The extraordinary imprecision that the term emotion displays in philosophical
literature has only been
partially dispelled after the progress of empirical psychology in the XIX
Century. The ambiguity has been generated as a consequence of the associations
that this concept maintained with other close notions[1] -like that of feeling, or affection-, as well as
due to the ethical contexts in
which the first discussions of its scope took place. In the Western World, such
terminological confusion began with the Latin translations of the Greek philosophical
works, particularly, with the Latin rendering of the term πάθη as it was employed by Aristotle, a confusion that started with Cicero and extended to
Saint Agustin (Civitas Dei.IX.4), pervading later medieval philosophy. The movements of the soul (animi motus) had been called passions, but they also had other meanings like perturbationes, affectiones, affectus, whose connotations point towards a conceptual model of
something invariant, a substance, and something foreign that changes or affects it[2]. However, such polysemy simply shows the general
uncertainty which Antiquity had about the
number, name and nature of all those
mysterious and common experiences of the soul which sized it and dragged it
into autonomous whirlpools of action, whether such transformations were thought
to be originated by motu propio or by a foreign force to human substance.
Ethico-philosophical discussions stand over more
archaic mimetic frameworks
-shamanic and oracular, where very active supernatural beings interfere in human
actions-, something which made difficult a clear definition of natural scenarios. Think for a moment in the world of the Iliad. What is the relation of the heroes to their emotions? Where does Odysseus’ cunning begins and Athena’s whispers end? We read in the first Canto how Apollo’s wrath by Agamemnon’s offense to his priests jumps like a quick fire to
Achilles, and Athena has to intervene to stop his sword and
appease his rage so he does not
kill the son of Atreus. The first discussions about emotions appear precisely
in the sphere of the foggy relationship between humans and supernatural beings.
In this context, emotions do not move beyond the notion of being terrible and
irresistible affections that the human soul has to endure,
a viewpoint maintained by both philosophy and tragedy in
the Western World. Tragedy, as a ceremony of emotional education,
conjures the vital liminality in order to transform it
into the triumph of the organizer sophrosyne[3], a form of wisdom that agglutinates self-knowledge
and the common state of mind, the prudence and temperance that maintains the group
united in its most enduring vital project, achieving it through a ceremony of
confrontation with pathos[4]. The restrain of the volatile nature of emotions is
a common goal to all cultures, for without it the group cannot prosper. We read
in the Mahabharata that the man without anger surpasses the angry[5], and we could say in general, that all
politico-religious traditions have
aimed at the guidance and taming of emotional experience through
reinterpretation of its link to a supernatural world, which dictates its order
of performance and proper enactment.
What is particularly uncomfortable both to philosophy and religion
from the emotional world is the
head-on collision that it has, in its most basic manifestations, with the
ethical projects of a
polis organized upon
the principle of reason, where neither the passionate gods nor the brutalized
humans have room anymore. In Plato’s theories, emotions are rejected in
the same manner as pleasure and pain are rejected:
as the cause of woes and
misfortunes which distance man from his immortal nature.[6] In Plato’s case, it is the old Orphic doctrine of
Soma-Sema at work, the
set of beliefs that equates the human body with a tomb. As it is to be expected
from this ontology, no analysis of emotions was performed from its
grounds, for their doctrinal negative valuation removes any
possible interest in them, with the exception of their mere political control.
Although Plato had maintained that the megista
mathemata of the philosopher[7] (the highest form of philosophical revelation) was
similar to the initiation of the Mysteries -implying an
equation mathos-pathos[8] that seems contradictory with his general ideas about
emotions-, he refers by it to the equation of two divine forces in a
mysteric liminal representation,
apt for a non-human model of being which operates on an ideal level that is not
met by human imperfection. Mathos equals
pathos, the notion that knowledge is a movement of the soul, in the sense that it is moved by truth, does not
mean that Plato is saying that our emotions are the clue to knowledge, but
rather that knowledge is something exterior to human soul: truth is the divine
passion which gives as
a result knowledge. Both mathos and pathos are exomorphic representations in his system, solved
endomorphically in political praxiological terms in the emotion of sophrosyne, as a (Pythagorean) human proportion, but most of all as an acceptance of the bounds and
limits of human experience.
One way or another social life is based upon emotional control, on the
channeling of disruptive instincts towards a common project of order in accordance
with some economic guidelines for
survival. Moral law, inasmuch as it is the result of a successful
tradition for restraining emotions –for it guaranteed
the survival of the group-, is first thought as the way of things, as part of
the cosmic order, and emotions are defined and understood in relation to it.
The restrictions are hypostasized together with the chained emotions and the Lebenswelt in which the binding occurs, and
cannot be thought separately, as an object within a system that could have its
own epistemological content, may be even predicable
at other cognitive scenarios. Thus, emotions can only be though within these
restrictions as universal facts of the life of the group.
Emotions will have to wait until Aristotle for their first
positive treatment, though always with the goal of developing a practice for
political control. It will not be until the appearance of empirical psychology that their
negative moral load will be
discharged, as we can observe, for instance, in the qualification of the
emotions as ailments of
the soul made by a man
of the Enlightenment such as Kant.[9] Aristotle understood that the control of passions gives the basis
for civil virtues when they are
guided by reason in order to encourage
habits of excellence.[10] Such control is performed by the rational part of the
soul over the irrational part, which by its nature obeys to reason[11]. The distinction between rational and irrational soul
proves to be necessary in his system, not only to guarantee the independence of
the concept of intelligence in relation to
the one of character, but also to maintain coherence in the dynamics of his
ethical doctrine. The
postulation of a double nature of the soul in which the irrational part obeys
reason is the basic moral axiom of Aristotelean ethics that
will underlie all rational psychology. Such principle is not supported by experience, neither was ever the base of political praxis, but it gives for the first time a minimum autonomy
for the understanding of emotions without a direct supernatural intervention.
So, the starting point of his theory of emotions is movement, for the soul is that which
primarily and pre-eminently originates movement[12], and is moved in return. Those forces acting upon the
soul are called passions, or irrational soul movements, a concept in
which Aristotle subsumes the
experience of rage, fear, shame, sensual pleasure, and in general all that is followed by the pleasure
or pain of the senses.[13] Therefore, we could say that passions are, under this
point of view, causes which produce pleasure or pain in the irrational soul.
They are forces of movement, for they change the human psyche from whatever
state is experiencing into either the state of pleasure or pain, but they can
only affect what is irrational. In the book Categories, the term passion is used as contrary to action, in an inconsistent manner to
what we read in his books of ethics or in De Anima, where passions have a clear
active component for they work as causes for pleasure and pain. Since the will
is supposed to obey the intellect, passions cannot originate in a deliberate
reasonable action. However, this distinction is never really clear in
Aristotle’s thought, for there are non-voluntary actions which are somehow
affected by our doings and farings, as we read in relation to the concept of tyche (good fortune)[14], i.e. there is a class of actions, emotional and otherwise,
which proceed by reason though they are
not the result of our human will. Tyche
and automaton (chance
result) are incidental causes of the efficient order of nature, but they do not obey to deliberate action. While automaton is an accidental action which
happened with no purpose, tyche is
the collateral result of an action, an effect not aimed at
but that is related to some purposeful action. It is easy to imagine emotional movements cause by tyche, in fact, emotions seem to be so
related as to produce one another by tyche,
as the cascade events of Greek tragedies and everyday life clearly shows. The
question gets even more tangled if we consider, as Aristotle does, that the
results of automaton and tyche actions are always such as could
have been if purposefully aimed at by nature, and that there cannot be anything
incidental if there was not prior to it something
primary for it to be incidental to[15]. Such denial of chance and fortune at an ontological
level, the idea that mind (noein) and nature (fisis) precede any casual action implies that the irrationality of
emotions is incidental to a deeper sense of order, gives the grounds for the
intervention of reason to correct the accidents and separation from the
universal rationality, but blurs the causation of emotions
under the physical scheme of
movement, for emotions become irrational at the human level but part of a
rational cosmic plan.
Besides, passion is an action
from the point of view of the person who behaves in
accordance to it, and we can say that passions generate actions, but action
could not be created out of non-action in Aristotle’s system. If passion is to be
understood in the twofold dimension of Aristotle’s theory, as passiones entis, as something which
incidentally happens to the subject (inasmuch as not necessarily aimed at by
the subject), but also as a mover of the subject, something which alters his
qualities, we need to explain how irrational causes can
dominate a human being in a rational universe without its
deliberate agency, and what is the purpose of such causation.
Aristotle has to
postulate two additional concepts, those of faculty and habit, in order to harmonize
his emotional theory with his
basic ontology. The first one is linked to the category of quality. A faculty
or a capacity is a kind of quality of
the soul in virtue of which humans
who act by their passions are named
according to them, whereas he defines habit
as the causes through which these faculties become operational in the soul,[16] or, in other words, how passion becomes action.
Faculty is, from this perspective, a
capacity of the human soul to experience passions,
although understood as a quality of the substance that is our
soul, and passions are imposed to us through the repetition of habit, but in
virtue of such quality. It is due to having the faculty of irascibility why I
can be called irascible and act with
anger, and I have anger because the habit of being angry,
not tempered by reason, has strengthened that passion in me, until it
has been transformed into action. However, emotions show another
quality of our psyche besides its passive capacity to receive the movement of the passion, so we can say that emotions are also affective
qualities which
correspond to soul states (more or less permanent), and not just simply
affections that happen by our faculty to
experience something foreign to our personal psychological constitution, as
Aristotle observes in emotional hereditary
predispositions to certain passions.[17]
The model is faced with the difficulties of
harmonizing the physical system,
governed by causation and movement, with the inner workings of will and culture, and all
this without the aid of a minimal physiological theory to bridge the gap between
those two spheres. To ascribe both reason and irrational causation in relation to emotions, the postulation of a faculty to receive
emotions and the existence of prenatal
affective qualities in the soul creates a
cosmological tension between
reason and irrationality in the human psyche difficult to solve on Aristotle’s grounds. What is the purpose of emotions in a
rational universe? The answer is never clear, and it could not ever be
one on mere rational grounds unless we turn to a final ethical explanation of
the universe in which the control of emotions obeys a rather inconsistent
macro-plan for the transformation and control of an evil nature (as medieval
philosophers will do), something which was not exactly in Aristotle’s mind. The concept
of habit is the tool to
amend both the casual and the irrational emotional drives, though
it does not solve the teleological problem of
emotions.
In Aristotelian terms, passions are
predispositions of the irrational soul, but also affective qualities of the
irrational human psyche. It is never clear whether as predispositions all
humans have the capacity for all emotions but only enact
some of them, or whether we enact only those emotions which in our irrational
soul are imprinted from birth giving a particular configuration to our psyche.
In both cases, they are made effective through habit, which can be guided by means of rational education. The
frequency of habit will directly affect its condition of rationality, for both the excess and the lack of the conscious
action, which arises out of will, violates the middle term which to
Aristotle is the mark of
any healthy physiological action.[18] Emotions, insofar as they are involuntary, are not
reproachable when they are bad, neither praiseworthy when they are good, but rather they are a kind of raw material with
which reason works to reach
excellence (arete) in life. The doctrine of the middle term is made evident in the frequential quantitative classification
he undertakes of fourteen passions within an imaginary emotional continuum in
whose extremes are found vices that are equidistant from a middle term (mean)
in which passion manifests
itself as excellence.[19] Thus, for instance, there is a quality that when
excessively repeated we call recklessness, and when its use is deficient, cowardice, whereas when it occurs in its right measure, we
speak about courage. On the other hand, in the Aristotelian list there
are passions that do not even have a name, like the emotion of envy by deficiency,
or by its right measure, to which he calls righteous
indignation, being indignation an emotion that would seem to be closer to
anger. Moreover, the fact that not having envy or not
feeling anger may be
considered as positive emotions for a smoother development of the group, it
would question per se the Aristotelian theoretical model which advocates a
faculty over which the
habit operates, for if an emotion expresses either a faculty or capacity of the
soul or one of its affective qualities, the absence of any of these expresses at least the
deficiency of such affective quality (for the capacity might still be there,
though no active), therefore we would have a positive quality of the soul whose
nature is not being an
affective quality, which does not make any sense.
The problem we encounter in relation to the concept of
habit as the rational tool to control
emotions is derived from
the imposition of a model analogous to the one that operates in the syllogistic theory,
governed by the notion of the middle term. The middle term of emotion, where ethical excellence is to be found, is not postulated
as an inductive generalization from the physiological observations of the Lebenswelt, but geometrically, just like the middle term of the syllogistic deduction is postulated:
as something outside both extremes which relates them and makes them
intelligible through the relation.[20] Even though Aristotle understood that
the precision of reasoning is proportional
to the subject matter being reasoned about,[21] that logic and politics, for example, cannot proceed with the same
expectations of rigor, when dealing with emotions he has to maintain the basic
principles of his thought, concerning the rational unity of the world. Thus,
since action and passion are movements,
and all movement is continuous,
it is possible to divide passions according to
their frequency into excessive, deficient and balanced human habits, and this
middle and balanced term -insofar as upper limit for deficiency and lower limit
for excess- is desirable for the particular physiological constitution of the
human being, not so much on empirical grounds (as it
would seem by Aristotle’s inclination towards natural sciences) as on the
transcendental order of logic. The failure of Aristotle in giving a psychological
explanation of emotions consistent with his ontology did not hamper
its ethical success, for
the proposed orientation of actions based on goals is perfectly compatible with
syllogistic reasoning, and
with the theoretical schemata of the final cause. The fact that emotions were poorly understood
through the concept of passion did not rest a bit of
strength to his ethics. Their nature was of
secondary importance in relation to their political and juridical control, for
it was clear that their sphere of action was the polis, the relation between the members of the community.
For a philosophical organization of the group, i.e. according to principles of
a rational universal law, it was necessary that all emotional actions could
be mediated by reason with the
creation of proper habits, binding through the rational will all the citizens
to the law, citizens which could be made accountable for their actions as a
consequence of their ethical education,
which tames appetites and desires conducting them by thought and not by
mindless choice or mere desire.
With the triumph of Christianity, the rational undertakings to
understand the nature of emotions suffered a
serious drawback. The principle of a universal law was still at work in the social
Weltanschauung of the Western and Eastern Roman
empires, though it receded from the achievements of its logico-philosophical
epistemology to a mixed
onto-epistemology with more archaic forms of rationality of universal
law linked to the will and ethical plan of a
supernatural being. For most Christian theologians,
emotions express virtue and sin on a cosmic
scale. As Aquinas puts it, the
passions of the soul were part of
the sensory appetite, whose object was thought to be good and evil[22] they are not anymore a question of proportion and
measure but qualitative forces whose value is metaphysical and show the dynamics of the
soteriological plan. Such plan does not follow a strictly rational
purpose, in fact, the universe is a mysterium
tremendum and the feeble
human reason could not and
should not attempt to scrutinize the will of the divine, manifest to men only through the revelation
jealously ministered by a priestly caste. The ideal of sancta simplicitas,
defended by Clemens of Alexandria and many
others, took the place of sophrosyne. Instead of prudence and temperance directed by the
ideal of self-knowledge and self-reliance of the Greek philosophers, simplicity
of mind, negation of the senses and fear of knowing
(original sin) rules the life of the earthly community, becoming human
emotional life a mere
fighting ground for an inconsistent salvation dynamics whose driving force is
sin. Origenes and later
Evagrius Ponticus (the artifex of the Seven Deadly
Sins mythology, together with Pope Gregorius I) defended the notion of apatheia, the renouncing of all emotions and their deliberate
repression, an ascetic ideal –common
to many religious ways- where
reasoning was substituted
by prayer, word by silence, arete by weeping and
sophrosyne by an apology of stupidity. Emotions stand at the center of the
communal life but as exomorphic representations of the soteriological drama, closely
associated to the created substance of the human
soul, though such relation remained a mystery. In this sense, their workings
did not change much in relation to the religious management of
emotions that we find in the mysteries and the tragedies of Aesquilus and specially
Sophocles, though pity, as a collective tool-ideal for social
order, has received a trans-mundane turn and the control of
emotions opens up to a new dimension of ghostly paranoia heavenly sanctioned by
a strict and angry supernatural being.
Even those theologians who were not openly against philosophy, like Gregory of Nisa, Nemesius of Emesis, Aquinas and others,
never treated emotions as forces
outside the soteriological drama. In most
cases, their expositions are epigones to Aristotle’s system, whose dialectic of movement in relation to
the soul satisfied the
metaphysical speculations about the grounds of
the human city (Earthly Jerusalem). Passions, i.e. those emotions which are not
qualified as virtues, are considered the very action of the passive power[23]. Such nonsense has to be understood in the frame of
the cosmic drama, with all the manichean connotations which underlie medieval
Christian doctrine:
passions are the forces
of Evil, the work of the Enemy, the disruptor of God’s order. In the distinction between a passive and an active
dimension of emotions we can hear Aristotelian resonances of rational and irrational desire, of
intellectual pleasure as opposed to that of the senses.[24]
An idealized state of original innocence and
perfection, pretty much imagined as an emotionless state, conditioned severely
any attempt to give a consistent account of human emotions. Even Aquinas’ system, probably the most carefully elaborated of
all, never quite solved the contradictions in relation to emotions. For
instance, the recognition of some form of passion in God and the angels
-specially anger against evil, something which the bad tempered God of the Old
Testament so frequently displays-, would
imply that there is some form of anger not born from concupiscence, but from the will of God (for God has not sensual attachments).
However, how could the will of God be moved by passions, which are the very action of the passive power? The
only way out is to declare that when repelling evil, the irascible power of the
soul is a virtue, but not in any other case[25], something which darkens more the blurred concept of
emotion.
The cosmic drama developed by Christian myth through the
centuries, synchretizing mythologems from several Middle East
traditions, was a dead end for the understanding of emotions, either in the rational way of Ancient
philosophy or in any
empirical scientific
manner, for it had an onto-epistemology which was
adversarial both to reason and to
experience. This was not unique to Christianity, but common to all major State Universal religions of the past
(and the present), who’s mythological remnants of King-God could not
conceive the universal law as independent of the will of the
Godhead[26]. In Aristotle’s system, the movements of the soul were never
overwhelmed by a transcendental dimension though they were
conditioned by his system of physics centered on the
concept of movement (and the
Unmoving Mover). For Christians (and equivalent myths of State
Universal religions), the soul is never an object for study. Its nature is irrelevant
outside the politico-religious drama of the
chosen community in which objects and relations have a definite unchangeable
and real constitution given by the Law, an universal scripture which contains
anything and everything that has interest for mankind. Emotions are just the
way things are, like in more archaic forms of myth, but within that kind of
narrative they can never
obtain a natural dimension and be studied in natural terms, for nature is not
central to the creation plan, but subsidiary. That was not the case in
Aristotle’s system which included natural observations of phenomena that would
have to be explainable within the rational frame and never contradicting it.
Thus, we find observations and reflections on the soul in his books on nature[27], an orientation that in the Middle Ages we will only find outside the
Christian tradition. Avicenna went even
further than Aristotle, noticing how closely related are emotions to
physiological states[28]. Anger, fear and similar
emotions arise from the senses[29] and not from other supernatural faculties, which, though at work
in ordinary experience, are modulators of the natural mechanisms but neither
the unique or the first cause of the
emotional action. Such
independence of the physis in relation to other cosmic moral plans is
undoubtedly Aristotelian, but has an added content which prefigures emotional theories of the
Enlightenment, linking emotions to the language of animals: for animals can express their emotions to one
another, a lamb can perceive the emotional intention of
the wolf through a power which is not reason, and feel fear instinctively, so
emotions can be though as some sort of apprehensive faculty which executes
a judgment[30], i.e. some sort of intelligence.
An open critique to the treatment of emotions on transcendental grounds was clearly stated by Baruch Spinoza, who
laments that man is conceived in those systems as a kingdom within a kingdom
under the belief that man disturbs nature rather than follows its principles[31].
Spinoza noticed that no one had defined the nature and strength of emotions
(affectus) as a
consequence of considering them repugnant to reason, or
trivial and frivolous matters, but since nothing in nature is a flaw[32],
emotions can only prove, once properly understood, nature’s efficacy. His
doctrine has to be understood in the milieu of the philosophical discussion
against Descartes’ dualism
of body and soul. Whereas
for the Spinoza emotions are affections of the body that are accompanied by confuse
ideas, in
which the soul affirms a quantitative change in its vital impulse,[33]
to Descartes emotions are passions caused by the body, which maintains a relation
with the soul through the animal spirits found in the pineal gland.[34]
Such Cartesian reference to biology should not mislead us
with respect to the method used by these theories. This
latest gland, from whose physiological functioning the 17th Century scarcely new anything
beyond what is implied by its anatomical location in the brain, was a
mere theoretical postulate based on the most blatantly fantastical empiricism,
and that served to poorly mediate the worlds of nature and the spirit,
pretending to dispel the inconsistencies derived from the narrative of a radical separation between body and soul.
The way in which the images are formed in the gland, which supposedly has to
mediate between the world of the senses and that of the soul, is never explained -as
it could not be any other way-, hence reproducing the classical problem of
idealism when trying to explain the mechanisms of
interaction of the immaterial with the material. Spinoza disposes of the gland
by postulating a no less fantastic isomorphism between the soul and the body, although more
consistent with the postulates of the rational method: the concatenation and order of thoughts and ideas about things in the soul, is isomorphic with the affections and images of things in
the body.[35]
For both thinkers, emotions involve a double phenomenon, of nature and soul,
although Descartes tries to adjust his concept to a Christian theology in which passion can be controlled by means of ratio et auctoritas,[36]for
he naively thought that mind has absolute power over its actions, whereas in Spinoza there is a
naturalist rationalism in which emotion and reason are linked like two
concurrent forces of nature.
To Spinoza,
emotions condition the soul to think in a determinate manner, to think one
thing and not another, which is equivalent to postulate that the body
conditions the soul, but only insofar as the latter has confuse ideas. Such
conditioning is nor permanent and the confusion disappears as soon as the
isomorphic mental image of the passion is substituted by a clearer one through the
mere rational exercise of the soul in which stronger ideas are proposed. Spinoza defines emotion as the
modifications of the body by which its active power is increased or decreased,
made splendid or constrained, and also the ideas of those alterations.[37]
When we are the adequate cause of such modifications, Spinoza calls the
emotion an activity, if not, he calls passion to the alteration. The notions of causa adequata and
causa inadequata or
partialis, was developed by Scotus
Eriugena.[38]
Whilst by causa adequata it is
understood a causal connection in which the effect is clearly and differently perceived by means
of the cause, the inadequata does
not allow such a perception, a
highly useful notion to logically and epistemologically justify the human inability to determine
clearly any empirical connection derived from a passive alteration,
and therefore the inability to form distinct representations out the mere experience of life. Since a fair number of our experiences could be said to be
determined and produced beyond our will, we can expect mainly a confuse mind populated by inadequate causes. This
implies that our ignorance is deeply grounded in our intellect and that the true and adequate mode of things is only
partially within our grasp. Furthermore, Spinoza considers that the mind
insofar as it has adequate ideas and also insofar as it has confused ones,
persists in its being for an indefinite period[39],
i.e. there is a principle of inertia at work in the human mind which operates upon
both modes of emotions, as activities and as passions. In
fact, confuse ideas do not disappear simply by knowing that we have them, for
the power of man is limited compared to that of nature,
understood as Deus sive Natura (DN), and
only a stronger passion can substitute a weaker one.[40]
Spinoza’s major
contribution to the study of emotions is the explicit epistemological dimension which he gives them. Since a man can
only know himself through the modifications of his body, an epistemological
principle which applies also to nature, and
since those alterations are either the outcome of activities or passions,
emotions are not only the conditions of possibility for our self-knowledge, but
they are also its content. To know ourselves is to observe our emotional dispositions and their vicissitudes. Such
emotions are either activities or passions. When the observation is of our
activities, we feel pleasure, but
when we observe our passions, we feel pain; for pleasure
is a transition from a less perfection to a greater one, and pain is the
opposite transition. The mere fact of observing our activities produces
pleasure, for such observation implies an increased rational stand in relation to the already adequate
cause which connects activities, and therefore, the
transition of our intellectual experience to a greater perfection. But such is not the
case when we observe a passion. For Spinoza,
the order and connection of ideas is the order and connection of things, and
vice versa, i.e. ideas are isomorphic to things and body alterations[41].
Contrary actions cannot coexist in the same object for long and they change
until they are not contrary anymore. Likewise, contrary ideas cannot coexist in
the mind at the same time for long, so when we observe
a passion which perseveres in us while we observe it, we
can only be doing it from the perspective of a confused mind (partial or
inadequate cause), the
one producing our idea of such passion; for if
it was considered from the vantage point of a clear idea (adequate cause) the
passion would disappear.
Thus, we could say that a clear mind transforms passions in activities, a conclusion unthinkable from
the Christian (and Universal Religions) point of view, and
also alien to the Aristotelian system. Aristotle would probably agree with Spinoza’s
isomorphism, for he
thought that actual knowledge is identical with its object[42],
and would appreciate the solution that Spinoza found for the aporiae of the
double nature (active/passive) of the emotions via the concept of adequate cause, but he
would probably would disagree in relation to the independence that emotions
show in respect to the will, or with the strong epistemological role that emotions play in the Spinozist
cosmos.
Spinoza’s system
tries to unify the natural and the moral worlds by making reason an instrument of nature, though
not the unique force of order: it is a
necessary tool but not sufficient to understand man and DN. In fact,
he does not even regard man as a being whose specific determination is reason,
but instead, he considers that human essence is formed by certain modifications of the
divine attributes, specifically, from a part of the understanding
of DN and of his extension.[43]
For Spinoza, substance does not constitute the actual being of man,
for the being of substance implies necessary existence, while
man’s being does not. Since human essence is just a mode of substance, a set of
particular modifications or alterations of substance, our reason could hardly
aspire for necessary connections in its workings. Reason could not be the
dominant attribute of DN for reason implies purpose and necessity,
measure and limits, and for Spinoza DN has neither purpose nor beginning or end,.
Therefore, there is a contradiction between the workings of our human reason
and the divine one, and this would imply a double principle of action in the
universe,
something that would be contradictory with the theorems in which it is shown
that DN is the sole and immanent cause of the universe which acts in virtue of its own laws.[44]
Besides, not even divine reason could be the defining attribute of DN, for DN has infinite attributes and each one of them must be
conceived through itself, so it would be contradictory with such constitution
the existence of a dominant one.
Reason is capable of producing activities or positive
affections, it can
propose models of clear thought, models which can be more perfect according to
the perfection of the thought, something which depends on the perspective
taken: the perspective of existence or that of the essence, of the
finite or that of the infinitude and eternity of DN. Our
ailment occurs because of the inability to think clearly the origin and motive
of passions, to
understand their place, and therefore, ours, in the natural schema of things.
Happiness can only be produced from the thought that is based on the divine perspective, what Spinoza calls the
third kind of knowledge,
which is equivalent to the intellectual love towards DN from which happiness is derived, not as a
reward for virtue, but as
virtue itself.[45]
The third genre of knowledge[46]
is the one in which we proceed from the adequate idea of the formal essence of
certain attributes of God to an adequate knowledge of the essence of
things, a type of mystical intuitive knowledge in which the attribute of
extension (corporality) is clearly understood, and the confusing passionate
ideas in the human soul are no longer produced, which had been
originated by a mere knowledge from the senses, from
experience, or from
inferences. To Spinoza, knowledge by inference (of the second kind), although true, take us
only from one efficient cause to another, and even though ultimately such
causal sequence refers to the first cause, it
involves an infinite series, something which would impede to our
limited mind any form of perfect knowledge by proceeding in
this manner. For this reason, the
third kind of knowledge must be sustained on some kind of formal causality through which we could think the formal
essence of the attributes, and from there -in a kind of cosmic-formula
syllogism-, attain
the substance.[47]
As we can observe by exposing the general lines of the
Spinozist system in relation to emotions, though
these are tools for self-knowledge inasmuch as they are alterations which offer
data to our minds about the universe and its constitution, they are still absorbed
in transcendental ontology, and
minimized by epistemology in their practical human function as cognitive errors. Spinoza’s
immanence is rather relative, for his pantheism, like
any other pantheism, related to the myths of Purusha or the Adam Cadmon, assumes
the transcendentality of a being which is absolutely infinite. In
fact, Spinoza’s pantheism has lost the immanent traits of the anima mundi myths in which nature is a direct and intimate experience of the divine in every one of its objects.
Seventeenth
Century European rational psychology employed observational data in relation to
emotions as a mere justification for its metaphysical theories.
Physiological knowledge was scarce and fragmentary, and the
weight of religious and social censorship was widely suffered by
any philosopher trying to unveil the workings of the human mind. Both Descartes and Spinoza noticed, following Aristotle, that
emotions also occur in animals, but
such observation follows the only purpose of marking the difference between
human and animals, not of declaring their continuity. In the case of Descartes,
the emotions observed in animals -which he considers more violent than those of
human beings- are used in an argumentation to negate their ability for thought,
widening even more the traditional gap between the spheres of irrationality and
reason.
According to Descartes, even though emotion in humans is associated with
thought, we could not infer from it the same for animals. Animal are emotional but not thinking creatures, for if they were,
they would have already expressed their thoughts to us like they have done with
their emotions.[48]
Descartes is willing to admit that emotions in animals have a physiological origin, and that they are derived from the
disposition of their organs, but such derivation is different in humans, for it
is accompanied by thought, while animals are mere automata.[49]
It is interesting to notice that a discussion on animal automatism which
contrasts the machine-like
nature of emotions with the supposedly non mechanical nature of our reasoning contradicts the frame of the science of logic with which Descartes was well accustomed. In
the Discourse[50],
he mentioned that logic is of avail in the communication of what we already know but not in the
investigation of the unknown, i.e. as a mere tool for rearranging knowledge which
assists the process of proof, a notion which implies a mechanical dimension for the reasoning mind. The fact
that thinking is also a mechanic action was extensively thought during the XVII
Century. For Leibniz,
reasoning could be reduced to the mechanical operation of going through a list, an idea
which he developed from the works of Raymond Llul and Thomas Hobbes.[51]
So why is Descartes ignoring on purpose the mechanical nature of logical thought? More than ignoring we should probably say that he simply does not consider
logical thought to be the core of reason. For Descartes,
thinking is a four dimensional activity, it is the result of the work of the
intellect, the imagination, the
senses and the will. These four actions can have as
origin either the soul or the body, when they are soul actions they
are called volontés[52],
and they are called passions when the cause in the body. Aquina’s philosophy underlies the division, and although Descartes
never works his discourse explicitly in terms of the soteriological Christian drama, but his total submission to the
authority of Rome conditions his psychological system, which
rejects axiomatically any possibility of mechanic workings for the soul. As a
matter of fact, the mechanical nature of the soul would destroy the salvation
schema based on punishments and rewards. In
order to preserve the Weltanschauung, he has
to declare the absolute control of the will upon the passions[53],
and by doing so, he reduces the study of emotions to their relation to such
control. As he will express it: the function of passions is merely the
fortification and conservation of good thoughts in the human soul[54],
i.e. they are part of the Christian ethical drama.
For Spinoza, the
specific difference between animals and humans in relation to emotions could not be given by thought, but by the
difference in essences of one and the other, which implies distinctive
abilities of ideation, more or less perfect.[55]
He noticed the continuity but establishes an essential gap: we share, for
instance, the procreation desires with the bee or the horse, but for the
animals in one case is an insect desire, and in
the other, an equine desire, while for us is a human desire. However, there is
a major gap between our essence and those of animals: human emotions are
accompanied by rational processes, whilst those of animals are not,
for these do not possess the second kind of knowledge, and their confuse ideation occurs only in relation
to experience. In
fact, even among humans emotions are experienced differently, according to the
use that is made of the second kind of knowledge, so a drunkard and a
philosopher do not experience joy in the same way, though they both share the
human essence, which qualifies the experience as of a same species and unique
in relation to animals.
Curiously enough, the theses of Modern Rationalism come short in relation to the Aristotelian
ones in what pertains to the emotional continuity among living beings. To Aristotle, the
emotional difference between some animals and humans is only quantitative and not
essential; in fact, he considered that humans and animals have some
psychological qualities that are identical, whereas others are only
akin, and a third group of them maintain a relation of analogy.[56]
It is remarkable how Aristotle established a full continuity of life from the
inanimate to the animate, by
simple though clear minded observations. Moreover, Aristotle understands that
there is continuity also between the emotional desire, that we
share with animals, and the intellective activity, and that the actualization
of a desire, like the one that can be present in an animal is, in fact, a
substitute for thought.[57]
Aristotle did not find himself constrained by the theological myths which make the human a being essentially
different from animals, so he could start out from his observations without the
need for making them to conform to the narrative of a sacred book that separated ab initio
humans from the rest of nature.
Following the Aristotelian tradition, both Spinoza and Descartes made lists of emotions,
actually, very similar to those of the ethic writers of the epoch. Spinoza
simplified Descartes’s list of six basic or primitive passions,
admiration, love, hate, desire, joy and sadness,[58]
reducing them to three: desire, pleasure and pain, but
deriving from them forty eight passive emotions. [59]
These lists, derived as much from the psychological observation of morals as from the Aristotelian tradition, are at
best rude tentatives for reducing the vast realm of affectiones to an intellectual schema which conveniently
considers and manages a small set of emotional principles whereby to deduce all emotions. For
instance, the distinction between appetite, will, desire and impulse,
though concepts that might be subject to all sorts of metaphysical subtleties, is a mere terminological matter.
In fact, Spinoza’s list of emotions is relativized from the moment that he
recognizes that emotions are innumerable in their composition, for there are so
many classes of joy, sadness, love, hate, etc., as there are objects that affect
us.[60]
The diverse lists elaborated by ethic writers functioned more like
exemplifications of the theoretical system in which they were inscribed than as
precise descriptions of emotion, or of the group of emotions that were
associated under the same concept. Little more could be expected from these
classifications, which simply enclosed the emotional domain around the parameters of desire, pleasure
and pain, as Aristotle had already done, confirming, by means of the
almost bi-millenary repetition of the same emotions, that these were the ones
–or some of their variants-, and not others, thus having their categorization and order a practical social interest, as a
metaphysically grounded political guide for citizens behavior.
However, a major problem in all these systems which included as basic active
emotions pleasure and pain was the inconsistency of considering pain as an
active drive in the cosmic drama without falling into Manichean metaphysics. If we do not intend to postulate
a perverse and contradictory cosmos, in
which reason and virtue share the same attributes of irrationality,
pain must be excluded from the active engine, although it can proposed as a
secondary product of partial scenarios of action, of actions that correspond solely
to the perspective of finitude and ignorance. For although none of this
philosophers confused pleasure with what is morally good, none of
them either considered that pain could be an active driving force on a human or
on cosmological scale. The happy man, as someone that fares
well and lives well[61]
might be accompanied or not by pleasure, but he certainly cannot not be
determined in his actions by mere pain. Once again, it was precisely Aristotle
who better understood that there were contradictions in considering pleasure
and pain as emotions, though they were drives for emotional action and at the same time the result which
followed emotions[62]
As we have seen, the conceptual mainframe of philosophical
modernity in relation to emotions is still Aristotelian, although incorporating
part of Medieval metaphysical discussions concerning the difference between
ontology and psychology, between
essence and existence, a
Platonized Aristotelianism that inevitably relegates emotions to the field of
the latter, existence, where it is found the contingent, the transitory, the
confused idea, the error, something very different to the proposals that we
read in Aristotle about the emotional dimension of cognition.[63]
To this we have to add the theoretical climate propitiated by the incipient
science of mechanics, which makes emotion to be -as a property of matter (an
idea which had a general consensus) - utterly reducible to automatisms, or to
the notion of causa inadequata. However, it is precisely the idea of emotion as
automatic movement of the body in relation to outside stimuli what will hinder further developments of the
important notion of continuity of human-animal emotional realms. Such continuity will not be completely
acknowledged in the modern world until the enlightened theses of La Mettrie,[64]
who covered the essentialist gap by declaring them both automatic, mere machine-like
physiological functioning of
animals and humans. Like Aristotle, La Mettrie
considered nature a continuum of life, from the plant to the
human, with rather arbitrary lines between the conceptual realms established by
natural philosophy[65].
For La Mettrie, man’s physiology works like a device, and its main leverage is
in the brain. He
declares useless for philosophy the Leibnizian,
Cartesian or Malebranchian thesis in relation to the human soul, for
they postulate entities and substances with such certainty that it would seem
that those philosophers had seen them and counted their numbers[66].
La Mettrie calls for comparative anatomy and medicine in order to solve the disputes about the nature of
emotions in human and animal. Man is a machine, though composed in such a
manner that it is impossible to form a clear idea of its constitution without
careful physiological investigations. A believer in a universal natural law,
his Epicurean epistemology drove him to the observation of the
inheritance of emotions, and the independence that they show in relation to the
will. Why the simple idea of a beautiful woman causes all kinds of movements
and particular desires in men?[67]
asked himself La Mettrie. And he answered that in all those movements we cannot
look for mere moral answers but the machine workings of our bodies
in which the will plays but little part. The virtues of the soul cannot go further than the
strength allowances of the body, in fact, as La Mettrie noticed, desires change
with age and with fever[68],
so the metaphysical treatment of emotions are but vain
constructions, empty theories.
A very similar materialist stand is found in D’Holbach theses on emotions (he calls them passions). In a
world fully interconnected by causes and effects, in which nothing operates
independently, it would be foolish to ascribe independence to the will in
relation to emotions (passions). Nature marks to man the line to follow, it
gives him the reason for his being this and nor that, his
particular emotional configuration and the means to accomplish the
ends of his intellectual and emotional endeavors[69].
It is interesting the connection that D’Holbach establishes between emotions
and survival[70],
an idea which will only be fully developed later within the frame of
evolutionism.
Passions are movements of attraction and repulsion which drive men towards
objects and actions or away from them, and the different names that they
receive are related to the different objects that excite them. His interest in
emotions is part of his program for the development of a political science based on natural science and, accordingly, he considers that politics should be the art for the regulation of human
passions through habit and education, leading them to the best social
interest[71].
The ruling force here is an exomorphic reason allied with prudence[72]
in which the language of nature is formulated, a language spoken by man. Such
Aristotelian-Epicurean program, aimed to political action, pretty much like
Aristotle’s, was
restricted in its formulation by the a la
contra character of its atheist contents, particularly by the need to prove
that atheism was compatible with the morals inherited by his society. However, it is
interesting to observe that he did not realize the link between those Christian morals he was attacking and their basic
grounding in survival functions, despite the more or less hallucinated contents
of their myths, a twist
that will have to wait for Nietzsche’s exam
of Western Culture. Emotions are still a datum of nature, a final
representation of an exomorphic mechanical world.
[1] I will use the term notion as a synonym for concept.
[2] See Wolfson, Harry Austryn, The Philosophy of Spinoza. Vol. II. Harvard University Press. Cambridge (Mass.)
and London. 1983. p.193-194.
[4] It can be seen in the three main tragedians, to
mention Sophocles will suffice (Tragedies. 2 Vol. Harvard Heinemann.
Cambridge (Mass.) and London. 1981.) Electra.
v.v.356 and s.q.; In Oedipus Tyrant the
chorus is Apollonian when it says that Tiresias and Oedipus
have allowed themselves to be carried away by wrath in the discussion, and
precisely that is not what is needed in the circumstance they are in.
(v.v.404-407). In Antigone the chorus
affirms that the mind that is
dominated by passion, especially during youth, is dangerous, and the words
of the chorus with which this tragedy is concluded seem to be said directly
from the mouth of Apollo: Of happiness
the chiefest part is a wise heart: And to defraud the gods in aught with peril's fraught. Swelling words
of high-flown might mightily the gods do smite. Chastisement for errors past wisdom
brings to age at last. (Antigone. v.v.1348-1353) In Philoctetes, the chorus sings how
unhappy are men who do not lead a moderate life. (Philoctetes. v.v.177-178.) In Ajax,
despite the general Dionysian character of
the chorus, they desire that prudence
may assist Agamemnon and Teucer to
be able to think sensibly in the midst of the dispute that they are
maintaining. (Ajax.v.v.1264-1265.).
An equivalent mood of sophrosine is
found even in Aeschylus’ tragedies (Aeschylus
Tragedies. Harvard Heinemann. Cambridge (Mass.) and London. 1983.), see
among other examples: Prometheus.v.v.1036-1039.; Seven
Against Thebes.v.v.686-688; Agamemnon.v.v.40-263; Choephoroi (Libation-Bearers).v.v.598-601.
[5] Mahabhatata. The
Book of Origins. 7.d. The Latter Days of Yayati. Cit. Edition. p.197.
[6] See Plato, Timaeus, especially
69a and s.q. Let us recall that in Plato’s idealist philosophy, emotions, common to all humans (Gorgias. 481c), are responsible for binding the soul to the body (Phaedo. 83d), and are as irrational as the poetry that feeds them (Republic. 10.606) dangerously for the
order of the Polis.
[7] Republic. 6503 e.4.
[8] See the study undertaken by Thomas Gould, The Ancient Quarrel between Poetry and
Philosophy. Princeton University Press. Princeton. 1991.
[10] As it is sustained all along Chapter II of the Eudemian Ethics.
[12] Aristotle. De Anima. Book 1. 403-404.
An opinion which was shared also by Democritus, Leucipus, Anaxagoras, Heraclitus, Diogenes, Alcmeon
and others.
[13] This is the list that he offers in the Eudemian Ethics (1220. b.11.), similar
to the one offered in the Nicomachean
Ethics (1105. b.19) where he names, anger, fear, trust, envy, joy, love, hate, longing, emulation and piety.
[15] Ibid. Translation of Wicksteed, P.H., and Cornford, Francis M. Harvard Heinemann
Edition. Vol.IV. p.163.
[17] Categories. 8.b.33.
[18] De Anima. 424 a.1.
[19] The table is in the Eudemian Ethics. 1221. a.1.
[20] See Prior
Analytics. 26. b. 34.
[24] Like we read in On
the Soul. 432 b. 1-6. And in the Nicomachean
Ethics. 1175 a. 26-28.
[27] See History of
Animals. Book VIII
[28] Fear and anger to changes in
breathing, for instance. Avicenna, The Canon of
Medicine. No. 161. Trans. Oskar Cameron Gruner. AMS Press Inc. New York.
1973. p.p.118.
[30] Ibid.No.180. p. 137.
[32] Nihil in natura fit, quod ipsius vitio possit tribui.
Spinoza, Ethics.
Trans. R.H.M. Elwes. Dover Publications. New York. 1951.
[35] See Proposition 1. Part V. Ethics.
[36] To Descartes, as Spinoza tells us when
criticizing the theory of the pineal gland, no soul is so weak that
it could not acquire, if well guided (by the ratio et auctoritas of the
Catholic Church), an absolute power over its passions. This is the Stoic theory, but
also the one adopted by the Roman Church, by which the punishment to the
sinners is justified. See Spinoza. Preface to part V. Ethics.
[37] Per Affectum intelligo Corporis affectiones, quibus ipsius Corporis agendi potentia augetur, vel
minuitur, juvatur, vel coercetur, & simul harum affectionum ideas. Ethics.
Part III. Def. III.
[39] Ethics. Part III. Prop.IX.
[41] See Part V. Axiom I. and Prop. I-III for the
following.
[42] De Anima III.7.
[43] Ibid. Part II. Propositions X-XIV.
[44] As it is stipulated in the theorems of the first part
of the Ethics. Particularly
contradictory with propositions XVII and XVIII.
[45] See propositions XLII and XXXVI of part four.
[46] The first kind of knowledge is the one given by the
senses and experiences,
whether vague or not. It is a false knowledge. The second kind of knowledge is not confined to the experience of things, but
it is founded on reason. It concerns a deductive knowledge of two types: one
that proceeds up to the cause from the effect, and the other, from a universal that is accompanied
by a property, that is, we deduce the conclusion of a syllogism. See part II of the Ethics, and the treatment of this subject by Wolfston in The Philosophy of Spinoza. Vol. II Chapter XVI.
[47] Medieval philosophy, following Aristotle’s theory of the four causes, had questioned which one
of them was God. By theologically starting from the immateriality of
God, it could not be the material cause, therefore the other three were granted. The theory
was gathered by Maimonides, and from him by Spinoza. See Wolfson, The
Philosophy of Spinoza. Ed. Cit. Vol. I. p. 302.
[48] Cf. René Descartes. From a Letter
to the Marquess of Newcastle. 23 November 1646. In Rosenthal, David M.
Editor. The Nature of Mind. Oxford
University Press 1991. p. 35-36.
[49] Cf. Descartes, From Letter to
More. 5 February 1649. Ibid. p. 37. A thought which is also expresed in Le Discours de la Methode. Ian
Maire. Leyde 1637. p. 55-56. La Gaya Scienza June 2012. Web.
[50] Part. II.
[51] R. LLul, Ars Magna; T. Hobbes Computatio
sive Logica (In De Corpore). See on this
W.Kneale and M. Kneale. The
Development of Logic. The Interests of Leibniz. P.325.
[52] Descartes. Les Passions
de l’Ame. Art. 17 and 18. Ed. Henry Le Gras. Paris. 1649.
Philosophie. 2010.Web.
[54] Or, il est aisé à connaître, de ce qui a été dit ci-dessus, que
l’utilité de toutes les passions ne consiste qu’en ce qu’elles fortifient et
font durer en l’âme des pensées, les-quelles il est bon qu’elle conserve, et
qui pourraient faci-lement, sans cela, en être effacées. Les Passions de l’Ame. Art.74.
[56] Cf. Aristotle. History of
Animals. Book VIII. 588b 1-3. The emotional and
intellective capabilities of animals have been
observed by all primitive cultures, who even considered them gods, even though, reflections more interesting and
founded in experience only occur from
Aristotle onward. The tradition that will arrive to Darwin covers, amongst others, the reflections
of Michel de Montaigne (Apology for Raymond Sebond. The
Complete Essays. Stanford University Press. Stanford, CA. 1992.)
[59] To Spinoza, the first active ones are desire and pleasure, for he considers that pain is always
an active emotion. See the end of Part III of the Ethics.
[60] Cf. Ethics. Part
III. Proposition LVI.
[64] Julien Offray de La Mettrie. L’Homme Machine. F.
Henry. Paris. 1865. p. 128.). The machine quality in relation to
the movement of animals was already
highlighted by Aristotle in Movement of Animals. 701 b.2.
[65] Ibid. p.151.
[66] “comme s'ils les avaient vues et bien comptées”. L’Homme Machine. Op.Cit. p.22.
[67] Ibid. p.121.
[68] Les goûts
changent avec l'âge et la fièvre. Ibid. p.27.
[69]
Paul Henri Thiry, baron d'Holbach. Système
de la nature ou des lois du monde physique & du monde
moral. 1770. Edition Web. http://classiques.uqac.ca/
p.p.59-60.
[70] Ibid. p. 113.
[71] Ibid.p.108.
[72] Ibid. p.p.89,146.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Please write here your comments