17th and 18th century theories of emotions

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17th and 18th Century Theories of Emotions

Copyright c 2010 by the authorAmy M. Schmitter

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17th and 18th Century Theories of EmotionsFirst published Thu May 25, 2006; substantive revision Fri Oct 15, 2010

Early modern philosophy in Europe and Great Britain is awash withdiscussions of the emotions: they figure not only in philosophicalpsychology and related fields, but also in theories of epistemic method,metaphysics, ethics, political theory and practical reasoning in general.Moreover, interest in the emotions links philosophy with work in other,sometimes unexpected areas, such as medicine, art, literature, andpractical guides on everything from child-rearing to the treatment ofsubordinates. Because of the breadth of the topic, this article can offeronly an overview, but perhaps it will be enough to give some idea howphilosophically rich and challenging the conception of the emotions wasin this period. Most attention will be devoted to the familiar figures ofearly modern philosophy and how they conceived of the emotions asvaluable, even indispensable aspects of embodied human life, which werelargely constitutive of the self and identity that matter to us practically.

A word of caution is in order: there is a plethora of source material, andthis entry is offered as a survey for organizing that material. Alas, muchworthy material must be excluded here. This article and its supplementsare designed for readers browsing for specific information, as well asthose hardy souls who may wish to read it straight through. The maindocument offers a thematic overview of early modern discussions of theemotions. Separate links lead to documents devoted to the pre-history ofthe topic, as well as to some of the most important individual figures inearly modern philosophy.

1. Introduction1.1 Difficulties of Approach1.2 Philosophical Background

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1.3 Ancient, Medieval and Renaissance Theories of theEmotions [Supplementary document]

2. The Context of Early Modern Theories of the Passions2.1 Changing Vocabulary2.2 Taxonomies2.3 Philosophical Issues in Theories of the Emotions

3. Individual PhilosophersBibliography

Primary Works CitedSecondary Works Consulted

Other Internet ResourcesRelated Entries

1. Introduction1.1 Difficulties of Approach:

Even recognizing some early modern writings on the emotions for whatthey are is no easy task. In part, this is due to diverging and rapidlychanging vocabularies for talking about the emotions. Seventeenthcentury philosophers favored talk of passion and affect, while theireighteenth century counterparts made increasing use of sentiment. Noneof these terms (or their French and Latin cognates) carried the meaningthey now do or that emotion has come to bear (which did not have aprimarily psychological sense until the nineteenth century). It is also easyto overlook the role early modern philosophy gives to calm emotions, ifwe concentrate on the current notion of passions as violent, turbulent andoverwhelming. In general, early modern philosophers tended to prefertheir emotions calm, but took turbulence to mark only certain kinds ofpassions. Another difficulty arises from the seemingly ambivalent natureearly modern philosophers granted to the emotions. Passion, inparticular, is connected with a kind of receptivity, but how the passions


2 Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

particular, is connected with a kind of receptivity, but how the passionsare receptive and what they are receptive to tend to cross over variouscomfortable divisions taken to mark early modern philosophy: mind andbody; perception and will; reason, judgment and desire; occurrentconsciousness and confused dispositions; representations andpresentations; private and social; nature and convention; and even what isinternal and what external to subjectivity.

1.2 Philosophical Background

Early modern discussions of the emotions are deeply indebted to earliersources. Aristotle was particularly important (much more so than Plato),influencing early modern theories both directly and through Stoic,medical, Ciceronian, and Scholastic approaches (especially that ofAquinas). Stoicism, likewise, was transmitted both from Latin authors andfrom the neo-Stoic revival of the 16th century (represented, e.g., by JustusLipsius, and in some moods, Montaigne). As in other areas of philosophy,however, those sources met a mixed reception. Aristotle's classification ofthe faculties of the soul and his location of the emotions among theappetites of the sensitive part remained commonplaces, as did Aquinas'sfurther distinction between the irascible and concupiscible passions. Butthey were also soundly rejected by some of the most famousphilosophers, starting with Descartes. Similarly, even those thinkers whoseem to owe the most to Stoicism (i.e., Descartes and Spinoza) explicitlycriticized certain of its doctrines, including the view that the passions areerroneous judgments. Different sorts of criticism proceeded from thinkerssuch as Pascal and Malebranche who borrowed from Augustine a sense ofhuman insufficiency for virtue and happiness that put them at odds withStoic, Skeptical and Epicurean ideals of the autonomous life of the sage.And many aspects of the systematic treatments of Aquinas and laterScholastic authors were both continued and attacked, often by the sameauthors.

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Winter 2010 Edition 3

Other ancient sources were also important, even when they were subjectto less discussion or criticism. The theory of the humors and animalspirits of the Hippocratic and Galenist medical traditions offered much ofthe basic vocabulary for early modern discussions of the physiology ofthe emotions. Rhetorical works, such as those by Aristotle and Cicero,provided a great deal of material for taxonomizing and manipulating theemotions. (Indeed, some of the distinctive early modern practice ofgenerating long lists of emotions, as well as many of the forms ofclassification, can be traced to these sources.) Popular treatises, such asthose by Juan Luis Vives, were sometimes discussed openly. And therewere important discussions of particular emotions in Renaissance works,such as the treatment of love and melancholy by the Florentine humanists,or that of glory [gloria] by Machiavelli and Montaigne. These sourcesoverlap in ways that are not always consistent and can be difficult totrace: for instance, we find Spinoza probably paraphrasing a passage fromMontaigne (III Def of the Affects XLIV), where Montaigne criticizesCicero's ambitions for glory by directly quoting the Latin author(Montaigne, 1958, 187) all without anything like citation of sources.

The very vocabulary available to early modern theorists is marked bytheir historical legacy. The terms passion, perturbation, and affectare all rooted in choices made by Latin authors such as Augustine, Ciceroand Seneca for translating the Greek pathos used by Aristotle. In contrast,sentiment, which came to be used with increasing frequency byeighteenth century British and French authors, seems distinctivelymodern. Debates about whether to classify emotions among appetites,judgments, or volitions originated in the models of Aristotle, the Stoicsand Augustine, although counting them among perceptions may constitutea somewhat novel approach. Early modern associations between theemotions and the body also owed an enormous amount to ancient andmedieval sources, as did the connection between emotions and motivesfor action. Such connections often underlay the long-running debate



for action. Such connections often underlay the long-running debateinherited by the early moderns about the epistemic, eudaimonistic andethical value of the emotions, a central issue of which is the degree towhich we can govern our emotions. Although the evaluations of pre-modern theorists diverged enormously, there was a generally positiveview of pleasurable emotions (although they were often classifiedseparately from other passions). This is a view shared by manyseventeenth and eighteenth-century philosophers, who often played up theholistic functionality of emotions. Even so, the early moderns seem tohave inherited a strong sense of the value of various forms of emotionaltranquility something worth bearing in mind for understanding thechanging uses of passion.

1.3 Ancient, Medieval and Renaissance Theories of theEmotions [Supplementary document]

For a more detailed discussion on the philosophical background, see thesupplement on

2. The Context of Early Modern Theories of thePassions2.1 Changing Vocabulary

Every philosopher of the early modern period developed distinctive termsof art for discussing the emotions. Still, some vocabulary was generalcurrency. The most common term for describing the emotions in theseventeenth century was undoubtedly passion, perhaps because of theinfluence of Descartes's Passions of the Soul (1649), perhaps because of ageneral tendency to see the emotions as receptive, passive states. It wasnot the only term used: affect and sentiment also appeared, as did

Ancient, Medieval and Renaissance Theories of the Emotions

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not the only term used: affect and sentiment also appeared, as didperturbation, or emotion, although these are not usually terms of art,and emotion usually meant little more than motion. The choice ofterminology often marked intellectual allegiances: Descartes saw himselfas introducing a new theory, in which passions are a species ofperception, while Spinoza's affects signaled his debt to Stoic ethics, aswell as distinctive features of his metaphysics. In his Penses (1670),Pascal introduced feelings or sentiments [sentiment], sometimescontrasting them with the corrupted passions and marking his neo-Augustinian understanding of love (see Penses 680, 531).

Sentiment was a particularly popular term in British philosophy of theeighteenth century, as was affection. These terms were sometimes usedinterchangeably with and sometimes in contrast to passions. In the lattercase, sentiments or affections specified calm emotions, perhapstempered by reflection or refined in some other way; whereas, passionindicated a raw, uncorrected emotion, which may be violent in the senseof either agitating us, or being unresponsive to reason. BernardMandeville, for instance, spoke of humans as a compound of passionsin his Fable of the Bees (1714), emphasizing that our emotions aredisorganized, fleeting and not subject to correction. Hume, in contrast,often used sentiment for the class of refined and reflective emotionsthat are the basis for our moral and aesthetic judgments. The contrastbetween these terms is not confined to philosophy. Sarah Fielding's novelThe Adventures of David Simple, first published in 1744 and wildlypopular in its day, frequently used passions to describe forceful,idiosyncratic emotions and desires, particularly those that mark thepersonality of a character, while reserving sentiment for calmer, sharedaffects and judgments. By 1762, Henry Home, Lord Kames, termedevery thought prompted by a passion a sentiment (Elements ofCriticism, chap. xvi).



The developments in vocabulary took place against a background ofshared associations and assumptions about the emotions. Emotions werecommonly connected with passivity, and what lay outside of our directcontrol. They were also associated with various forms of perception, evenas they were sometimes granted an intentional and judgment-likestructure. Emotions were typically assumed to have directions and toprovide motives for action. Given this cluster, philosophers oftenemphasized one or another of the features associated with the emotions.Although no philosophical questions were settled by word choice alone,the preferred vocabulary can reveal much about the choice of emphasis.

Still, it is worth bearing in mind that the available vocabulary may notfully capture what we now think of as emotion, affect, or mood.Sometimes it didn't even capture the range of affective states recognizedby early modern philosophers. Descartes, for instance, wrote of internalor intellectual emotions, which are not passions proper, but certainlyhave affective components, as well as being causally intertwined with thetrue passions. Spinoza distinguished affects from various emotions andmoods that for him indicated strength of mind, while reserving a specialstatus for beatitude. On the other hand, passion didn't even begin toget its contemporary flavor of violent, often sexually-charged emotionsuntil the middle of the eighteenth century (at the earliest), and so whatcounted as a passion can sometimes come as a surprise. Hobbes includedcompetition and glory among his passions, and many favorite earlymodern passions are quite placid, such as wonder, or the love of truth.There was also a whole special vocabulary for affective states that wererecognized by various medical traditions, ranging from splenetic humourto general melancholy.

2.2 Taxonomies

Seventeenth-century accounts are rife with long inventories of emotions,although the list-making urge may have dampened a bit by the eighteenth

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although the list-making urge may have dampened a bit by the eighteenthcentury, or at least the pretensions to exhaustive cataloguing. Comparedto his contemporaries, Descartes seems temperate with a docket of a meresix simple passions, although he also constructed a host of complex onesout of these six. Hobbes offered a list of about thirty in the Leviathan(1651), and more than twenty-five in The Elements of Law (ms. 1640).The head count for Spinoza is a bit trickier to determine, but the thirdbook of his Ethics (ms. 1675) defines at least forty affects. Locke's shortdiscussion in Book II, chap. XX of the Essay Concerning HumanUnderstanding (1690) treats eleven; whereas Hume's Treatise andDissertation on the Passions (1757) described about ten broad passions,as well as numerous sub-species and adjuncts, even before turning to themoral or aesthetic sentiments. This tendency is not simply found amongthe great early modern systems-builders. In the seventeenth century inparticular, just about everybody (and their maiden aunt and bacheloruncle) seems to have joined in the hunt for new and distinctive lists ofemotions. For instance, large portions of Thomas Wright's The Passionsof the Mind In General (1604) and Nicholas Coeffeteau's Tableau despassions humaines, de leurs causes et leurs effets (ms. 1621) are devotedto such lists. A short play of 1630, Pathomachia; or the Battel ofAffections, even makes proper taxonomy the motor of what little drama itpossesses.

The proliferation of lists can be at least partly explained by theproliferation of schemes of classification. Again, the attention toprinciples of classification is most marked in the seventeenth-centurytheorists, in part because of the taxonomic connections they saw betweenthe treatment of the passions and their scientific ambitions in other areas,and in part because of the attacks launched against the systems ofprevious, e.g., scholastic, thinkers. Descartes, for instance, singled outAquinas's division of the passions into the concupiscible and irascible forexpress and explicit criticism. But making his case required constructingan alternative classification more in accord with his reformist account of



an alternative classification more in accord with his reformist account ofthe soul and its faculties. Despite the efforts of those on the cutting edgeof passion theory, however, the Aquinian distinction remained acommonplace bit of early modern folk psychology (see Wright, Burton,even Henry More). Then too, many early modern authors borrowed, andborrowed heavily, from Stoic and Thomist classifications. Hobbes andLocke, for instance, both drew from Aquinas's enumeration of elevenpassions, as did Jacques Bossuet in Trait de la connaissance de Dieu etde soi-mme (ms. after 1670; see Gardiner 1970, 205).

Many time-honored principles of classification clearly decreased inimportance during the early modern period. In particular, the possibilityof psychic conflict, especially that which could generate competingmotives for action, had been a common device in ancient and medievaltheories for distinguishing among passions, kinds of passions, andfaculties of the soul in general. This principle played some role forDescartes in distinguishing between movements coming from the bodyand those originating in the soul, and it was deployed sporadically byother theorists. But the practice died out over the course of the twocenturies, as theorists came to recognize the possibility that a single, orsimilar, emotional source might produce conflicting motions ortendencies, both in the individual and across societies. Indeed, someemotions were characterized exactly by such conflict or turbulence.Descartes's description of regret is one such example. A somewhathappier case is the emotions generated by tragedy, as explained byphilosophers from Malebranche to Hume.

Perhaps the most basic division in play is evaluative, i.e., whether theemotion is good or bad. This was hardly an innovation. But early modernphilosophers came to understand that division in two different ways either an emotion is directed at good or evil as an object, or the emotionitself is affectively good or bad, pleasurable or painful. Many distinctivelymodern theories subsumed the former under the latter: both the

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modern theories subsumed the former under the latter: both thenaturalistic theories of Hobbes and Spinoza, on the one hand, and themoral sense theories of Hutcheson and Hume, on the other, held that weproject the value of the object from the affective quality of the emotion,although Hume allows for complications in how we experience thevalences of a passion as belonging to self or other, using suchmechanisms as sympathy and comparison. Some authors also identifiedneutral emotions: wonder is a common example, deriving largely fromDescartes, although anticipated in Sir Kenelme Digby's Two Treatises(1644).

Some philosophers singled out a particular passion, or group of passions,to head off their taxonomies. In rather different ways, that was the role ofwonder for Descartes, and of glory for Hobbes. Malebranche took there tobe an irreducible element of love in every passion. An even morecommon organizing device was to divide the passions into simple andcomplex. Not only did this impose a manageable order on the manyrecognized passions, it allowed explanation to be focused on the simplestcases, with the expectation that other emotions would fall into line, eitheras compounds, offspring, or species of the simples. The simple passionsthemselves were organized into contrasting groups, based on theirevaluative character. Schemes of this kind can be found in Descartes,Malebranche, Spinoza, Thomas Wright, and to a lesser extent, Hume.

Many other forms of classification were tied closely to the particularinterests of individual authors. This is particularly the case with thoseeighteenth-century British authors who argued against Hobbes andMandeville that the very possibility of morality requires that we becapable of genuinely benevolent emotions. For this reason, distinctionsbetween self-directed and other-directed emotions and between anti-socialand sociable emotions were a common point of organization andcontention. Similar concerns also generated a distinction betweenidiosyncratic affects and emotions that could be cultivated to be broadly



idiosyncratic affects and emotions that could be cultivated to be broadlyshared; in particular, emotions were often divided into the raw andimmediate and those that involve an element of reflection. This distinctionlent itself also to those philosophers concerned with the historical andsocial development of humans, as evident in many works of Rousseau.For instance, the Discourse on the Origin of Inequality (1755) presents akind of natural history tracing the genesis of many emotions throughchanges in social structure; works such as Emile (1762), La NouvelleHeloise (1761), and the Confessions (1782) treat the affective maturationand socialization of individuals, as well as the management and effects ofthe emotions. But for all his genealogical concerns, Rousseau, and indeedmany other eighteenth-century authors, showed a good deal less interestin taxonomizing the emotions according to principled systems than didtheir predecessors.

2.3 Philosophical Issues in Theories of the Emotions

Few areas of early modern philosophy remained untouched by at leastsome theory of the emotions. What follows is simply a cursory overviewof some issues of general interest. But since early modern understandingsof the emotions often made unexpected connections between diverseareas of philosophy, we may find that investigation reshapes our map ofseventeenth- and eighteenth-century philosophy. Certainly, theunderstanding of the emotions produced in one area of philosophy wasnot isolated from their treatment in other areas.

That is true of how the emotions figured in much of seventeenth-centurymetaphysics. Locating the emotions within their distinctive ontologieswas an important, but sometimes challenging task for philosophers suchas Descartes, Malebranche, and Spinoza. In doing so, they often tapped abroad metaphysical distinction between the active and the passive, whichsometimes supported, and sometimes undermined those ontologies (seeJames 1997). The emotions also inform various approaches to the relation

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James 1997). The emotions also inform various approaches to the relationbetween mind and body, whether Descartes's dualism, Hobbes'smaterialism, Spinoza's parallelism, or those of philosophers who refusedto take a stand on the issue. Indeed, attempts to accommodate theemotions sometimes led to novel and intricate pictures of the relationsbetween soul and body: Walter Charleton's Natural History of thePassions (1674, 2nd ed., 1701), for instance, posits two souls, one that isrational and immaterial and one that is sensitive and extended, mediatingbetween the rational soul and the body. The emotions were also importantin accounts of personal identity, whether that is understood ontologicallyin the cases of Descartes and Spinoza, or psychologically in the case ofHume.

Theories of the emotions played a role often a pivotal one in theimportant early modern debates about causation and the proper forms ofexplanation. As part of their embrace of the new science, manyseventeenth century philosophers considered the emotions to besusceptible, at least in part, to mechanical explanation. AlthoughDescartes offered a teleological defense of our propensities to experienceemotions, his account of their physiological underpinnings is mechanistic.Malebranche too considered the functions of the emotions and the way inwhich that functioning has been corrupted, but emphasized that theemotions are communicated through strictly mechanical operations.Hobbes and Spinoza went yet further, rejecting any talk of final causationin order to treat the behavior of the emotions as completely continuouswith bodily movements, and indeed reducing the appearance of goal-driven behavior to the motions of the passions. In contrast, Shaftesburycriticized Locke and Descartes for failing to appreciate the naturalteleology of our emotional constitution, and dismissed all physiologicalaccounts as beside the point. Many other British philosophers showed lessinterest in the metaphysics of explanation and more in defending anempiricist account of the origins of our ideas. But the rejection of innateideas often drove them to focus explanations of the emotions on the



ideas often drove them to focus explanations of the emotions on thehydraulics by which pains and pleasures push our ideas. This naturalisticapproach was particularly marked in eighteenth-century associationistpsychology, often hand in hand with Newtonian ambitions to produce ascience of man: examples include Hume's Treatise of Human Nature(1739-40), and such lesser-known works as David Hartley's Observationson Man, his Frame, his Duty, and his Expectations (1749) and ananonymous tract of 1741, An Enquiry into the Origin of Human Appetitesand Affections, Showing How Each Arises from Association: for the use ofyoung gentlemen at the universities (cited in Gardiner 1970, 221), as wellas in the works of Condillac.

As we might expect, emotions loomed large in the philosophicalpsychology of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. One questionaddressed by almost every philosopher was where to locate the emotionsin our psychological equipment. Following Descartes, seventeenthcentury philosophers tended to subsume the emotions under perception.Perception must be broadly understood, however; what is crucial is thatthe emotions involve the exercise of a receptive faculty, especially insofaras their causes lie in the body, or more generally, outside of the receptiveanimal. Spinoza, admittedly, allowed that we may be adequate causes ofsome of our affects, and took all our emotions to involve judgments. Buton his view, judgments are not different in kind from perceptions,although their epistemic status is determined by whether we are active andadequate or merely passive, inadequate causes of our perceptions.Descartes, too, attributed an at least proto-propositional, representativestructure to emotions. This structure, however, is independent of and priorto the volitions of assent or denial that generate real judgment. Theemotions thus remain among the perceptions belonging to the intellect,although they provide material for judgment. Nonetheless, sinceperceptions were typically granted a complex representational andintentional structure, most seventeenth century authors connected themclosely with judgments.

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closely with judgments.

Eighteenth century theorists, on the other hand, often identified emotionsspecifically with sense-perceptions. Indeed, Hutcheson multiplied thenumber of our sense-faculties to accommodate the wide variety of affectshe recognizes. Many philosophers also supposed a haptic aspect toemotions, approaching them as a variety of feeling. Most notably, Humemaintained that a distinctive feature of the passions and sentiments is thatthey touch, or strike upon the mind more forcibly than other perceptions.

More generally, eighteenth-century theories shift gradually fromcharacterizing emotions primarily by how they represent their intentionalcontents to considering their qualitative phenomenology, the special feelof the emotions. Hume, for one, stressed that our passions are simple anduniform impressions with characteristic affective qualities Still, this is atmost a change in emphasis, since many did allow that emotions typicallyhave some kind of object. Hume, in particular, attributed a rathercomplicated content to the indirect passions that show a double relationof impressions and ideas. But the atomistic tendencies of Britishpsychology following Locke spelled difficulty for accounts of intentionalcontent, and many philosophers emphasized features of our emotions thatare non-intentional. Emotions still retained important connections tojudgment, however, since judgments themselves, especially moral andpolitical ones, were often considered simply expressions of sentiment.

For all their disagreements about the nature of judgment, early modernphilosophers reached near-consensus in taking emotion to motivate ourpractical and theoretical endeavors. Because they provide at least some ofthe motives for action, the emotions were central to investigations of ourpractical reasoning and to moral philosophy. In particular, eighteenth-century spectator- and judgment-centered moral theories gave theemotions a double role for our moral judgments: insofar as they representthe enduring dispositions of character expressed in actions, they are the



the enduring dispositions of character expressed in actions, they are theobjects of moral evaluations; but they also generate the judgmentsthemselves. In a somewhat different vein, many philosophers took ouremotions to be the engine driving our theoretical reasoning: both wonder(for Descartes) and curiosity (for Hume) perform this function. Indeed,almost any philosopher investigating efficient causation in ourpsychology found an important place for our emotions, whether Hobbesconsidering our internal motions, or the associationist psychologists of theeighteenth century.

As crucial bits of our psychology, the emotions are also important toepistemology. Here, though, the position of many early modernphilosophers has often been misunderstood, especially when it is assumedthat they oppose reason to the emotions, to the detriment of the latter.(We might call this the Mr. Spock gloss on early modern philosophy.) Itis true that many philosophers held that the emotions can sometimes leadour reasoning astray, and they offer various epistemic techniques tominimize this cognitive interference. Malebranche, for instance, imbeddedhis account of the passions in the reforming project of The Search AfterTruth (1674-5), and many accounts of method, e.g., Arnauld's andNicole's Logic, or the Art of Thinking (1662), included an account of theemotions as an indispensable part of their epistemic techniques. But noneof these accounts assumed that the emotions are inevitably disruptive toour reason, however important it may be to temper them. Descartesparticularly emphasized the functionality of our passions, first forpractical, but also for theoretical reasoning, and suggested that properdiscipline should allow us to maximize the epistemic value of theemotions. Malebranche and Spinoza were less sanguine about our chancesof doing so, but even Malebranche maintained that the passions arefunctional in several respects. Hobbes, on the other hand, mounted anumber of contrasts between passions and the common measure ofreason. But these seem somewhat at odds with his claims about theoperation of the passions in driving mental activity. Here it is worth

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operation of the passions in driving mental activity. Here it is worthconsidering Spinoza's account of the relation between reason and theaffects, for it offers a kind of gloss on Hobbes. It is, Spinoza maintained,only our passive emotions that can produce conflict with the dictates ofour reason; our active affects accord well with reason. Hume, of course,denied that it makes any sense to speak of a conflict between reason andpassion, when he declared that reason not only is but ought only to bethe slave to the passions a dictum that seems to apply to theoretical aswell as practical reason. Later eighteenth-century philosophers developedthe view that our reasoning faculties, and particularly our language, are ahistorical development from our emotions; this seems to have been theview of Condillac and Rousseau.

One of the most important contexts for understanding the epistemicstrengths and weaknesses attributed to the emotions lies in their relationto the imagination. Accounts of what exactly this faculty is changeddramatically from the seventeenth to the eighteenth centuries, but in oneway or another, the emotions were commonly understood to interactclosely with the imagination. On some views, the imagination provides aconduit between the emotions and the body. Both pre-modern and modernfolk medicine held that experiencing strong emotions could affect theimagination of a pregnant woman in such a way as to leave marks on herfetus. Indeed, so close was the connection supposed to be that simplyimagining emotionally-fraught situations could mark the development ofthe fetus, and there was a substantial literature of eighteenth-centurymanuals instructing mothers-to-be on the proper control of their affectivestates. (See Smith 2006 and Kukla 2005.) Descartes made mention ofsuch views, and more generally saw the imagination as an important toolfor managing the emotions: picturing things in the imagination could haveaffective results, so manipulating the imagination is an effective way ofcontrolling our emotions and their effects. The view taken of theinteraction between emotions and imagination changed with shifts in howthe faculty of the imagination and the relation between mind and body



the faculty of the imagination and the relation between mind and bodyin general were understood. Hume, for instance, considered theimagination to be the faculty of composing, decomposing, and associatingideas, in contrast to the impressions among which passions werenumbered. Nonetheless, there is still some role for the imagination inproducing and manipulating affects, and vice-versa. The imagination isalso a crucial mechanism in the social communication of the passions, atopic considered by both Malebranche and Hume.

The physiology of the emotions and their implications for medicine wasanother important theme in early modern philosophy. (Here too theimagination has a role to play.) Descartes considered the emotions centralto the treatment of both mental and bodily illness. In doing so, he joined along and popular medical tradition treating the emotions, includingRobert Burton's Anatomy of Melancholy (1621) and William Falconer's ADissertation on the Influence of the Passions upon the Disorders of theBody (1788). Burton's work was conservative, if eclectic, in its approachto understanding the soul and using the machinery of humours and spiritsto explain emotion and temperament. But many other writers borrowedpiecemeal from the language of humours and spirits, sometimesembedding it in new physiological accounts, sometimes simply using it todescribe various affects. Descartes and Malebranche, for instance, spokeof the animal spirits, but also used such new tools as Harvey's discoveryof the circulation of the blood to explain the bodily effects of emotions.

The affective aspects of mental disorders are matters of particular interest.Some of that interest may have been personal, since melancholy waswidely taken to be a special affliction of the learned, a point that putssome of Hume's discussion of the emotional effects of skepticism incontext. Enthusiasm, particularly religious enthusiasm, also garnered agreat deal of attention, considered as a matter of excessive and contagiousemotion that could be based in bodily disorders. But since manyphilosophers of the eighteenth century followed Shaftesbury in refusing to

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philosophers of the eighteenth century followed Shaftesbury in refusing toconsider the physiology of the emotions, they relegated the bodily causes,components and effects to the attention of anatomists, rather than ofphilosophers. More generally, the sort of humour-driven approach tomedicine and pathology that informed many seventeenth-century accountsof the emotions declined among eighteenth century philosophers.

Some of the most important issues raised by the emotions in early modernphilosophy are practical, especially those concerning practical reason, thepursuit of happiness and moral philosophy. As we have seen, theemotions were generally seen as motivating. They are not necessarily theonly sources of motivation: Descartes and Malebranche considered reasonto offer motivations of its own, as did Pascal, who also admitted othersources of motivation. But many other philosophers, such as Hobbes,Hutcheson and Hume took the emotions to be the driving source of ourpractical reason. None of them, however, maintained that the emotionswere immune to training and refinement, and indeed all early modernphilosophers took it as important for both morality and happiness that wedo train our emotions. The practical philosophies offered by Descartes,Malebranche and Spinoza are particularly concerned with the pursuit ofhappiness, which they assume involves both managing and cultivating theemotions. This is what Descartes called pursuing virtue and Spinozafreedom from bondage, but they shared the view that the emotions arecrucial to the good life, conceived both eudaimonistically and morally.

The pursuit of happiness was also an issue for British philosophers suchas Shaftesbury and Hutcheson, although it sometimes paled next to theirinterests in moral evaluation. Shaftesbury argued vehemently that virtueand interest coincide, because he maintained that happiness depends on apreponderance of pleasant affects, and the emotions carrying moral worthare themselves pleasant. Yet he had to argue the point, since he did notunderstand virtue primarily in terms of individual flourishing. Hutchesonalso considered how the passions contribute or detract from our



also considered how the passions contribute or detract from ourhappiness. But Shaftesbury, Hutcheson and Hume expended even moreeffort to explain how we make judgments of moral worth, starting withthe emotions issuing from our moral senses. For it is only through ouremotions that we can be responsive to the moral qualities we evaluate.For this reason, they may all seem committed to a sentimentalist moralphilosophy. Hutcheson and Hume did indeed oppose the moralrationalists, arguing that there is no independent quality in actions orpersons to which emotions are sensitive. But their position presupposes avery particular understanding of the nature of our senses and of theontological status of the secondary qualities to which they are receptive.In contrast, Shaftesbury, often suggests both that there are moral andaesthetic qualities intrinsic to the external world, and that we access thosequalities through our emotions. On this view, our emotions, at least whenfunctioning as they should, are simply our natural equipment for pickingup salient features of the world.

Early modern philosophy held a special place for the emotions in itspolitical and social theory (see Kahn, Saccamano & Coli, 2006). Indeed,there was a popular early modern genre of how-to books abouttechniques for governing others by managing their emotions. Likewise, agreat deal of political philosophy concerned the management of theemotions by social institutions and authorities, with Hobbes andMandeville being just two of the most obvious examples. But there arealso deeper issues about what role the emotions might play in makingsocial order possible. Many philosophers held that the emotions facilitatedsocial interaction: Descartes suggested something of the sort in hisanalyses of such passions as love and generosity. Malebranche was evenmore clearly committed to the view, holding that the communication ofthe emotions is crucial to social organization, ranking and cohesion.Hobbes and Spinoza, in contrast, found the grounds of much interpersonalconflict in the emotions, and even diagnosed specific emotions asinherently disruptive to social order, e.g., glory for Hobbes. But by the

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inherently disruptive to social order, e.g., glory for Hobbes. But by thesame token, there are many passions that Hobbes stated incline us topeace, and Spinoza allowed that insofar as people agree in affects, theyagree in nature. Eighteenth-century philosophers tended to evaluate thesocial effects of the emotions in terms of whether they were self- orother-directed, with Shaftesbury and Hutcheson arguing againstMandeville that our most natural emotions were other-directed. In hisPhilosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime andBeautiful (1759), Edmund Burke distinguished between the passionsdirected at self-preservation and those belonging to society, but spendsthe lion's share of his time on the latter. The issue is somewhat morecomplicated in Hume, but he does seem to take the development of ouremotions and their susceptibility to a standard of appropriateness to beindispensable to many of the artifices that make social life possible. Adifferent twist is provided by Rousseau's contrast between two kinds ofself-directed affection, amour de soi and amour propre, of which theformer, but not the latter seems consistent with compassion for others.

The place of the emotions in early modern aesthetic theories deserves aseparate treatment. The representation of the emotions was considered aproper object, sometimes the object, of aesthetic criticism. It was also thesubject of many practical manuals in the arts; there is, for instance, anextensive seventeenth-century literature stemming from discussions in theFrench Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture about how to depictfacial expressions and bodily gestures in ways that would allow thedeciphering of emotional states. Here the representation of the emotionsserves both narrative and didactic purposes.

Another commonplace of early modern aesthetics was the importance ofexciting emotions in the audience for a work of art. This is a commontheme in musical aesthetics, which borrowed heavily from rhetoricaltreatises. Baroque composers developed an entire theory of affects, and ofmusical figures to express those affects, for just this end. (See the Grove



musical figures to express those affects, for just this end. (See the GroveDictionary of Music.) Another version of this theme appears inphilosophical discussions of tragedy; since it is assumed that the dramaticdepiction of emotions excites the same emotions in the audience, tragicdrama presents a bit of a puzzle. It seems odd that we should enjoy theexperience, and even enjoy it in proportion to the distress it invokes.Malebranche, Hutcheson and Hume are just a few to address this puzzleby developing accounts of the meta-pleasures afforded to us by theexercise of our emotions.

Eighteenth-century aesthetics moved away somewhat from the view thatthe arts should carefully control our emotions, although the notion thatartworks both express and excite emotions remained. Particularlyinteresting in this regard is the development of the concept of thesublime. As Burke explains it, the experience of the sublime transgressescategories of pain and pleasure and explains much of our response todramatic tragedy. Here it seems that aesthetic, and other distinctiveexperiences can produce emotions that are sui generis, a view that givesaesthetics a particular importance for any understanding of the emotions.

Several of the most important discussions of the emotions in the earlymodern period involved women, who sometimes raised specific concernsrelevant to their status as women. That is the case with Princess Elisabethof Bohemia, whose correspondence pushed Descartes to write on thepassions, while pursuing a lengthy discussion of the impact of theemotions on health and reasoning and our ability to control them.Elisabeth also seems to have inspired other writers on the emotions,serving as the dedicatee for the Treatise of the Passions and Faculties ofthe Soul of Man (1640) of Edward Reynolds, the Bishop of Norwich.Both Mary Astell in Letters Concerning the Love of God (1695) andDamaris Cudworth, Lady Masham, in Discourse Concerning the Love ofGod (1696) took issue with the Malebranchean account of love offered byJohn Norris, albeit to very different degrees and from different

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John Norris, albeit to very different degrees and from differentapproaches. Later in the eighteenth century, Mary Wollstonecraft'scriticisms of Rousseau specifically addressed some of his views aboutemotional development and the sexual division of labor in the sentimentaleducation of children. However, since some recent authors have turned toearly modern discussions to understand how the emotions can beconceptually gendered, we should note that many women philosophers ofthis period showed no particular interest in the emotions. It does not seemto have been considered a special area of expertise for women.

Although early modern philosophy did not seem to associate concepts ofthe emotions with gender just as we now do, there is still a great deal ofgender-baggage to investigate. Many authors took the position that therewere important sexual differences in the disposition to feel specificemotions. Malebranche allowed that there are many such differences, notjust between the sexes, but for different ages, fortunes and stations in life;indeed, it is differences between individuals' stations in life that do themost work for him in explaining variations in affective susceptibilities.Other authors laid such variations at the doorstep of bodily composition,especially the constitution of the brain, and took the relevant differencesto be especially and intrinsically marked between the sexes (although theycould also typify class and rank). In Les Characteres des Passions (1648-62), Marin Cureau de la Chambre discussed the effects that the liquidhumours in the brain could have on emotional temperament, taking it asan explanation of why some people (women, as well as children anddrunkards) cry more readily than others.

Some more distinctively gendered and more evaluatively loaded claimsabout the emotions appeared in the eighteenth century, particularly inaesthetic theory. Shaftesbury is a bit of a villain here, contrasting truetaste with the trivial sentiments of merely feminine taste. Some authorseven distinguished aesthetic qualities and emotions through genderedcontrasts, as when feminine beauty is opposed to the masculine sublime



contrasts, as when feminine beauty is opposed to the masculine sublime(with, of course, the preference going to the sublime). But despite suchgendered accounts of particular emotions, there seems little to suggest thatearly modern philosophy associated emotion as such with the feminine.

3. Individual PhilosophersSupplementary documents are available for the philosophers:

DescartesHobbesMalebrancheSpinozaShaftesburyHutchesonHume

BibliographyPrimary Works Cited

Ancient, Medieval and Renaissance

Aquinas, Thomas, Selections in Philosophy in the Middle Ages, ed. A.Hyman and J. Walsch, Indianapolis, IN: Hackett PublishingCompany, 1973.

Aquinas, Thomas, Summa Theologicae, 5 vol., tr. Fathers of the EnglishDominican Province, Westminster, MD: Christian Classics(henceforth ST), 1981. [Cited by Part, Question, and article.]

Aquinas, Thomas, Truth, 3 vol. (translation of Quaestiones disputatae deVeritate), tr. Mulligan, McGlynn, Schmidt, Indianapolis, IN: HackettPublishing Company, 1994. [Cited by number of question.]

Amy M. Schmitter


Aristotle, De Anima (On the Soul), in The Complete Works of Aristotle,vol. 1, ed. J. Barnes, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984a.

Aristotle, Nichomachean Ethics, Poetics and Rhetoric, in The CompleteWorks of Aristotle, vol. 2, ed. J. Barnes, Princeton: PrincetonUniversity Press, 1984b. [All works of Aristotle are cited by title andby Bekker number (page, column and line).]

Augustine, City of God, ed. D. Knowles, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1972.[Cited by book and chapter.]

Augustine, Selections in Philosophy in the Middle Ages, ed. A. Hymanand J. Walsch, Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company, 1973.(Selections from Augustine and Aquinas.)

Augustine, On the Two Souls, against the Manicheans, in Nicene andPost-Nicene Fathers, Series One, Volume 4, ed. P. Schaff, 1887;reprinted by Peabody, MA: Hendrickson, 1992 (also available athttp://www.newadvent.org/fathers/1403.htm, edition copyrighted2004 by K. Knight). [Cited by chapter and paragraph.]

Augustine, De genesi ad litteram (The Literal Meaning of Genesis), 2vol., tr. J.H. Taylor, New York: Newman, 1982. [Cited by book,chapter and paragraph.]

Charron, Pierre, De La Sagesse, ed. Barbara de Negroni, Paris; Fayard,1986.

Cicero, Cicero on the Emotions: Tusculan Disputations 3 and 4, tr. M.Graver, Chicago: Chicago University Press, 2002.

Cicero, De Finibus Bonorum et Malorum, tr. H. Rackham. London:Heinemann, 1931.

Cicero, Pro A. Licino Archia Poeta, oratio ad judices, ed. G. H. Nall,London: St. Martin's Press, 1987. [Cited by section and line.]

Eustace of St. Paul (Eustachius de Sancto Paulo), Summa philosophiaequadripartite de rebus dialecticis, ethicis, physicis, et metaphysicis,Paris, 1609.

Galen, The Best Doctor is Also a Philosopher, in Galen: SelectedWorks, tr. P. Singer. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997.



Works, tr. P. Singer. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997.Galen, On the Passions and Errors of the Soul, tr. P. Harkins, Columbus,

OH: Ohio U. Press, 1963.Galen, De temperamentis et de Inaequali Intemperie, facsimile

reproduction of 1521 Thomas Linacre translation, Cambridge: A.Macmillan and R. Bowes, 1881.

Lipsius, Justus, De constantia libri duo, qui alloquium praecipuecontinent in publicis malis. Leiden: C. Plantin, 1584.

Lipsius, Justus, Sixe bookes of politickes or civil doctrine [translation ofPoliticorum sive Civilis doctrinae libri sex, Leiden: C. Plantin,1589], tr. W. Jones, London: R. Field.

Machiavelli, Niccol, Prince and Discourses (selections), in SelectedPolitical Writings, tr. D. Wootton, Indianapolis, IN: HackettPublishing Company, 1994.

Montaigne, Michel de, The Collected Essays, tr. D. Frame, Stanford, CA:Stanford University Press, 1958.

Seneca, On Anger, in Moral and Political Essays, tr. J. Cooper and J.Procop. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.

Suarez, Tractatus de Anima and Tractatus quinque ad Primam SecundaeD. Thomae Aquiniatis, in Opera Omnia, vol. IV-V, edition nova aD.M. Andr, Paris: Apud Ludovicum Vivs, 1856-1878.

Vives, Juan Luis, The Passions of the Soul: the Third Book of de Animaet Vita, ed., C. Norea, Lewiston, N.Y.: E. Mellen Press, 1990.

Seventeenth Century

[See sections below for Descartes, Hobbes, Malebranche, and Spinoza]

Anon, Pathomachia; or the Battel of affections: Shadowed by a FeignedSiege of the City Pathopolis. Written some years since, and now firstpublished by a friend of the deceased author. London.

Arnauld, Antoine and Pierre Nicole, Logic or the Art of Thinking, tr. J.V.Buroker, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.

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Buroker, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.Astell, Mary and John Norris, Letters concerning the Love of God,

between the Author of the Proposal to the Ladies and Mr. JohnNorris, London, 1695.

Bossuet, Jacques-Benigne, Trait de la connaissance de Dieu et de soi-mme, Paris, 1741 (posth.).

Burton, Robert, Anatomy of Melancholy, ed. H. Jackson, intro. W. Gass,N.Y.: New York Review Books, 2001.

Charleton, Walter, Natural History of the Passions (2nd edition), London,1701.

Coeffeteau, Nicolas, Tableau des passions humaines, de leurs causes etleurs effets, Paris, 1630.

Coeffeteau, Nicolas, Table of Humane Passions, tr. E. Grimeston,London, 1621.

Condillac, tienne Bonnot, Abb de, Essay on the Origin of HumanKnowledge, tr. H.Aarsleff, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,2001.

Condillac, tienne Bonnot, Abb de, Condillac's Treatise on Sensations,tr. G. Carr, London: Favil Press, 1930.

Cureau de la Chambre, Marin, Les Characteres des Passions, Paris, 1648-62.

Digby, Kenelm, Two Treatises: in the one of which, the nature of bodies;in the other, the nature of man's soul, is looked into: in the way ofdiscovery of the immortality of reasonable souls, Paris, 1644.

LeBrun, Charles, LeBrun's Lecture on Expression, in J. Montagu, TheExpressions of the Passions, New Haven, Conn.: Yale UniversityPress, 1994. (Text and translation of LeBrun, c. 1668, Confrencesur l'expression gnrale et particulire, delivered to the AcadmieRoyale de Peinture et Sculture; first published 1698, variously titledTrait des Passions).

Locke, John, Essay Concerning Human Understanding, ed. P. Nidditch,Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975.



Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975.Masham, Damaris Cudworth, Discourse concerning the Love of God,

London, 1696.More, Henry, An account of virtue, or, Dr. Henry More's abridgment of

morals put into English, London, 1690. (Translation of 1668,Enchiridion ethicum praecipua moralis philosophiae rudimentacomplectens, illustrata utplurimum veterum monumentis, & adprobitatem vitae perpetu accommodata, London.)

Norris, John, Theory and Regulation of Love, Oxford, 1688.Pascal, Blaise, Penses, tr. H. Levi, N.Y.: Oxford University Press, 1995.

[Cited by fragment number.]Reynolds, Edward, Treatise of the Passions and Faculties of the Soul of

Man, London, 1640.Senault, Jean Franois, The Uses of the Passions, tr. Henry Earl of

Monmouth, London, 1649.Wright, Thomas, The Passions of the Mind in General, London, 1604.

Descartes

[See remarks on citations.]

Descartes, Ren, Oeuvres De Descartes, 11 vol., ed. Ch. Adam and P.Tannery, Paris: Librairie Philosophique J. Vrin, 1996. [Cited bywork, then AT followed by volume and page number.]

Descartes, Ren, The Philosophical Writings Of Descartes, 3 vol., tr. J.Cottingham, R. Stoothoff, and D. Murdoch, volume 3 including A.Kenny, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1985-8. [Cited bywork, then as CSM(K) followed by volume and page number. Alltranslations not my own are from this edition.]

Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia and Ren Descartes, The CorrespondenceBetween Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia and Ren Descartes, ed andtr. L. Shapiro, Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007.

Amy M. Schmitter


Hobbes

[All citations to works of Hobbes are given by chapter and paragraph.]

Hobbes, Thomas, The English Works of Thomas Hobbes of Malmesbury,ed. Sir W. Molesworth, London: J. Bohn, 1839-45.

Hobbes, Thomas, Leviathan, tr. E. Curley, Indianapolis, IN: HackettPublishing, 1994.

Hobbes, Thomas, Man and Citizen (translation of de Homine and deCive), tr. B. Gert, C. Wood, T.S.K. Scott-Craig, and T. Hobbes,Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing, 1990.

Hobbes, Thomas, Elements of Law: Human Nature and de CorporePolitico with Three Lives (with selections from de Corpore, chaptersI, VI and XXV), ed. J.C.A. Gaskin, Oxford: Oxford University Press,1994.

Malebranche

[All citations are to The Search after Truth (ST) followed by the numberof Book, chapter and page.]

Malebranche, Nicolas, The Search after Truth, tr. T. Lennon and P.Olscamp, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997.

Spinoza

[References to the Ethics are by part (I-V), definition, (D), proposition(P), or other subsection, and if applicable, to scholium (s), demonstration,or corollary (c).]

Spinoza, B., Ethics in The Collected Works of Spinoza vol. 1, tr. E.Curley, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1985.



Eighteenth Century

[See below for sections on Hume, Hutcheson, and Shaftesbury.]

Anon., An Enquiry into the Origin of Human Appetites and Affections,Showing How Each Arises from Association: for the use of younggentlemen at the universities, 1741. (Cited in Gardiner 1970, 221.)

Burke, Edmund, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas ofthe Sublime and Beautiful, in Pre-Revolutionary Writings, ed. I.Harris, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993.

Falconer, William, A Dissertation on the Influence of the Passions uponthe Disorders of the Body, London: C. Dilly; and J. Phillips, 1788.

Fielding, Sarah, The Adventures of David Simple and the Adventures ofDavid Simple, Volume the Last, ed. L. Bree, London: Penguin, 2002.

Hartley, David, Observations on Man, his Frame, his Duty, and hisExpectations, facsimile reproduction of 1749 edition, New York:Garland Publishing, 1971. Selections available in Raphael, 1991, Vo.II.

Kames, Lord (Henry Home), Elements of Criticism, 2 vols., ed. P. Jones,Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 2005.

Mandeville, Bernard, Enquiry into the Origin of Moral Virtue from TheFable of the Bees: or Private Vices, Public Benefits, 1714; selectionsin Raphael, 1991, Vol. I.

Mandeville, Bernard, The Fable of the Bees: or Private Vices, PublicBenefits, 2 vols., ed. F.B. Kaye, Indianapolis: Liberty Fund, 1988.

Raphael, D.D., ed., British Moralists: 1650-1800, 2 Vols., Indianapolis,IN: Hackett Publishing Company, 1991.

Reid, Thomas, Essays on the Active Powers of Man, 1788; selections inRaphael, 1991, Vol. II.

Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, Discourse on the Origin of Inequality, in On theSocial Contract and Discourses, tr. D Cress, Indianapolis, IN:Hackett Publishing, 1983.

Amy M. Schmitter


Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, Julie, or the New Heloise, tr. P. Stewart and J.Vach, Dartmouth, N.H.: University Press of New England, 1997.

Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, Emile; or, on Education, tr A. Bloom, NewYork: Basic Books, 1979.

Rousseau, Jean-Jacques, The Confessions, tr. J.M. Cohen,Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1953.

Smith, Adam, Theory of Moral Sentiments, 1759; selections in Raphael,1991, Vol. II.

Smith Adam, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, ed. D.D. Raphael and A.L.Macfie, from The Glasgow Edition of the Works andCorrespondence of Adam Smith, vol. I, Indianapolis: Liberty Fund,1982.

Wollstonecraft, Mary, Mary: a Fiction, Thoughts on the Education ofDaughters, and Vindication of the Rights of Woman, in TheCollected Works of Mary Wollstonecraft, ed. M. Butler and J. Todd,London: Pickering, 1989.

Wollstonecraft, Mary, A Vindication of the Rights of Woman, ed. M.Brody, Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1982.

Hume

[See remarks on citations]

Hume, David, A Treatise of Human Nature, ed. L.A. Selby-Bigge, rev.P.H. Nidditch, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975. [All citations to theTreatise refer to this edition, cited as T, followed by Book, Part,Section and then page number.] Selections available in Raphael,1991, Vol. II.

Hume, David, Dissertation on the Passions, in The Philosophical Worksof David Hume, vol. 4, Edinburgh, 1828.

Hume, David, Essays, Moral, Political, Literary, ed. E.F. Miller,Indianapolis: Liberty Classics, 1985. [Citations by title of the essay.]



Hume, David, Enquiry Concerning the Principles of Morals, 1751;selections in Raphael, 1991, Vol. II.

Hume, David, Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, 1748;selections in Raphael, 1991, Vol. II.

Hume, David, Two letters to F. Hutcheson, in Raphael 1991, Vol. II.

Hutcheson

[See remarks on citations]

Hutcheson, Francis, Essay on the Nature and Conduct of the Passionswith Illustrations on the Moral Sense, ed. A. Garrett, Indianapolis,IN: Liberty Fund, 2002. Selections available in Raphael, 1991, Vol.I. (henceforth Essay)

Hutcheson, Francis, Inquiry Concerning the Original of our Ideas ofBeauty and Virtue, Glasgow: R. and A. Foulis, 1772; electronicreprint from the fourth edition, Thomson Gale, 2003; selectionsavailable in Raphael, 1991, Vol. I. (henceforth Inquiry)

Shaftesbury

[All citations to Shaftesbury are from the Cambridge edition, cited byspecific work and page number. Works cited are Inquiry ConcerningVirtue and Merit (cited as Inquiry selections of which are alsoavailable in Raphael, 1991, Vol. I), Letter Concerning Enthusiasm,(cited as Enthusiasm), Soliloquy, or Advice to an Author (cited asSoliloquy), and Sensus Communis (cited as Sensus).]

Shaftesbury, Characteristics of Men, Manners, Opinions, Times, edited byLawrence Klein, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.

Other

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Nietzsche, F., On the Genealogy of Morals & Ecce Homo, tr. W.Kaufmann, N.Y.: Vintage Books, 1967.

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Buelow, George J., 2000. Theory of the Affects, in The New GroveDictionary of Music and Musicians, 20 vols., Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press.

Buelow, George J., 2000. Theory of Musical Figures, in The New GroveDictionary of Music and Musicians, 20 vols., Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press.

Buelow, George J. and Wilson, Blake, 2000. Rhetoric and Music: Before1750, in The New Grove Dictionary of Music and Musicians, 20vols., Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Feagin, S., 1998, Tragedy, in Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy,ed. E. Craig, London: Routledge

Feiser, J., 1992, Hume's Classification of the Passions and itsPrecursors, Hume Studies, 18: 1-17.

Gardiner, H., 1970, Feeling and Emotion: a History of Theories,Westport, Conn.: Greenwood Press.

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Schmitter, A.M., 2005, The Passionate Intellect: Reading the (Non-)Opposition of Intellect and Emotion in Descartes, in Persons andPassions: Essays in Honor of Annette Baier, ed. J. Whiting, C.Williams, and J. Jenkins, Notre Dame, IN: Notre Dame U. Press, 48-82.

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Schmitter, A.M., 2010 (forthcoming), Family Trees: Sympathy,Comparison and the Communication of the Passions in Hume & hisPredecessors in Emotion and Reason in Medieval and EarlyModern Philosophy, ed. L. Shapiro and M. Pickav, Oxford: OxfordUniversity Press.

Schmitter, A.M., 2011 (forthcoming), The Passions in OxfordHandbook of British Philosophy in the Seventeenth Century, ed. P.Anstey, Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Sedley, D., 1998, 2005, Epicureanism, in Routledge Encyclopedia ofPhilosophy, ed. E. Craig, London: Routledge.

Sedley, D., 1998, Stoicism, in Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy,ed. E. Craig, London: Routledge.

Shapiro, L., 2003, Descartes' Passions of the Soul and the Union ofMind and Body, Archiv fr Geschichte der Philosophie, 85: 211-48.

Shaver, R., 1998, Enthusiasm in E. Craig, ed., Routledge Encyclopediaof Philosophy, London: Routledge.

Slomp, G., 1998, From Genus to Species: the Unravelling of HobbesianGlory, History of Political Thought, XIX: 552-69.

Smith, J., 2006, Imagination and the Problem of Heredity in CartesianEmbryology, in Smith, J. ed., 2006, The Problem of AnimalGeneration in Modern Philosophy: from Descartes to Kant,Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.



White, S., 1998, 2003, Cicero, Marcus Tullius, in RoutledgeEncyclopedia of Philosophy, ed. E. Craig, London: Routledge.

Wolfson, M.A., 1934, The Philosophy of Spinoza, 2 vol., Cambridge, MA:Harvard University Press.

Zaw, S., 1998, Wollstonecraft, Mary, in E. Craig, ed., RoutledgeEncyclopedia of Philosophy, London: Routledge.

Other Internet ResourcesThe Balance of Passions, from the on-line exhibit Emotions andDisease, National Library of Medicine.The Descartes Web Project: Passions de l'Ame and Passions of theSoul, bi-lingual texts.The OnLine Library of Liberty [texts from the Liberty Fund].

Related Entriesaesthetics: British, in the 18th century | aesthetics: French, in the 18thcentury | aesthetics: German, in the 18th century | Aquinas, Saint Thomas| Aristotle, General Topics: ethics | Aristotle, General Topics: psychology| Aristotle, General Topics: rhetoric | Augustine, Saint | Burke, Edmund |Condillac, tienne Bonnot de | Descartes, Ren: and the pineal gland |Descartes, Ren: ethics | emotion | emotion: in the Christian tradition |emotion: medieval theories of | Epicurus | feminist (interventions): historyof philosophy | Hartley, David | Hobbes, Thomas | Hobbes, Thomas:moral and political philosophy | Hume, David | Hume, David: aesthetics |Hume, David: moral philosophy | Lipsius, Justus | Machiavelli, Niccol |Malebranche, Nicolas | Montaigne, Michel de | Reid, Thomas | ScottishPhilosophy: in the 18th Century | Shaftesbury, Lord [Anthony AshleyCooper, 3rd Earl of] | Smith, Adam: moral philosophy | Spinoza, Baruch |Spinoza, Baruch: psychological theory | Stoicism | Surez, Francisco

Amy M. Schmitter


Acknowledgments

Initial work on these entries was supported by a fellowship from StanfordHumanities Center during the academic year 2002-03, helped by an ableUndergraduate Research Fellow, Jason Rosensweig, who prepared somebibliographic materials. I have also benefited from the research assistanceof Edwin Etieyibo in the summer of 2005, who cheerfully took on manyonerous tasks. Thanks also go to the editorial staff at the StanfordEncyclopedia and to Doug Jesseph, who was a particularly patient andhard-working subject editor. Much of the work for the updated version of2010 was done by John Kardosh, who combed through the entire entry,catching mistakes and offering insightful comments; I thank him and theSocial Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, whichprovided support.

Supplement to 17th and 18th Century Theories of Emotions

Ancient, Medieval and Renaissance Theories of theEmotions

1. Aristotle2. Stoicism, Cicero and Seneca3. Hippocratic and Galenist Medicine4. Epicureanism5. Augustine6. Aquinas7. Renaissance and Sixteenth Century Discussions

7.1 Florentine Humanism and Machiavelli



7.2 Juan Luis Vives7.3 Montaigne7.4 Justus Lipsius7.5 Suarez and Late Scholasticism

1. Aristotle

Aristotle's preferred term for the emotions was pathos [pl. pathe], whichmakes the emotions largely passive states, located within a generalmetaphysical landscape contrasting active and passive, form and matter,and actuality and potentiality. The pathe are first and foremost responsesfound in the embodied animal to the outside world, very much likeperceptions. They can thus be associated broadly with matter insofar asthey represent capacities or potentialities that need to be actualized byexternal causes, which also explains how they are directed at objects. Ofcourse, the pathe are not pure potentialities. They are actualized in theexperience of an occurrent emotion, and even the mere capacity toexperience pathe requires a determinate form, a soul. Moreover, the pathehave close connections to action, and Aristotle treated them as movementsof a sort. For all these reasons, the pathe can be attributed to the soulinsofar as the soul informs a body. Yet since their causes lie outside of theanimal who experiences them, the question arises whether and to whatextent we can control them.

That is a question addressed in several different ways by the mostimportant Aristotelean texts on the pathe available to later ancient andmedieval authors: the Nicomachean Ethics and Rhetoric. Each workpresents lists of emotions, although where the Nichomachean Ethicsserves up 11, the Rhetoric dishes out a full 14. They differ too in theiraims and tenor: the Nichomachean Ethics is concerned with the place ofthe pathe within the economy of acting according to our habits anddesires as moderated by reason, whereas the Rhetoric concerns thearousal and management of pathe in the context of producing persuasion.

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arousal and management of pathe in the context of producing persuasion.In both cases, however, the pathe are treated as susceptible to rationalinfluence and voluntary action, although not directly subject to choice.

The Nichomachean Ethics characterizes pathe as the feelingsaccompanied by pleasure or pain, listing appetite, anger, fear,confidence, envy, joy, love, hatred, longing, emulation, and pity asexamples (1105b21). Nonetheless, it will be easiest, as well as consistentwith the bulk of Aristotle's analyses, to treat pathos as more or lessequivalent to desire, or appetite in the broad sense. (The Rhetoric makesthe identification explicit, e.g., at 1378a31. But just to keep thingsinteresting, De Anima, treats the pathe, along with desire and wish, asa species of appetite at 414b3). The pathe form one of the three maincategories found in the soul, distinguished from faculties, on the onehand, and states [hexeis], on the other. They are, however, very closelyassociated with the latter. States constitute the virtues [arete] or vices ofthe non-rational part of the soul, which can, however, either conform to orviolate right reason. They do so through their connections with actions.The pathe, along with the appetites, motivate action (even to the point ofprovoking bodily changes such as internal temperature, color andexpression). The dispositions to feel them in certain ways are, in turn,shaped by our habits of action, and states may be understood as thedispositions to feel particular kinds of pathe on certain occasions. Statesare, in fact, the things in virtue of which we stand well or badly withreference to the passions [pathe] (1105b26).

The pathe are not themselves virtues or vices. But states are, and thatmeans that the pathe are morally significant. More generally, becauseemotional experience is intrinsic to any life, any account of the good lifemust give them their due. Now, certain pathe (spite, envy) are always bad.But despite characterizing the human good as a life exercising activity ofthe soul in conformity with excellence [or virtue] (1098a16), and despitecounting reason (but not feeling pathe) as a distinctively human activity,



counting reason (but not feeling pathe) as a distinctively human activity,Aristotle took the excellence of the excellent human to consist partly inexperiencing pathe in the right way, to the right extent, and on the rightoccasions. Indeed, the cultivation of character is largely a matter ofcultivating the disposition for appropriate experience of the pathe, whichis as important as developing our abilities for deliberative reason. Theappropriate emotional dispositions may, in fact, be even more crucial tothe good life, since our capacity to feel the passions seems intrinsic, whileour ability to reason develops with maturity and can be crucially affectedby our emotional dispositions. In any case, the truly excellent person willnot only reason well about what to do in particular situations, but will feelthe appropriate desires and pathe in those situations. For this reason, theintellectual virtue for deliberating about what to do, phronesis, isdistinguished from the other practical intellectual virtues of techne in partby its involvement with pathe.

This comfortable relation between the emotions and reason, however, hitssome snags when Aristotle turned to the distinctive ways in which we canfail to act well. For example, the akratic, or weak-willed person,recognizes what should be done without actually doing it. Aristotle'ssolution to this puzzling, if common, phenomenon, was to lay the blameat the feet of some pathos, particularly the pathe of either anger orpleasure. Here these pathe might seem to oppose reason. Aristotle,however, appears to have thought of them more as exercising a cognitiveinterference that disrupts our completion of the practical syllogism than asan external force overturning our otherwise smoothly operating reason.(For this reason, the pathe seem to have cognitive aspects themselves; seeKraut 2005). In contrast, the enkratic person feels the same disruptivepathos, but does not give way to them in action. The enkratic is thussuperior to the akratic, but still not as admirable as the person who feelsthe pathe as the virtuous person would, that is, in accord with the dictatesof right reason. So Aristotle's ethical works treat the pathe both assusceptible to reason and as integral to the good life, even as they allow

Amy M. Schmitter


susceptible to reason and as integral to the good life, even as they allowthat the emotions can impair our reason.

The risk of emotional disruption of our reason and the management of theemotions are topics explored much further in the Rhetoric. That Aristotlewould even consider the topic is noteworthy, for it suggests thattechniques for producing belief, among which appeals to emotion areprominent, need not be relegated to sophistry, but make a proper subjectfor philosophy. Things seem a bit less rosy, however, when we turn to thethree distinct sources of persuasion Aristotle admitted: trust in thecharacter of the speaker, the passions of the audience, and the proof, orapparent proof, provided by the words of the speech [logos] itself(1356a4). The first and last seem sources that are themselves reasons either reasons for holding it probable that the speaker's conclusions aretrue, or reasons for the conclusion itself. But arousing the audience'spassions seems another matter altogether. Indeed, Aristotle herecharacterized the pathe as all those feelings that so change men as toaffect their judgments, and that are also attended by pain and pleasure(1378a21), for which he produces the example of anger, exactly theinterfering pathos held responsible for any cases of akrasia. But despitethe acknowledged risk that the pathe can be used for sophistic ends,warping our beliefs and decisions and producing commitments onindefensible grounds, Aristotle did not hold that all emotional appealsmust do so. The problem with sophistic rhetoric is that it makes itsemotional pitch in ways independent of the subject under discussion,perhaps even distracting from the subject at hand (e.g., by invoking angerat Al Qaeda, while considering the merits of invading Iraq). Presumably,however, a particular subject may have characteristics that themselvesprovoke certain emotions, indeed that should provoke certain emotions,and appropriate rhetoric will highlight those features without ever leavingthe subject at hand. In this respect, the arousing of emotions might evencount as a kind of salience argument for the beliefs so produced (e.g.,anger at particular outrageous events can serve as a reason for believing



anger at particular outrageous events can serve as a reason for believingthat a politician should be impeached).

More generally, the pathe pervade our lives; our judgments are alwaysaffected by our emotions and moods, not just in perverse and perniciouscases. In this respect, any rhetorician attempting to produce belief musttake account of the emotional state of her audience. This is true whateverher motives might be. Aristotle considered the true to be inherently, butnot overridingly persuasive, and so even the rhetorician most sincerelydevoted to the truth will need to consider how to manage the emotions ofher audience so that it will be amenable to belief in truth. Doing so willrequire not only some assessment of the character of the audience, butalso a great deal of insight into the nature and causes of the pathe, andAristotle devoted a great deal of Book II of the Rhetoric to a kind oftaxonomy and physiognomy of the emotions (thereby inaugurating whatwas to become a popular sport). Aristotle's list is copious, listing some 14passions. Each receives an analysis of its causes (qualities) and objects(persons) which together provide a complex intentional content for theemotion. Aristotle also described the mental conditions under which apathos is felt, that is the relations between the person feeling it and thatwhich provides its content. But it is an odd list, comprising anger, calm,friendship, enmity, fear, confidence, shame, shamelessness, kindness,unkindness, pity, indignation, envy, and emulation. Presumably, Aristotlethought that these were the pathe most likely to be of use to therhetorician (even if he ought not raise envy or shamelessness in hisaudience), but there seems little other rhyme or reason to the selection,and no reason to think that it is comprehensive (especially since itexcludes pathe enumerated in the Nicomachean Ethics). One notableorganizing feature is Aristotle's assumption that the pathe fall intocontrasting pairs, although it may be a bit of a stretch to see the contrastbetween, e.g., envy and emulation, or to take certain candidates, e.g.,calm, as a full-fledged pathe. Also interesting is Aristotle's discussion ofhow the general psychology of the emotions will map onto different types

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how the general psychology of the emotions will map onto different typesof character, ages, and fortunes, again a topic he might have consideredparticularly useful for the rhetorician.

So Aristotle's assessment of the pathe is mixed: they can be cultivated byreason and figure in the good life; they can also disrupt our reason andaction, and be used for nefarious ends. Indeed, by rendering ourjudgments unstable and prone to conflict, the emotions may pose a basicthreat to human social life. But whether happy or dangerous, Aristotlecertainly thought that the emotions are a fixture of human life that cannotbe ignored. Ethics cultivates them in developing character; rhetoricmanages them to produce belief. To these techniques, we might also addthe psychological discipline accomplished by poetry, particularly tragedy.The notion of katharsis, or discharge of the unpleasant emotions of pityand fear may be the most famous part of Aristotle's Poetics, although thetext mentions it only in passing. It did not, in fact, have much influenceon literature and aesthetic theory through the seventeenth century(although the Poetics was an important model in other respects, especiallyfor considering how emotional responses could be directed at differentkinds of characters). However, starting in the eighteenth century, thenotion of katharsis gained ground, particularly since it addressed aquestion of enormous importance to 18th century aesthetics, namely howsomething like tragedy, which would seem to revolve around situationsinvoking unpleasant emotions, can nonetheless be enjoyable. The notionof katharsis at least hints at the complex and multivalent emotional statesthat would be further analyzed by later theorists such as Hume.

2. Stoicism, Cicero and Seneca

Compared with Aristotle's moderation, the Stoics seem pretty intolerantof the pathe, stressing their cognitive, eudaimonistic, and moral failings,while recommending their elimination. The Stoic evaluation of thepassions was extremely influential and contentious for later authors,



passions was extremely influential and contentious for later authors,particularly among the seventeenth-century neo-Stoics, as well as amongthose authors interested in defending the value of the passions. Stoicism'sthoroughgoing naturalism also made it a force to be reckoned with forcutting-edge 17th century philosophers. Since Stoic doctrines were largelytransmitted to early modern philosophers through the writings of Ciceroand Seneca, it is mainly the views current in late, Roman stoicism thatmatter for our purposes. But these sources sometimes mixed upspecifically Stoic doctrines with views taken from other schools,particularly with skepticism in Cicero's De Finibus bonorum et malorum.

Like Aristotle, the Stoics also spoke of pathe and located them within thepassive, material element of the universe. This feature of the concept wasemphasized by Cicero, who in teaching philosophy to speak Latin,considered how to translate the Greek term pathos:

Following Cicero, Roman Stoics frequently translated pathos asperturbatio, which came to have a particularly negative ring. Seneca usedaffectus, while others preferred passio, which explicitly connected theemotions with undergoing, or suffering (Levi 1964, 14-5, also Meyer2000, 60). All of these translations, however, emphasized passivity,particularly the psychological passivity of the emotions and the sense inwhich they are out of our voluntary control, and indeed not a proper partof ourselves.

I might have rendered this literally, styled them diseases, but theword disease would not suit all instances; for example, no onespeaks of pity, nor yet anger, as a disease, though the Greeks termthese pathos. Let us then accept the word emotion [perturbatio]the very sound of which seems to denote something vicious andthese emotions are not excited by any natural influence. (DeFinibus Bonorum et

17th and 18th century theories of emotions

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