Aristotle and the Emotions (original) (raw)
Related papers
CONCEPTUALIZING EMOTIONS : FROM HOMER TO ARISTOTLE
Chora.REAM, 2022
Cet article vise à faire ressortir les fils hétérogènes de la pensée sur les émotions qui traversent la littérature philosophique et médicale grecque des cinquième et quatrième siècles avant J.-C., contribuant à l'émergence de la sphère des passions en tant que territoire autonome pour l'exploration des faits mentaux. Nous examinons d'abord le modèle psychologique homérique dans le but de mettre en évidence son influence sur la littérature philosophique et non philosophique grecque des siècles suivants. Les auteurs hippocratiques, en particulier, se révèlent redevables du monisme «matérialiste» d'Homère, mais on retrouve également des traces du modèle épique chez les penseurs qui, par la suite, se sont intéressés à la relation entre le corps et l'entité-âme. Nous reconstituons ensuite l'évolution au cours de laquelle, d'Héraclite à Démocrite, de Platon à aristote et au Péripatos, une notion du pathos en tant qu'émotion finit par émerger, prête à être acceptée et bien sûr précisée autant que retravaillée par les philosophies des âges hellénistique et romain 1 .
Emotions,'Phantasia'and Feeling in Aristotle's Rhetoric
2009
Over the past three decades, phlosophy has seen a remarkable revval of nterest n the concept of emoton and wth t a reassessment of the role of the pathê n the work of Arstotle. Qute a number of scholars clam hm as the first phlosopher to defend a cogntve approach n emoton theory. I wll argue that ths clam s one-sded and that hs dscussons of the passons dffer markedly from contemporary cogntve vews of emoton.
Anger, Hatred, and Judgment in Aristotle's Rhetoric
American Journal of Political Science
Aristotle's analysis in the Rhetoric of the intelligibility of passionately angry political speech is an urgently needed addition to the ongoing scholarly reassessment of his relevance to democratic practices. Aristotle shows his readers-both orators and their auditors, citizens who might both rule and be ruled-that anger is prone to exaggeration and distortion and is therefore liable to be amplified into hatred. He shows further though that if instead of simply being exaggerated, anger is taken "seriously," then a more sober and measured politics can ensue, one less destructive of a good legal order.
Worthington/A Companion, 2007
If you wish to consult an ancient Greek or Roman discussion of the emotions, the place to look is not-as one might have expected-in a treatise on psychology, or in classical terms, 'On the Soul' (for example, Aristotle's De anima), but rather an essay on rhetoric. First and foremost, on the Greek side, there is Aristotle's own Rhetoric, with its detailed treatment, in Book 2, of a dozen or more different passions. In Latin literature, Cicero examines the emotions in his youthful De inventione, as well as in other essays on oratory, although he also treats them at some length in his philosophical dialogue, The Tusculan Disputations (especially Books 3 and 4). As late as the third century AD, a certain Apsines-if that is his true name 1-surveyed the emotions in elaborate detail as part of an extensive handbook on rhetoric (only a portion survives, chiefly the part dealing with pity). It is not difficult to see why the emotions were of interest to writers on rhetoric. If an orator was to be convincing, he had to know how to arouse or allay the passions of his audience, whether in the courtroom, the Assembly, or some other public forum, and the composers of manuals duly undertook to catalogue the best ways of doing so. This, in turn, required at least an elementary understanding of what emotions are and how they function. The emotions may also affect human behavior in general, which is why they are discussed at least to some extent in treatises on ethics, for example Aristotle's Nicomachean Ethics. But the close connection between rhetoric and the emotions in ancient Greece was not merely an accident of scientific compartmentalization. Classical Greece was an intensely verbal culture, and from the very beginning of Greek literature it is words that are the stimuli to emotion: Achilles' great wrath in the Iliad is a consequence of what he considers an intolerable insult on the part of Agamemnon, and the events that lead to Achilles' fateful withdrawal from the battle at Troy take the form of speeches. The intimate connection between emotion and discourse, in turn, contributed decisively to the way the Greeks conceived of and defined both emotion in general and the several specific passions. Richard Lazarus, one of the founders of the modern 'appraisal theory' of the emotions, which takes Worthington / Companion to reek Rhetoric 1405125519_4_027
2013
Robert Prus is a sociologist at the University of Waterloo, Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. A symbolic interactionist, ethnographer, and social theorist, Robert Prus has been examining the conceptual and methodological connections of American pragmatist philosophy and its sociological offshoot, symbolic interactionism, with classical Greek and Latin scholarship. As part of this larger project, he also has been analyzing some of Emile Durkheim’s lesser known texts (on morality, education, religion, and philosophy) mindfully of their pragmatist affinities with symbolic interactionist scholarship and Aristotle’s foundational emphasis on the nature of human knowing and acting.
n: M. Boeri - Y. Kanayama - J. Mittelmann (Eds.), Soul and Mind in Greek Thought, Springer. 2018.
Recently, a strong hylemorphic reading of Aristotelian emotions has been put forward, one that allegedly eliminates the problem of the causal interaction between soul and body. Taking the presentation of emotions in de An. I 1 as a starting point and guiding thread, but relying also on the discussion of in Rh. II, I will argue that this reading only takes into account two of the four causes of emotions, and that, if all four of them are included in the picture, then a causal interaction of mind and body remains within Aristotelian emotions, independent of how strongly their hylemorphism is understood. Beyond the discussion regarding this recent reading, the analysis proposed of the fourfold causal structure of emotions is also intended as a hermeneutical starting point for a comprehensive analysis of particular emotions in Aristotle. Through the different causes Aristotle seems to account for many aspects of the complex phenomenon of emotion, including its physiological causes, its mental causes, and its intensional object.