Aristotle's Theory of the Emotions: Emotions as Pleasures and Pains
Aristotle's Theory of the Emotions: Emotions as Pleasures and Pains
Aristotle offered in Rhetoric II his own theory of the emotions, which was neither the mere preliminaries to developing such a theory, nor a theory appropriated from a predecessor such as Plato. In his theory, to have an emotion is to experience pain, pleasure or both, where this pain or pleasure is intentional and representational. An emotion is pain or pleasure at the emotion's object, where that object is represented in ways that give grounds for the particular emotion experienced. Aristotle's development of this view had some limitations, but the view itself seems to have considerable merits.
Keywords: Aristotle, Plato, emotion, passion, pleasure, pain, intentional, representation
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