Emotions and Choice from Boethius to Descartes

Emotions and Choice from Boethius to Descartes
Author: Henrik Lagerlund
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 368
Release: 2012-12-06
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 9401005060

The essays in this book give the first comprehensive picture of the medieval development of philosophical theories concerning the nature of emotions and the influence they have on human choice. The historical span reaches from the late ancient to the early modern philosophy, showing in detail how old and new ideas were bred and brought into the Middle Ages, and how they resulted in a genuinely modern perspective in the thought of Descartes.

Not Passion's Slave

Not Passion's Slave
Author: Robert C. Solomon
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 276
Release: 2003-01-30
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0199881847

The idea that we are in some significant sense responsible for our emotions is an idea that Robert Solomon has developed for almost three decades. Here, in a single volume, he traces the development of this theory of emotions and elaborate it in detail. Two themes run through his work: the first presents a "cognitive" theory of emotions in which emotions are construed primarily as evaluative judgments. The second proposes an "existentialist" perspective in which he defends the idea that, as we are responsible for our emotions. Indeed, sometimes it even makes sense to say that we "choose" them. While the first claim has gained increasing currency in the literature, his claim about responsibility for emotions has continued to meet with considerable resistance and misinterpretation. The new emphasis on evolutionary biology and neurology has (mistakenly) reinforced the popular prejudice that emotions "happen" to us and are entirely beyond our control. This volume is also a kind of intellectual memoir of Solomon?s own development as a thinker. The essays written in the 1980s elaborate the themes of the "intentionality" of emotion and the claim that emotions are "judgments"; in this period, he is also increasingly preoccupied with how emotions vary and are identified in a variety of cultures. In the 1990's, his interests evolve to consider the social and political role of emotions and theories about emotion. The final section presents his current philosophical position on the seeming "passivity" of the passions. Despite his own critical assessment of his earlier work, he continues to argue that, in the final analysis, we are responsible for our emotions and existential quality of our lives.

Author:
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Total Pages: 369
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ISBN: 0199383480

The Relationship between Reason and Emotions in Descartes, Spinoza and Hume’s Classical Theories

The Relationship between Reason and Emotions in Descartes, Spinoza and Hume’s Classical Theories
Author: Patrick Kimuyu
Publisher: GRIN Verlag
Total Pages: 10
Release: 2018-06-25
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 3668735425

Essay from the year 2018 in the subject Psychology - Cognition, grade: 1, Egerton University, language: English, abstract: In philosophical and psychological fields, emotion is referred to as subjective and conscious experience that is primarily characterized by psycho-physiological expressions, mental states and biological reactions. It is mostly associated and deemed jointly influential with mood, personality, temperament, motivation and disposition. Over the years, emotion theory has, therefore, been illustrated by a dichotomy involving the body and head. In the 1960s and 1970s (cognitivism golden years), this theory focused on cognitive emotion antecedents, the so-termed as appraisal processes, with some philosophers perceiving bodily events as by-products of cognition, and as highly unspecific to contribute to emotion experience variety. In other words, they conceptualized cognition as an abstract and intellectual process that is detached from bodily events. Cognitivism legacy perseveres in treating bodily and cognitive events as separate emotion components, even though the present emotion theory has moved past this disembodied position by conceiving of emotions as comprising the two processes; cognitive processes like perception and attention, and bodily event such as behavior and arousal. However, it is evident that the body already highly contributed to the theories of emotion of Descartes, Spinoza and Hume since their arguments never implied that they denied other emotion aspects like cognition and evaluation. Rather, these three classical theorists considered emotions as psychosomatic states, each focusing on distinct emotion aspects as per their theories, but showing an intimate connection between the body and emotions that leads to a relationship between reason and emotions. Therefore, the purpose of this essay is to demonstrate the relation between reason and emotions by presenting the views of classical (pre-Jamesian) theories of Descartes, Spinoza and Hume.

Emotion and Cognitive Life in Medieval and Early Modern Philosophy

Emotion and Cognitive Life in Medieval and Early Modern Philosophy
Author: Martin Pickavé
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 296
Release: 2012-10-04
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0199579911

This volume explores emotion in medieval and early modern thought, and opens a contemporary debate on the way emotions figure in our cognitive lives. Thirteen original essays explore the key themes of emotion within the mind; the intentionality of emotions; emotions and action; and the role of emotion in self-understanding and social situations.

Descartes' Error

Descartes' Error
Author: Antonio Damasio
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 338
Release: 2005-09-27
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 014303622X

Since Descartes famously proclaimed, "I think, therefore I am," science has often overlooked emotions as the source of a person’s true being. Even modern neuroscience has tended, until recently, to concentrate on the cognitive aspects of brain function, disregarding emotions. This attitude began to change with the publication of Descartes’ Error in 1995. Antonio Damasio—"one of the world’s leading neurologists" (The New York Times)—challenged traditional ideas about the connection between emotions and rationality. In this wondrously engaging book, Damasio takes the reader on a journey of scientific discovery through a series of case studies, demonstrating what many of us have long suspected: emotions are not a luxury, they are essential to rational thinking and to normal social behavior.

Emotional Minds

Emotional Minds
Author: Sabrina Ebbersmeyer
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
Total Pages: 332
Release: 2012-07-30
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 3110260921

The thoroughly contemporary question of the relationship between emotion and reason was debated with such complexity by the philosophers of the 17th century that their concepts remain a source of inspiration for today’s research about the emotionality of the mind. The analyses of the works of Descartes, Spinoza, Leibniz, and many other thinkers collected in this volume offer new insights into the diversity and significance of philosophical reflections about emotions during the early modern era. A focus is placed on affective components in learning processes and the boundaries between emotions and reason.

Thinking about the Emotions

Thinking about the Emotions
Author: Alix Cohen
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 332
Release: 2017-05-26
Genre: Philosophy
ISBN: 0191079448

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.

Thinking about Feeling

Thinking about Feeling
Author: Robert C. Solomon
Publisher: Oxford University Press
Total Pages: 312
Release: 2004-03-04
Genre: Psychology
ISBN: 019028840X

Philosophers since Aristotle have explored emotion, and the study of emotion has always been essential to the love of wisdom. In recent years Anglo-American philosophers have rediscovered and placed new emphasis on this very old discipline. The view that emotions are ripe for philosophical analysis has been supported by a considerable number of excellent publications. In this volume, Robert Solomon brings together some of the best Anglo-American philosophers now writing on the philosophy of emotion, with chapters from philosophers who have distinguished themselves in the field of emotion research and have interdisciplinary interests, particularly in the social and biological sciences. The reader will find a lively variety of positions on topics such as the nature of emotion, the category of "emotion," the rationality of emotions, the relationship between an emotion and its expression, the relationship between emotion, motivation, and action, the biological nature versus social construction of emotion, the role of the body in emotion, the extent of freedom and our control of emotions, the relationship between emotion and value, and the very nature and warrant of theories of emotion. In addition, this book acknowledges that it is impossible to study the emotions today without engaging with contemporary psychology and the neurosciences, and moreover engages them with zeal. Thus the essays included here should appeal to a broad spectrum of emotion researchers in the various theoretical, experimental, and clinical branches of psychology, in addition to theorists in philosophy, philosophical psychology, moral psychology, and cognitive science, the social sciences, and literary theory.