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

What are emotions? How do they arise? How do they relate to other mental and bodily states? And what is their specific structure? The book discusses these questions, focusing on medieval and early modern theories. It looks at a great number of authors, ranging from Aquinas to Spinoza, and shows that they gave sophisticated accounts of human emotions. They were particularly interested in the way we cope with our emotions: how we can change or perhaps even overcome them? To answer this question, medieval and early modern philosophers looked at the cognitive content of emotions, for they were all convinced that we need to work on that content if we want to change them. The book therefore pays particular attention to the intimate relationship between theories of emotions and theories of cognition. Moreover, the book emphasizes the importance of the metaphysical framework for medieval and early modern theories of emotions. It was a transformation of this framework that made new theories possible. Starting with an analysis of the Aristotelian framework, the book then looks at skeptical, dualist and monist frameworks, and it examines how the nature of emotions was explained in each of them. The discussion also takes the theological and scientific context into account, for changes in this context quite often gave rise to new problems - problems that concerned the love of God, the joy of resurrected souls, or the fear arising in a soul that is present in a body. All of these problems are examined on the basis of close textual analysis.

Philosophical reflection on the emotions has a long history stretching back to classical Greek thought, even though at times philosophers have marginalized or denigrated them in favour of reason. Fourteen leading philosophers here offer a broad survey of the development of our understanding of the emotions. The thinkers they discuss include Aristotle, Aquinas, Ockham, Descartes, Malebranche, Spinoza, Hobbes, Hume, Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, Kant, Schiller, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, James, Brentano, Stumpf, Scheler, Heidegger, and Sartre. Central issues include the taxonomy of the emotions; the distinction between emotions, passions, feelings and moods; the relation between the emotions and reason; the relationship between the self and the emotions. At a metaphilosophical level, the collection also raises issues about the value of historical study of the discipline, and what light it can shed on contemporary concerns. Thinking about the Emotions is a fascinating and illuminating collective study of how philosophers have grappled with this most intriguing part of our nature as beings who feel as well as think and act.

Seminar paper from the year 2011 in the subject Philosophy - Theoretical (Realisation, Science, Logic, Language), grade: 2, University of Zurich (Philosophisches Seminar), course: Emotion, language: English, abstract: After an illustration of the relationship between reason and emotion defended by the philosophers, who do not claim the emotion to be rational, I elaborate the role of emotion as an aid to rationality. Therefore, I will introduce a concept of the emotion as an aid to bounded rationality. I will then go on pointing out the rational and irrational elements of the emotion jealousy in order to conclude with an argument, that is defending a more differentiated and relative view on the rationality of emotions. At first sight, jealousy seems to be a very unreasonable feeling. Especially the actions in consequence of jealousy are in several situations hard to comprehend for an external observer. This raises the question, if the emotion jealousy, which leads people to unreasonable activities, can be called unreasonable itself as well. How about the relationship between rationality and the emotion jealousy without considering the following actions? Many philosophers called emotions in general irrational some claimed the relationship between reason and emotion to be interdependent. Is the emotion influencing the reason or is the reason affecting emotions? Or are emotions rather an aid to rationality? Is a feeling like jealousy due to its dependency on temper a proof for the irrationality of emotions? For Descartes , reason and emotion are two distinct entities, while for Hume an emotion is neither called rational nor irrational . Aristotle by contrast calls for the rationality of emotions .

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

This volume draws together important selections from the rich history of theories and debates about emotion. Utilizing sources from a variety of subject areas including philosophy, psychology, and biology, the editors provide an illuminating look at the "affective" side of psychology andphilosophy from the perspective of the world's great thinkers. Part One features classic readings from Aristotle, Descartes, Spinoza, and Hume. Part Two, entitled "The Meeting of Philosophy and Psychology," samples the theories of thinkers such as Darwin, James, and Freud. The third sectionpresents some of the extensive work on emotion that has been done by European philosophers over the past century, and the final section comprises essays from modern British and American philosophers.