martin Heidegger's unpublished 1924 lecture course on Aristotle's Rhetoric. Gross recently co-edited with Ansgar Kemmann a book of original essays dedicated to a critical assessment of this lecture course (Gross and Kemmann 2006). In concluding her contribution to the book, the well-known Renaissance scholar Nancy S. Struever maintains that the course "remains, arguably, the best twentieth-century reading of Aristotle's Rhetoric" (Struever 2006: 127). Gross advances this reading with his creative and insightful assessment of his topic.This advance unfolds as Gross, abiding by phenomenology's well-known critique of the matter, takes issue with the reductive psychophysiology of emotion that Descartes first proposed and that informs latter-day sciences of the mind and the brain. Gross turns to the research program of the distinguished cognitive scientist Antonio Damasio as a way of arguing "how brain science of emotion goes awry when it blunders into social fact" (29). The reductionism of science, in other words, misses the forest for the trees. Admitting that Damasio is open to inquiries outside the boundaries of neurobiology, Gross nevertheless takes particular issue with Damasio's model for such a project: Edward O. Wilson's, Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge. Indeed, Wilson never gives rhetoric a nod when he acknowledges the worth of the humanities in his book.This slight, coming from Wilson, Damasio, and other scientists, fuels Gross's enthusiasm for turning to Aristotle's analysis of the pathe in book two of the Rhetoric. With Aristotle's discussion of "anger" in mind, for example, Gross emphasizes how we live in "a contoured world of emotional investments, where some people have significantly more liabilities than others" (3). [End Page 326]The point warrants elaboration: "The contours of our emotional world have been shaped by institutions such as slavery and poverty that simply afford some people greater emotional range than others, as they are shaped by publicity that has nothing to do with the inherent values of each human life and everything to do with technologies of social recognition and blindness" (4). Gross links this Aristotelian based social-psychological insight with such early modern philosophers, psychologists, and cultural critics as Thomas Hobbes, David Hume, William Perfect, and then with such contemporary intellectuals as Judith Butler. Gross' discussion of this linkage enables him to argue a key point in his overall project: the constitutive power of emotions depends not on how the social passions originate in a moral sense equally shared by all, but rather on the "uneven distribution" of these passions in our social and political lives.Gross makes much of how the rhetoric of this uneven distribution is at work in such particular cases as Aristotle's apathetic slave, Seneca's angry tyrant, Hobbes's resentful preacher, Sarah Fielding's humble hero, and Adam Smith's compassionate spectator. Gross's intellectual acumen shines as he weaves together these cases and expands on their implications for developing a rhetorical understanding of emotion. For example, in chapter three ("Virtues of Passivity in the English Civil War"), Gross offers a critical assessment of Michael Walzer's classic The Revolution of the Saints: A Study in the Origins of Radical Politics in order to show how the emotional makeup of passivity, too often "relegated to a diminished femininity" (87), not only informs the virtue of humility, but also helps it serve rhetorically "the most dramatic revolutionary ends" (110). Additional extended case studies emphasize the specific emotions of apathy, pride, pity... (shrink)

New materialism challenges conventional theories of understanding human being and subjectivity, which it regards as shaped by mechanistic models characteristic of early modern philosophy that regarded matter as largely passive. Instead it gives weight to topics often overlooked in such accounts: the body, the role of affect and the emotions, gender, temporality, agency and vitalism. This collection, which includes an international roster of contributors from philosophy, history, literature and science, is the first to ask what is (...) 'new' about the new materialism and place it in interdisciplinary perspective. Against current theories of new materialism it argues for a deeper engagement with materialism's history; questions whether matter can be 'lively'; and asks whether new materialism's wish to revitalize of politics and the political lives up to its promise. (shrink)

The challenge of explaining the emotions has engaged the attention of the best minds in philosophy and science throughout history. Part of the fascination has been that the emotions resist classification. As adequate account therefore requires receptivity to knowledge from a variety of sources. The philosopher must inform himself of the relevant empirical investigation to arrive at a definition, and the scientist cannot afford to be naive about the assumptions built into his conceptual apparatus. The contributors (...) to this volume have approached the problem of characterizing and classifying emotions from the perspectives of neurophysiology, psychology, and social psychology as well as that of philosophical psychology. They discuss the difficulties that arise in classifying the emotions, assessing their appropriateness and rationality, and determining their function in motivating moral action. (shrink)

Much has been said on particular feelings that appear in Nietzsche's works, such as pity, revenge, altruism, guilt, shame, and ressentiment. But there has not been a significant study on Nietzsche's overall teachings on feeling and emotion. What does Nietzsche mean by feeling and the related phenomena? Out of such disparate types of feelings and disparate reflections by Nietzsche on them, can one make sense or can one speak of a theory of feelings in Nietzsche? If so, how does this (...) theory fit with his philosophy of value? On the other hand, how do his teachings relate to some of the later concepts of his philosophy such as the overhuman, the will to power and the eternal return of the same? While the book will contextualize Nietzsche's emotive theory in relation to other emotive theories in the history of ideas, it will also explore Nietzsche's influence on later generations in this area. (shrink)

Voltaire called fanaticism the "monster that pretends to be the child of religion". Philosophers, politicians, and cultural critics have decried fanaticism and attempted to define the distinctive qualities of the fanatic, whom Winston Churchill described as "someone who can't change his mind and won't change the subject". Yet despite fanaticism's role in the long history of social discord, human conflict, and political violence, it remains a relatively neglected topic in the history of philosophy. In this outstanding inquiry (...) into the philosophical history of fanaticism a team of international contributors examine the topic from antiquity to the present day. Organised into four sections, topics covered include: Fanaticism in ancient Greek, Indian and Chinese philosophy; Fanaticism and superstition from Hobbes to Hume, including chapters on Locke and Montesquieu, Shaftesbury, and Hutcheson; Kant, Germaine de Stael, Hegel, Nietzsche, William James, and Jorge Portilla on fanaticism; Fanaticism and terrorism; and extremism and gender, including the philosophy and morality of the 'manosphere'; Closed-mindedness and political and epistemological fanaticism. Spanning themes from superstition, enthusiasm and misanthropy to the emotions, purity and the need for certainty, Fanaticism and the History of Philosophy is a landmark volume for anyone researching and teaching the history of philosophy, particularly ethics and moral philosophy. It is also a valuable resource for those studying fanaticism in related fields such as religion, the history of political thought, sociology, and the history of ideas. (shrink)

For the passions represent a force of excess and lawlessness in humanity that produces troubling, confusing paradoxes.In this book, noted European philosopher Michel Meyer offers a wide-ranging exegesis, the first of its kind, that ...

In this paper, I would like to show, in general terms, the Husserlian sources of the way in which von Hildebrand understands emotive consciousness, while still recognizing important differences beween the two authors. To carry out this task I will develop four points of contact between the two thinkers: (1) the idea of the existence of a priori laws in the emotional sphere, (2) the defense of spiritual (geistige) forms of affectivity, (3) the idea that affective responses to value can (...) be correct or incorrect, that is, adequate or not according to the value to which they respond, and (4) the existence of a kind of emotive evidence (Gemütsevidenz) that parallels evidence in the realm of judgment. (shrink)

An account of the conflict between our positive and negative emotional relationships to the Earth and how they will be resolved for the Symbiocene, the next period in the history of the Earth.

This book contends that when late eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century writers sought to explain the origins of emotions, they often discovered that their feelings may not really have been their own. It explores the paradoxes of representing feelings in philosophy, aesthetic theory, gender ideology, literature, and popular sentimentality, and it argues that this period's obsession with sentimental, wayward emotion was inseparable from the dilemmas resulting from attempts to locate the origins of feelings in experience. The book shows how (...) these epistemological dilemmas became gendered by studying a series of extravagantly affective scenes in works by Hume, Wordsworth, Charlotte Smith, and Jane Austen. Making its argument through a provocative conjunction of texts that range across genres and genders and across the divide between the eighteenth century and Romanticism, Strange Fits of Passion rediscovers the relationship of empiricism to the culture of sentimentality, and the significance of emotion to Romanticism. (shrink)

A History of Modern Aesthetics narrates the history of philosophical aesthetics from the beginning of the eighteenth century through the twentieth century. Aesthetics began with Aristotle's defense of the cognitive value of tragedy in response to Plato's famous attack on the arts in The Republic, and cognitivist accounts of aesthetic experience have been central to the field ever since. But in the eighteenth century, two new ideas were introduced: that aesthetic experience is important because of emotional impact - (...) precisely what Plato criticized - and because it is a pleasurable free play of many or all of our mental powers. This three-volume set tells how these ideas have been synthesized or separated by both the best-known and lesser-known aestheticians of modern times, focusing on Britain, France and Germany in the eighteenth century; Germany and Britain in the nineteenth; and Germany, Britain and the United States in the twentieth. (shrink)

The Genealogy takes a historical form. But does the history play an essential role in Nietzsche's critique of modern morality? In this essay, I argue that the answer is yes. The Genealogy employs history in order to show that acceptance of modern morality was causally responsible for producing a dramatic change in our affects, drives, and perceptions. This change led agents to perceive actual increases in power as reductions in power, and actual decreases in power as increases in (...) power. Moreover, it led agents to experience negative emotions when engaging in activities that constitute greater manifestations of power, and positive emotions when engaging in activities that reduce power. For these reasons, modern morality strongly disposes agents to reduce their own power. Given Nietzsche’s argument that power has a privileged normative status, these facts entail that we have a reason to reject modern morality. (shrink)

(2002). Emotive meaning and Christian mysteries in Berkeley’s Alciphron. British Journal for the History of Philosophy: Vol. 10, No. 3, pp. 401-411. doi: 10.1080/09608780210143218.

This book is the first to offer a full account of the philosophical work of Else Voigtländer. Locating the sources of her thought in the philosophy and psychology of the 19th and 20th centuries in figures such as Nietzsche and Lipps, the book uncovers and examines Voigtländer’s intellectual exchanges with both phenomenology and psychoanalysis. The major themes within her work are also considered in light of more recent developments in the philosophy of emotion, self, and sociality.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Reviewed by:Passion and Action: The Emotions in Seventeenth-Century Philosophy by Susan JamesRichard A. WatsonSusan James. Passion and Action: The Emotions in Seventeenth-Century Philosophy. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997. Pp. vii + 318. Cloth, $35.00.Susan James shows how during the seventeenth century philosophers moved from the three souls of Aristotle and the tripartite soul of Thomas Aquinas in which passions and reasons compete for the (...) attention of the will, to a Cartesian view of man as a single soul in union with the body who wills under the influence of both passions and reasons, to a Hobbesian view that the soul is the body and that the bodily motions we call reasons and passions are desires; acts of will are merely the deciding desires in deterministic causal sequences of the material motions of the body that constitute desires. This sets up the contemporary view that, motions are caused by desires and beliefs, leaving behind the difficulties of integrating with one another Aristotelian souls, Thomistic faculties, and Cartesian mind and body. James conceives of this evolution as one of unification of mental and bodily powers, and of integration of the active and passive powers of the mind. This concourse also represents a development from theories meant to explain to theories calculated for control and finally to theories facilitating therapy. Aristotle and Thomas adapted their ontologies to perceived differences in powers and faculties, while Descartes and Hobbes worked toward an ideal of unity of science and nature. The Christian Descartes brought together all the substances and powers of nature under a single extended matter divided into parts by the single force of motion, but he excepted the human soul with its power of will to alter the course of nature. The atheist Hobbes simply dispensed with supernatural [End Page 168] mental substance and occult power of will in order to integrate the whole of nature (including sensing and reasoning) under a cause and effect sequence of moving material bodies in which the last desire in a sequence of human bodily motions is designated as an act of will.James intends her book “as a contribution to the reinstatement of the emotions within philosophy, to the… opinion that we need to take account of our emotional life if we are to understand… moral motivation and growth, the springs of action (rational and otherwise), and the nature of reasoning” (22). She agrees that the sharp division between ideas and passions or emotions is properly abolished to be replaced by the view that all ideas have an emotional component, and all passions an ideational component. This fits with the parallel development of the notion that all sensible perceptions are propositional, and the somewhat less widespread notion that all concepts have a sensible component.But did this development result in a view of passions and ideas, learning and knowing, thinking and action, that is more true to nature than Aristotelian ontology? It is very hard to answer this question, and despite her sympathies with the notion that all human thought is both conceptual and emotional, James does not try. The reason we don’t know lies under the surface of the movement from Aristotle to Hobbes (i.e., to Daniel Dennett) like a monster in the deep. The monster is the monotheistic God, the perfection and unity of which underlies the Western drive to a unitary view of nature including man. The possibility that this God could be a deceiver, and so all our sensations and ideas might not represent the real world, set up Cartesianism and modern hypothetico-deductive science. But lurking throughout James’ book is a more palpable dreadnought, a demoness, the woman Eve. The female is responsible for the Fall of Man, and thus the fear and suspicion of women that suffuses patriarchic Christianity, and is expressed openly by such philosophers as Malebranche. Bodily passions and emotions (particularly the concupiscent ones) are nasty, evil, irrational, overpowering; to wit, they are feminine. They are not to be trusted, and must be subdued. So while still driven by ideals of monotheism, Descartes and Hobbes do move beyond the dogmatic Christian association of the emotions with female treachery. Even so... (shrink)