Paola Giacomoni

Emotions are complex phenomena. We all have an intuitive understanding of what they are because we experience them in everyday life. They occur in response to triggering situations in the external environment and play a major role in our perception, cognition, and motivation. Despite their paramount importance in our lives, attempts to provide a general definition or complete taxonomy of emotions have failed. To date, both the definition and classification of emotions remain controversial and depend on the theory of emotions one favours.

This book takes the reader on a philosophical quest to understand the dark side of emotions. The chapters are devoted to the analysis of negative emotions and are organized in a historical manner, spanning the period from ancient Greece to the present time. Each chapter addresses analytical questions about specific emotions generally considered to be unfavorable and classified as negative. The general aim of the volume is to describe the polymorphous and context-sensitive nature of negative emotions as well as changes in the ways people have interpreted these emotions across different epochs. The editors speak of ‘the dark side of the emotions’ because their goal is to capture the ambivalent – unstable and shadowy – aspects of emotions. A number of studies have taken the categorial distinction between positive and negative emotions for granted, suggesting that negative emotions are especially significant for our psychological experience because they signal difficult situations. For this reason, the editors stress the importance of raising analytical questions about the valence of particular emotions and focussing on the features that make these emotions ambivalent: how – despite their negativity – such emotions may turn out to be positive. This opens up a perspective in which each emotion can be understood as a complex interlacing of negative and positive properties. The collection presents a thoughtful dialogue between philosophy and contemporary scientific research. It offers the reader insight by illuminating the dark side of the emotions.

Traditionally, anger tends to have a bad reputation because of its aggressive attitude, destructive tendency and inclination for conflict and violence. However one strand of ancient tradition considered it to be an energy that compels human beings to action, to reject injustice and to struggle for their dignity. The main aim of this chapter is to show the complexity of this multifaceted emotion from different perspectives, by comparing ancient and modern interpretations against the background of contemporary philosophical and empirical research. Hippocrates, Plato, and Aristotle provided the first conceptual pillars for any study of anger, linking it to the courage and dignity of the human being. Thomas Aquinas, too, recognized its positive role, when governed by reason. Descartes’ scientific attitude to the emotions, including anger, and the recognition of their utility for the individual body’s healthful survival, paved the way for all subsequent assessments of the affective sphere up to the present.

There have been many interpretations of Bildung in the history of German philosophy, from the Medieval mystics to the secularization of the Enlightenment. Wilhelm von Humboldt's work at the end of the 18th century is a good example. He placed the idea of Bildung at the center of his work because it was rooted in a dynamic, transforming idea of the natural and human worlds while also being oriented toward a model of balance and perfection. Von Humboldt's interpretation of modernity is characterized by a strong emphasis on change as well as the need to find criteria for guiding such a transformation that has no intrinsic or predetermined end. Love of classical antiquity was not merely nostalgia for a lost world, a normative current that placed the idea of perfection and balance foremost in order to achieve the ideal of Humanitas in an attempt to overcome the unilaterally of modernity.

: Emotions are currently at the center of a lively international and interdisciplinary debate. The first sections of this essay present a synthetic overview of its key features. The main sections provide a re-examination of one of the most historically significant developments in the field of affective studies. René Descartes’ approach to the study of emotions implies a positive assessment of the role of the body and a remarkable attenuation of his classical dualism that allows an innovative perspective on the subject. He inaugurated a new scientific style of research, which is one of the original sources of some key concepts of the current research. Keywords: Emotions; René Descartes; Embodied Cognition; Classification of Emotions; Philosophy of Emotions Le emozioni di Descartes: dal corpo al corpo Riassunto: Le emozioni sono attualmente al centro di un dibattito internazionale e interdisciplinare molto vivace, di cui la prima sezione del saggio presenta una panoramica sintetica. La sezione principale propone un’analisi critica di uno dei passaggi storicamente più significativi nel campo dello studio dei fenomeni emotivi. L’approccio di Descartes al tema delle emozioni presuppone una considerazione positiva del ruolo del corpo e una notevole attenuazione del dualismo per cui è noto, consentendo così una prospettiva innovativa al tema. Descartes inaugura un nuovo stile di ricerca che è alle origini di alcuni concetti chiave della ricerca contemporanea. Parole chiave: Emozioni; René Descartes; Conoscenza incarnata; Classificazione delle emozioni; Filosofia delle emozioni

Every classification intends to introduce an order into a set of objects. If we use an image we can put together objects in space, and in so doing we make choices, exclusions, intensifications, which allow a better knowledge of the single case. Through drawings, engravings, paintings, some classifications have been produced in the past, which allowed new points of view on the world. I will consider three very different attempts to classify through images: the first one is the classifications of passions by the French painter Charles Le Brun, who, knowing Les Passions de l’âme of Descartes, realized a series of geometric images in order to paint the expression of the different passions. The second case is the Physica sacra by J.J. Scheuchzer, a Swiss scientist who, in the eighteenth century, illustrated the Holy Bible with a set of beautiful engravings of naturalistic subject. The third example comes from the German geographer Alexander von Humboldt who, by means of images, started a classification of landscapes.

Subject of my paper is the connection between Hegel’s philosophy of nature and the new conception of subjectivity developed in his works. At the centre of my reflection is the origin of desire from biological needs of the animal world, as affirmed by Hegel in the Encyclopaedia of philosophical sciences and inPhenomenology of Spirit. The animal nutrition is periodical: hunger and thirst are forms of lack, from which, in Hegel’s eyes, arises the first form of self‐consciousness: they produce a first, obscure and indefinite sense of self. The correspondent concept in Phenomenology of Spirit is desire, as awareness of limits, and also as necessity to overcome them: as impulse to action. The fight and recognition which follow imply this natural source. The formation (Bildung) of subjectivity itself presupposes in Hegel this fundamental role of desire: What I want to analyse is the measure in which philosophy of nature influenced Hegel’s theory of subjectivity. Researches of the last decades give a new evaluation of the importance of this part of his philosophy and show the evident links to romantic philosophy of nature. My paper intends to demonstrate that desire in Hegel’s philosophy shows an evident cognitive value and can be considered a key-instrument for a new conception of reason, not opposed to passions. This approach can be interesting within the present international debate about the strategic role of passions in our post-modern world.

This paper focuses on Antonio Damasio’s recent reinterpretation of Descartes’s and Spinoza’s philosophy. Damasio underlines, from an interdisciplinary perspective, the relevance of philosophical conceptions of the mind to current, neurological research on emotion. His main thesis affirms that some 17th century philosophical concepts can be useful within the framework of contemporary research on the human brain and the emotions. Damasio’s work is also an effort to foster dialogue between the humanities and natural sciences within the field of scientific research on human emotions. The thesis expounded in several of Damasio’s works is the necessity of overcoming the mind-body dualism. While Damasio’s evaluation of cartesian philosophy is superficial and underestimates Descartes’s last work, Les passions de l’âme, his approach to Spinoza’s philosophy is more accurate. His interpretation of the concept of “conatus” in terms of homeostatic self-regulation of the organism seems interesting also for a reappraisal of the XVII century’s philosophical debate and its use in a contemporary scientific context.