Limited distribution phenomena related to negation and negative polarity are usually thought of in terms of affectivity where affective is understood as negative or downward entailing. In this paper I propose an analysis of affective contexts as nonveridical and treat negative polarity as a manifestation of the more general phenomenon of sensitivity to (non)veridicality (which is, I argue, what affective dependencies boil down to). Empirical support for this analysis will be provided by a detailed examination of affective dependencies in Greek, (...) but the distribution of any will also be shown to follow from (non)veridicality. (shrink)

The puzzle is this: I argue that for Reid, moral sense needs benevolent affections – i.e. some of our animal, non-cognitive principles of action – to apply the rules of duty. But he also thinks that duty can conflict with benevolent affections. So what happens in these conflict cases? I will argue that Reid takes moral psychology seriously and that he believes that our natural benevolent affections can be used as indicators of duty. Although creative, his account (...) has a major problem, because he does not resolve certain conflicts that arise between what action a duty prescribes and what action a natural affection, associated to that duty, inclines us to do. (shrink)

Taxonomy and terminology might seem like dull topics. But the diverse ways that eighteenth-century philosophers identified and classified the emotions crucially shaped the approaches they took. This chapter traces the sources available to eighteenth-century British philosophers for naming and ordering the passions, lays out the main vocabulary and concepts used for description and analysis, including the notions of “reflection” and “sympathy,” and outlines the principles that organized explanation, such as the division of the passions into the pleasurable or painful, and (...) the selfish or social, as well as the role of “master passions.”. (shrink)

This book reconstructs and interprets the theory of the emotions as expounded by the Stoic philosopher Chrysippus in his 'On Affections', only fragments of which remain. Given its contextual approach, sources such as Galen and Cicero receive ample attention.

The present article is divided into two parts: the first focuses on the affections of the soul in general, while the second part investigates the case of melancholy, as it is studied from Aristotle and the Stoics to Galen. The main point of the first part is an analysis of the Chrysippean treatise On the Affections of the Soul as it appears in the Galenic treatise On the Doctrines of Hippocrates and Plato. The analysis identifies several Chry­sippean influences (...) from Plato and Aristotle regarding the psyche. In the second part, the case of melancholy is analyzed through the pseudo-Ar­istotelian treatise Problem XXX 1. The discussion shows the common points between the Aristotelian text and the Chrysippean fragments regarding the issue of melancholy. This article aims to bring to light the evolution of the phenomenon of melancholy in Galen’s thought, which is connected with the study of both medical and philosophical texts already existing before him. (shrink)

Aristotle recognises preternatural affections in numerous passages from his ethical writings, where he claims that some desires and emotions are beyond human nature, too strong for our nature to withstand, and that an action motivated by them is συγγνωμονικὸν: something excusable. However, there has been some reluctance among scholars to explicitly acknowledge that Aristotle recognised preternatural affections as a category of excuse in its own right. The aim of this paper is to remove the obstacles that stand in (...) the way of such a recognition, and to show that Aristotle developed a normative account of preternatural affections, based on the natural human capacity to withstand, allowing him to class them as genuine cases of βία, compulsion. (shrink)

An Essay on the Nature and Conduct of the Passions and Affections, with Illustrations on the Moral Sense (1728), jointly with Francis Hutcheson’s earlier work Inquiry into the Original of Our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue (1725), presents one of the most original and wide-ranging moral philosophies of the eighteenth century. These two works, each comprising two semi-autonomous treatises, were widely translated and vastly influential throughout the eighteenth century in England, continental Europe, and America. -/- The two works had (...) their greatest impact in Scotland and influenced many well-known Scottish philosophers, particularly those writing after the last Jacobite upheaval, in 1745. This can be seen in the concern of the post-1745 generation with analyzing human nature as the foundation of moral theory, with the “moral sense” and moral epistemology more generally, with the impartial spectator and the calm passions, and with the independence of benevolence from self-interest. In addition to the influence of his writings, Hutcheson was also a famed teacher whose Glasgow students, notably Adam Smith, held sway over generations of Scottish moral philosophers. -/- Despite their impact on Scottish letters, the four treatises were in fact written in Dublin, and the philosophers to whom Hutcheson responded and with whom he debated were in the main not Scottish but English, Irish, French, Roman, and Greek. Consequently, part of Hutcheson’s legacy was a cosmopolitan outlook among enlightened Scots, who learned to turn their eyes far from home. (shrink)

이 글의 목적은 감정 철학과 서사이론의 관점에서 가족관계의 구조와 의미를 설명하는 데에 있다. 먼저, 필자는 가족 또는 가족관계를 가리킬 때 사용하는 언어를 가족언어로 부르고, 가족언어의 의미작용을 지시사(indexical) 의미론에 의거하여 설명한다. 지시사의 의미가 지시사가 사용되는 맥락과 사용하는 주체에 따라 상대적으로 결정되듯이, 가족언어도 주체가 누구를 자신의 가족으로 지칭하는가에 의해 결정된다. 그 뿐만 아니라, 주체가 누구를 자신의 가족으로 지칭하는가는 주체가 특정 인물에 대해 편애적 감정을 갖고 있는가에 따라, 그리고 자신의 정체성과 삶의 기획에 있어서 그 인물과의 관계가 대체불가능한 선으로서 인식하는가에 의해 결정된다. 그런 의미에서 (...) 가족관계와 그 관계가 포함하는 주체의 편애적 감정은 주체의 정체성과 삶의 의미의 근간이 된다. 즉 가족관계는 주체의 감정을 구성 요소로 갖는다. 여기서 말하는 감정은 일시적인 현상적 감정이 아니라 장기간에 걸쳐 주체가 갖는 성향적 감정으로서, 기억에 의해 현재화되는 감정 서사의 양태로 경험되고 주체의 정체성의 일부를 형성한다. (shrink)

The association of emotions as kinds of affections is not unusual. This essay, however, considers whether the tight association between affections and emotions is conceptually satisfactory and advantageous. Does an emphasis on the boundedness of affections and emotions inadvertently mask their distinctive natures? In turning to Gustafson, Aquinas, and, ultimately, Edwards, I propose that, while affections are not emotionless, noticing their differences can reveal the limitations of the emotions for moral deliberation and draw greater attention to (...) the moral significance of the affections. (shrink)

I examine the significance of the Stoic theory of pathē for Kant’s moral psychology, arguing against the received view that systematic differences block the possibility of Kant’s drawing anything more than rhetoric from his Stoic sources. More particularly, I take on the chronically underexamined assumption that Kant is committed to a psychological dualism in the tradition of Plato and Aristotle, positing distinct rational and nonrational elements of human mentality. By contrast, Stoics take the mentality of an adult human being to (...) be rational through and through, while recognising that this rationality is not normally in a state of health or excellence. I show how Kant’s account of affections—chiefly the “affects” and “passions” that he identifies as targets of a duty of apathy—draws substantive lessons from his Stoic sources, and how he accepts on his own terms the monistic principles of Stoic moral psychology. (shrink)

This chapter examines the views of seventeenth-century British philosophers on passions and affections. It explains that about 8,000 books published during this period mentioned passion and that it started with Thomas Wright's Passions of the Mind in General. The chapter also explores the intellectual basis of the writers who wrote about passion – which includes Augustinianism, Aristotelianism, stoicism, Epicureanism, and medicine – and furthermore, analyzes the relevant works of Francis Bacon, Thomas Hobbes, Henry More, and Lord Shaftesbury.

hobbes’s views on the existence and nature of God have occasioned much controversy.1 He has been interpreted as holding positions ranging from sincere, if unconventional, Calvinism to out-and-out atheism.2 Of particular interest has been Hobbes’s apparent endorsement of a version of the cosmological argument. Take the following, for example:For he that from any effect he seeth come to pass should reason to the next and immediate cause thereof, and from thence to the cause of that cause, and plunge himself profoundly (...) into the pursuit of causes, shall at last come to this: that there must be one first mover, that is, a first and eternal cause of all things, which is that... (shrink)

Le livre de Teun Tieleman est une tentative de reconstitution du traité de Chrysippe Sur les passions (Περὶ παθῶν), non pas sous la forme d’une édition des fragments (celle-ci est prévue par l’auteur dans le cadre du projet d’édition des fragments des anciens stoïciens préparée à Utrecht sous la direction de Jaap Mansfeld), mais sous la forme d’une étude de ce traité à travers les fragments et témoignages qui nous sont parvenus. À l’origine, le projet du livre devait être le (...) pendant ou le pro... (shrink)

Emotion Review, Volume 14, Issue 1, Page 55-65, January 2022. Phenomenologists define social impairments as key aspects of depression and argue that depression is irreducible to the individual. In this article I aim to further elaborate this non-reductionist notion of depression by claiming that depression not only corresponds to an impaired experience of social relations, but also arises from a socially impaired world. To pursue this goal, I will challenge the understanding of depression as an affective disorder blocking the affective (...) communication between individual and environment. I will redefine feelings of depression as situated affections, and hence suggest that they are products of the individual's situatedness in a depressogenic environment and they function in initiating an active withdrawal from such environment. (shrink)

All Galen's surviving shorter works on psychology and ethics - including the recently discovered Avoiding Distress, and the neglected Character Traits, extant only in Arabic - are here presented in one volume in a new English translation, with substantial introductions and notes and extensive glossaries. Original and penetrating analyses are provided of the psychological and philosophical thought, both of the above and of two absolutely central works of Galenic philosophy, Affections and Errors and The Capacities of the Soul, by (...) some of the foremost experts in the field. Each treatise has also been subjected to fresh textual study, taking account of the latest scholarly developments, and is presented with accompanying textual discussions, adding greatly to the value and accuracy of the work without detracting from its accessibility to a wider readership. The volume thus makes a major contribution to the understanding of the ancient world's most prominent doctor-philosopher in his intellectual context. (shrink)

Sukjae Lee John Duns Scotus believes it to be undeniably true that we human beings have free will. He does not argue for our freedom but rather explains it. There are two elements which are both characteristic of and essential to Scotus’ account of human will: namely, 1) the will as a self-determining power for opposites, thus a ‘rational’ power; and 2) the ‘dual affections of the will.’2 The significance of each element taken separately is comprehensible if not obvious. (...) We are puzzled, however, when we attempt to ascertain the relation between the two. This paper is an attempt to reach an adequate understanding of this relation. (shrink)

Phenomenologists define social impairments as key aspects of depression and argue that depression is irreducible to the individual. In this article I aim to further elaborate this non-reductionist notion of depression by claiming that depression not only corresponds to an impaired experience of social relations, but also arises from a socially impaired world. To pursue this goal, I will challenge the understanding of depression as an affective disorder blocking the affective communication between individual and environment. I will redefine feelings of (...) depression as situated affections, and hence suggest that (1) they are products of the individual's situatedness in a depressogenic environment and (2) they function in initiating an active withdrawal from such environment. (shrink)

Drawing on the work of Jonathan Edwards, this essay explores two dimensions of Reformed thought central to considering the emotions’ moral significance. First, Reformed theology’s singular understanding of virtue and holiness as love to God and neighbor gives rise to a distinctive account of the emotions’ place in the moral life. Certain emotions are to be embraced insofar as they have the capacity to be sanctified and thereby made compatible with growth in love to God. Second, Reformed theology historically links (...) the emotions with the will, which is subject to moral necessity. Contemporary Reformed reflection on the emotions must therefore grapple with questions about moral agency and accountability that arise from this account of necessity. (shrink)

A proposta de refletir sobre a potência dos afetos na e para a educação emergiu da vivência experienciada em discussão interdisciplinar na disciplina “Ensino-aprendizagem: questões contemporâneas”, no Programa de Mestrado em Letras e Ciências Humanas da Universidade do Grande Rio. Destarte, o presente artigo apresenta, em sua estrutura, três objetivos interligados para dar razão à prática docente. Primeiramente, traçou-se a análise sobre a importância do conhecimento, consoante Spinoza, acerca de nossos afetos para sustentar o argumento de a educação ser um (...) processo de aprendizado com foco na liberdade e na autonomia. Para isso, discute-se a proposta desse filósofo com a finalidade de abstrair as ideias e os argumentos necessários à compreensão de como esses afetos agem sobre o corpo e a mente e, então, apontar a como os conceitos spinozianos do desejo tornam-se balizadores de práticas contemporâneas. Nesse tópico, são discutidos como os afetos oferecem subsídios para aumentar a capacidade de agir e de ser atuante em relação à própria vida. Posteriormente, são abordados os gêneros de conhecimento, conceito central desenvolvido por Spinoza, por meio do qual se torna possível o entendimento de como ocorre a passagem da passividade – submissão passional às causas externas – à ação ou à atividade, fortalecendo as paixões alegres e o desejo, que é a própria essência do homem. Finalmente, propõe-se articular a prática educacional à teoria dos afetos de Spinoza, a fim de pensar como um professor pode promover bons encontros com o conhecimento, possibilitando, assim, que os discentes possam ser afetados ao máximo pelas paixões alegres e possam reforçar sua potência de agir. Palavras-chave: Spinoza. Educação. Afetos. Conhecimento. Liberdade. (shrink)

Mediante o assustador avanço da técnica e da ciência todas as éticas que até então estão relacionadas com este fenômeno não dão mais conta de resolver determinadas questões, pois todas as propostas éticas tradicionais são insuficientes pelo fato de serem ou antropocêntricas ou imediatistas em si. O Princípio Responsabilidade que Jonas propõe visa preencher estes espaços que estas éticas tradicionais não conseguem preencher. Tomando essa proposta como referencial é que este trabalho se empenha em destacar o lugar das emoções e (...) dos afetos dentro deste novo agir como sendo um dispositivo heurístico na proposta jonasiana, a qual é contrastada com a perspectiva emotivista. (shrink)

Three figures in the American Reformed tradition—the novelist Marilynne Robinson, the theocentric ethicist James Gustafson, and the biocentric poet Robinson Jeffers—treat the perception of beauty as the framework of moral discernment in ways that seem particularly significant for ecological ethics. Their work makes vividly concrete dimensions of Calvin's theology of creation that have been the subject of increasing theological attention over the past twenty-five years. By focusing on receptivity to natural beauty, their approach suggests a reorientation of the Christian ecological (...) conversation that would root responsibility in grateful awe rather than stewardship, and would substitute graced responsiveness for obligation. This shift away from duty, sacrifice, and self-denial has the prophetic potential to inspire life-way changes that have been hard to effect through caustic critiques of wasteful materialism or exhortations to just regard for generations as yet unborn. (shrink)

La puissance de la pensée de Rousseau ne se mesure pas seulement à la grandeur de ses livres, mais également à la fécondité des interprétations que ces derniers suscitent. Une pensée profondément philosophique ne fait pas qu’instituer un dialogue privé et privilégié entre un auteur et son lecteur, mais elle permet aussi d’ouvrir un espace discursif polyphonique qu’instaure toute une communauté de lecteurs et d’exégètes eux-mêmes en dialogue les uns avec les autres. Le livre du philosophe ita...

This text addresses a problem that is not sufficiently dealt with in most of the recent literature on emotion and feeling. The problem is a general underestimation of the extent to which affective intentionality is essentially bodily. Affective intentionality is the sui generis type of world-directedness that most affective states – most clearly the emotions – display. Many theorists of emotion overlook the extent to which intentional feelings are essentially bodily feelings. The important but quite often overlooked fact is that (...) the bodily feelings in question are not the regularly treated, non-intentional bodily sensations (known from Jamesian accounts of emotion), but rather crucial carriers of world-directed intentionality. Consequently, most theories of human emotions and feelings recently advocated are deficient in terms of phenomenological adequacy. This text tries to make up for this deficit and develops a catalogue of five central features of intentional bodily feelings. In addition, Jesse Prinz’s embodied appraisal theory is criticized as an exemplary case of the misconstrual of the bodily nature of affective experience in naturalistic philosophy of mind. (shrink)

The formidable task of republishing Edwards' works is made the more significant by the planned inclusion of the manuscript material hitherto little known except to a limited number of research scholars. The job of deciphering and organizing these writings, to say nothing of providing a meaningful context for understanding their merits, is one of the first magnitude. Each of the volumes will be put into the hands of a competent scholar for the editing of the text and the writing of (...) an interpretive introduction. No attempt is being made to secure a unanimous interpretation of Edwards, and there is no possibility of fastening his many-sided genius to the partisan interests of any theological or philosophical group. What should emerge from the finished project is the first complete edition of the known writings of Edwards, plus a series of interpretive essays, each of which will be in itself a major contribution to the understanding of Edwards and to the broader field of humanistic studies. (shrink)

With the reintroduction of Hume’s philosophical works in the form of the Green and Gross editions, and the concomitant decline of the British Hegelians about a century ago, respect for Hume’s philosophical talent rose enormously. Our respect and admiration for Hume’s genius, whether we entirely agree with his work or not, has been a sustained, perhaps ever growing, philosophical attitude throughout the time since. However, we have been much slower to recapture and appreciate the philosophical discourse that helped to shape (...) Hume’s thought. One can, I think, argue that doing justice, in a historical sense as well as a moral sense, requires sufficient attention to Hume’s immediate predecessors. And perhaps the most important figure in that sense is Francis Hutcheson, for even the most cursory study of Hutcheson’s works reveals and sheds much light on where Hume found many ideas on the moral sense and moral psychology, as well as ideas concerning the very nature of moral philosophy as a discipline of inquiry. (shrink)

In this article, I argue that Wang Yangming'sNeo-Confucian religious beliefs can bewarranted, and that the rationality of hisreligious beliefs constitutes a significantdefeater for the rationality of Christianbelief on Alvin Plantinga's theory of warrant. I also question whether the notion of warrantas proper function can adequately account fortheories of religious knowledge in which theaffections play an integral role. Idemonstrate how a consideration of Wang'sepistemology reveals a difficulty forPlantinga's defense of the rationality ofChristian belief and highlights a limitation ofPlantinga's current conception of (...) warrant asproper function. (shrink)