Synopses & Reviews
What is an Emotion?, 2/e, draws together important selections from classical and contemporary theories and debates about emotion. Utilizing sources from a variety of subject areas including philosophy, psychology, and biology, editor Robert Solomon provides an illuminating look at the "affective" side of psychology and philosophy from the perspective of the world's great thinkers. Part One of the book features five classic readings from Aristotle, the Stoics, Descartes, Spinoza, and Hume. Part Two offers classic and contemporary theories from the social sciences, presenting selections from such thinkers as Charles Darwin and Sigmund Freud alongside recent work from Paul Ekman, Catherine Lutz, and others. Part Three presents some of the extensive work on emotion that developed in Europe over the past century. Part Four includes essays representing the discussion of emotions among British and American analytic philosophers. The volume is enhanced by a comprehensive introduction by the editor and a multidisciplinary bibliography.
What is an Emotion? is appropriate for any course in which the nature of emotion plays a major role, including philosophy of emotion, philosophy of mind, history of psychology, emotion and motivation, moral psychology, and history and psychology of consciousness courses. The second edition provides much more material on emotions in the sciences and more from recent philosophical theories, encompassing recent shifts in theorizing on three fronts: the wealth of new information on the central nervous system and the brain; new developments in cross-cultural research and anthropology; and the recent emphasis on "cognition" in emotion, both in philosophy and the social sciences. New selections include work by Antonio Damasio, Ronald De Sousa, Paul Ekman, Nico Frijda, Patricia Greenspan, Paul Griffiths, Richard Lazarus, Catherine Lutz, Martha Nussbaum, and Michael Stocker.
Synopsis
Includes bibliographical references (p. 291-305).
Table of Contents
Preface
Introduction: "What Is an Emotion?".
I. THE HISTORICAL BACKGROUND
Aristotle
From Rhetoric
From On the Soul
From Nicomachean Ethics
The Stoics
From Early Stoics
From Seneca, De Ira
From Galen, On the Doctrines of Hippocrates and Plato
René Descartes
From The Passions of the Soul
Benedict Spinoza
From Ethics
David Hume
From A Treatise of Human Nature
II. THE MEETING OF PHILOSOPHY AND PSYCHOLOGY
Charles Robert Darwin
From The Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals
William James
From What Is an Emotion?
Walter B. Cannon
From Bodily Changes in Pain, Hunger, Fear and Rage
John Dewey
From The Theory of Emotion
Sigmund Freud
From The Unconscious
Anxiety (From General Lectures on Psychoanalysis)
Stanley Schachter and Jerome E. Singer
From Cognitive, Social, and Physiological Determinants of Emotional State
Paul Ekman
From Biological and Cultural Contributions to Body and Facial Movement in the Expression of Emotions
Richard Lazarus
Appraisal: The Minimal Cognitive Prerequisites of Emotion
Nico Frijda
Emotions are Functional, Most of the Time
Catherine Lutz
From Unnatural Emotions
Antonio Damasio
From The Feeling of What Happens
III. THE CONTINENTAL TRADITION
Franz Brentano
From On the Origin of Our Knowledge of Right and Wrong
Max Scheler
From Formalism in Ethics and Non-Formal Ethics of Values
Martin Heidegger
Charles Guignon, Moods in Heidegger's Being and Time
Jean-Paul Sartre
From The Emotions: A Sketch of a Theory
IV. CONCEPTUAL ANALYSIS AND EMOTION
Gilbert Ryle
From The Concept of Mind
Errol Bedford
From Emotions
Anthony Kenny
From Action, Emotion and Will
Robert C. Solomon
From Emotions and Choice
Cheshire Calhoun
Cognitive Emotions?
Ronald De Sousa
From The Rationality of Emotion
Michael Stocker
The Irreducibility of Affectivity
Patricia Greenspan
Reasons to Feel
Martha Nussbaum
Emotions as Judgements of Value and Importance
Paul Griffiths
From What Emotions Really Are
Bibliography