Ancient Greek Theorisations of

Emotion
Lecture 1
Emotion Studies: Mind and Body
Lecture outline
Introduction
Plato
Aristotle
Introduction
Ancient Greek word for the English word ‘emotion’:
pathos (plural pathê)
‘psychopath’ and ‘pathology’
Related to the Latin patior from which the English
word ‘passion’ derives
Pathê: equivalent English emotions: ‘anger’, ‘fear’,
‘love’, ‘pity’, ‘indignation’, ‘envy’ and so on
Ordinary Greek term for ‘love’ is philia, and has a
wider usage
Can also mean ‘friendship’ and ‘business relationships
Introduction
Of importance to discuss in some detail: very much
the foundation of the varying theorisations that
followed
Similar understandings and problems perennially arise
Histories of ‘social psychology of emotion’ tend to
start with Charles Darwin and William James
They neglect rich tapestry of thought
 “the safest general characterization of the European
philosophical tradition is that it consists of a series of
footnotes to Plato” (Alfred North Whitehead)
Introduction
One reason early theories not considered – tend to
derive from metaphysical understandings of ‘the soul’
Concerned with theology and ethics
How to live the good (virtuous) life – eudaimonia
Psychology attempt to set self up as a science
Early theories often understood as ‘mythological’
rather than ‘psychological’
Introduction
But perhaps too far away from some contemporary
psychosocial accounts
Can find interesting understandings of relations
between – emotions, individuals and society
Following not critical account of Plato and Aristotle
Attempt to draw out interesting views
More than simply historical literary interest but
provides foundational context
Plato The safest general characterization of the European philosophical
tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato” (Whitehead)

Plato’s (429-347 BC)

Follower of Socrates
Transmits philosophy
through series of
dialogues
Socrates – Sophists
Early dialogues Socratic
– later own ideas
Can find progression of
ideas on ‘emotion’
Plato The safest general characterization of the European philosophical
tradition is that it consists of a series of footnotes to Plato” (Whitehead)
View of pathos is bound up
with his cosmology
Ancient Greek cosmology
generally mixed with
psychology
Plato’s Timaeus discusses a
creation myth
Physical kosmos: mortal,
subject to change and
extinction - eternal kosmos
divine and immortal
Humans a mixture of both the
divine and the physical
Plato: Timaeus’s Creation Myth

And when he had compounded it all, he divided the mixture into a number of souls equal to the number of
the stars and assigned each soul a star. He mounted each soul in a carriage, as it were, and showed it the
nature of the universe. He described to them the laws that had been foreordained: They would all be
assigned one and the same initial birth, so that none would be less well treated by him than any other. Then
he would sow each of the souls into that instrument of time suitable to it, where they were to acquire the
nature of being the most god-fearing of living things, and, since humans have a twofold nature, the superior
kind should be such as would from then on be called “man.” So, once the souls were of necessity implanted
into bodies, and these bodies had things coming to them and leaving them, the first innate capacity they
would of necessity come to have would be sense perception, which arises out of forceful disturbances. This
they all would have. The second would be love, mingled with pleasure and pain. And they would come to
have fear and spiritedness as well, plus whatever goes with having these emotions, as well as all their natural
opposites. And if they could master these emotions, their lives would be just, whereas if they were mastered
by them, they would be unjust. And if a person lived a good life throughout the due course of his time, he
would at the end return to his dwelling place in his companion star, to live a life of happiness that agreed
with his character. But if he failed in this, he would be born a second time, now as a woman. And if even then
he still could not refrain from wickedness, he would be changed once again, this time into some wild animal
that resembled the wicked character he had acquired. And he would have no rest from these toilsome
transformations until he had dragged that massive accretion of fire-water-air-earth into conformity with the
revolution of the Same and uniform within him, and so subdued that turbulent, irrational mass by means of
reason. This would return him to his original condition of excellence.
Plato
Immortal principle of the soul: self-motion
Anything receiving motion through external forces
considered mortal
Soul prior and distinct from body: person’s chief
concern
Should rule the body
Plato central figure who put forward a mind-body
dualism
Plato
Mind (rational-soul, psyche, nous) divine substance
infused with innate knowledge (logos)
Forms : all things on the earth are imperfect copies
Form of the Good (Agathon): notions of justice and
right come from
Could not come through sense perception - only
supplied humans with opinion (doxa) relative and
shifting truths
Plato
argues against
 Hereclitus’ notion ‘being is
becoming’
 Protagoras’ doctrine ‘man
is the measure of all things’
Also universal-eternal
truths that are stable
(Forms)
Comes about through
rational contemplation and
recollection of innate
knowledge
Plato
Immortal soul: self-driven acquired through (rational)
contemplation
Dualistic doctrine, however, more of a tripartite
division of the soul (Timaeus) localised within the
body
Motion of thought circular - placed in the head
Imitates spherical shape of kosmos and positioned
closest to heavens
Mortal aspects (emotion) placed further down the
body - did not pollute rational soul
Plato
Mortal part divided into two hierarchical aspects
Higher, spirited, part located in chest, the heart being
its principle organ
Associated with emotions such as self-assurance and
self-affirmation
Closer to the rule of reason, Plato suggested, facilitate
controlling and restraining the desires associated with,
food, drink, sexual arousal and the love of money
These base desires (the appetites) located in the
abdomen below the diaphragm
Tripartite Soul
Tripartite division of soul detailed
“involves the first detailed systematization of
emotional phenomena” (Knuuttila, 2004, p5)
Perhaps influenced Freud's famous tripartite division
of soul
Each part of soul either attracted or repelled to objects
having particular desires (although in dynamic
relationship with each-other)
Principle of ‘non-contradiction’ – each part cannot be
simultaneously attracted and repelled to same object
Tripartite Soul
The separation of the soul allows him to illustrate how
one can feel contrary affects:
 Leontius, the son of Aglaion, was going up from the
Piraeus along the outside of the North Wall when he saw
some corpses lying at the executioner’s feet. He had an
appetite to look at them but at the same time he was
disgusted and turned away. For a time he struggled with
himself and covered his face, but, finally, overpowered by
the appetite, he pushed his eyes wide open and rushed
towards the corpses, saying, “Look for yourselves, you evil
wretches, take your fill of the beautiful sight! (Rep,.
4.39e-440a)
Tripartite Soul
Simultaneity of affects (desire, disgust and anger) is
attributed to different parts of soul
Three separate agents: each initiate action
Appetite more powerful than spirit and reason
Accounts for ambiguity of affect
If soul driven by rational faculty – Plato suggests there
would exist:
 “a kind of health, fine condition, and well-being” (Rep.
4.445d-e)
Plato’s Psychosocial Account
In republic relationship between soul and city (polis)
Polis like soul made up of three parts
 the philosopher-guardians (rationality)
 the military class (spirit)
 the merchant class (appetite)
Plato’s Psychosocial Account
Plato’s Socrates wants to think through what justice is in the Republic – to do this he offers the
following
The investigation we’re undertaking is not an easy one but requires keen eyesight. Therefore,
since we aren’t clever people, we should adopt the method of investigation that we’d use if,
lacking keen eyesight, we were told to read small letters from a distance and then noticed that
the same letters existed elsewhere in a larger size and on a larger surface. We’d consider it a
godsend, I think, to be allowed to read the larger ones first and then examine the smaller ones,
to see whether they are really the same.
That’s certainly true, said Adeimantus, but how is this case similar to our investigation of jusice?
I’ll tell you. We say, don’t we, that there is the justice of a single man and also the justice of a
whole city?
Certainly.
And a city is larger than a single man?
It is larger.
Perhaps, then, there is more justice in the larger thing, and it will be easier to learn what it is.
So, if you’re willing, let’s first find out what sort of thing justice is in a city and afterwards look
for it in the individual, observing the ways in which the smaller is similar to the larger. (Rep.
2.368c-369a)
Plato’s Psychosocial Account
Thus the first account of an ideal city is given (utopia)
Particular social structures are envisaged to regulate
particular types of people and parts of the soul
 And these two [spirit and reason], having been nurtured in this
way, and having truly learned their own roles and been
educated in them, will govern the appetitive part, which is the
largest part in each person’s soul and is by nature most
insatiable for money. They’ll watch over it to see that it isn’t
filled with the so-called pleasures of the body and that it
doesn’t become so big and strong that it no longer does its own
work but attempts to enslave and rule over the classes it isn’t
fitted to rule, thereby overturning everyone’s whole life. (Rep.
4.442a)
Plato’s Psychosocial Account
Justice is then is accorded when the city and soul are
governed by rationality and
 each of the three natural classes within it did its own
work, and it was thought to be moderate courageous,
and wise . . .  Then, if an individual has these same three
parts in his soul, we will expect him to be correctly
called by the same names as the city if he has the same
conditions in them. (Rep. 4.435b)
Plato’s Psychosocial Account
Plato argue that there are “as many types of soul as there are specific
types of political constitution” (Rep. 4.445c)
He names five: aristocracy, timocracy, oligarchy, democracy and
tyranny
These are very much allied to the affects of the individuals
For example:
 Eventually the victory and honour loving men turn to “lovers of making
money” (Rep. 8.551a) and thus the city descends into an oligarchy wherein
the ruling class are driven by the accumulation of wealth and property.
Being characterised by the appetitive soul, the pleasure derived from this
accumulation is valued over virtue, “He makes the rational and spirited
parts sit on the ground beneath appetite, one on either side, reducing
them to slaves” (Rep. 8.553c).  This form of state thus develops a large
income inequality gap coming from exploitation of the lower classes.
Plato’s Psychosocial Account
Thus if not kept in check by reason – the desires become
lawless:
 Those that are awakened in sleep, when the rest of the soul –
the rational, gentle, and ruling part – slumbers. Then the
beastly and savage part, full of food and drink, casts off sleep
and seeks to find a way to gratify itself. You know that there is
nothing it won’t dare to do at such a time, free of all control by
shame or reason. It doesn’t shrink from trying to have sex with
a mother, as it supposes, or with anyone else at all, whether
man, god, or beast. It will commit any foul murder, and there
is no food it refuses to eat. In a word, it omits no act of folly or
shamefulness. (Rep. 9.571e-d)
The Charioteer
Middle dialogue (Phaedrus)
Beautiful horse – from good
stock (spirited)
Unruly horse – opposite
bloodline (appetite – erotic
desire)
Charioteer (reason)
 The heaviness of the bad horse
drags its charioteer toward the
earth and weighs him down if
he has failed to train it well, and
this causes the most extreme
toil and struggle that a soul will
face (Phae, 247b).
Plato’s shift in thought
Plato also suggests the unruly horse
the unruly horse “should be well fed and that, properly
controlled, it can play a good and a necessary role in
motivating the person, even in teaching the person
about the beautiful.”
Erotic love – special form of madness
Love reminds soul of true beauty – vision of the good
Unleashes kind of madness – when it occurs
 “they are beside themselves, and their experience is
beyond their comprehension because they cannot fully
grasp what it is that they are seeing” (Phae. 250a-b).
Late Dialogue
Philebus – value of pleasure and knowledge
Draws distinction between bodily processes and derived sense of pleasure
or pain
Insinuates non-conscious processes affect the body
Also affects that re remembered and anticipated that do not affect the
body
Two metaphorical figures describe memory and perception
Firstly, inscribe words on the soul (scribe)
Secondly, “painter follows scribe and proves illustrations to his words in
the soul”
Thus produces anticipatory pains and pleasures
 “What emotions typically lack in rationality, they make up for in a
phenomenology that comes of imaginative recall or anticipation” (Price, 2010,
p. 130).
Neo-Platonism
 Later dialogues reveal relatively sophisticated
psychology of emotion
 Made up of a variety of forms of memory, perception
and cognition
 Influenced by a variety of cultures and societies
 However it is Plato’s early dualistic conceptions which
heavily permeate Western thought –
 E.g. emerge in writings of St. Augustine, St. Thomas
Aquinas and Rene Descartes and all manner of
theologies
Aristotle
Aristotle (384-322 BC) alongside
Plato two of the greatest
philosophers
Had much in common, however,
often characterised as standing to
one another in the relation of
thesis (Platonism) to antithesis
(Aristotelianism)
Plato philosopher of ‘being’,
Aristotle philosopher of
‘becoming’
Truth more complex - important
not to over generalise distinctions
Aristotelian Metaphysics
Aristotle’s understanding of soul: De
Anima (the soul) opposing Platonic
dualistic formulation
Soul and the body united within one
substance
Matter contains internal essential
principle which directs its unfolding
teleologically – entelechy
Act and potency – matter contains
potential to be actualised
Acorn has inherent within it the
blueprint or potential to become
actualised as an oak-tree
Aristotelian Metaphysics
Nature: a state of unfolding between potency and act
Was able to attach meaning and reality to world of nature
Did not need to subscribe to a doctrine of transcendental
essences (Forms)
Actualisation tied to notion of activity
Form then is tied to actuality (active )and matter
potentiality (passive)
Hypothetical prime-matter – purely passive – not
potential for actualisation (not-active) but can be acted
upon
De Anima
Pure prime-matter has potential to become anything
Other matter has potential to be acted upon but limited as
to what it can become
Block of wood = table; not blanket
Central to metaphysics – understanding of the soul (De
Anima)
Soul composite of form and matter
Soul powers the body – comprises active (actual) and
passive (potential) parts
Distinction of soul as active and body as passive blurred
through notion of soul-body composite
De Anima
Describes three types of soul (powers)
Nutritive, sensitive and human
Nutritive = basic organisms – plants – power to
assimilate and reproduce (also found in higher
animals)
Sensitive = power of desire – sense perception – and
local motion – (not found in plants)
Human = power of scientific thought and deliberation
(found in humans who also have lower parts of soul)
De Anima
Powers of soul active or passive
Nutritive power – active
Power to transform object – e.g. break food down
assimilated into body
Sensation power – passive
Senses require stimulation by sensory objects
Sensitive soul has power to judge whether object
painful or pleasurable
Produce particular kinds of pleasures and pain
De Anima and Pathos
Desires and aversions appear to be passions
Passions tend to be passive – allow us to be affected by
surroundings
Although passive derive from interpretations,
evaluations and judgments
Do not emerge unaided but require stimulation
Also create physical (bodily motions)- often out of
one’s control
Anger (orge) creates heat around heart- moves up
causing face to become red
De Anima and Pathos
Perception passive – unmediated senses of external world
Imagination closely related to perception but not as passive
We can imagine but often fantasy induced by passions
Thinking (about means and ends): active power that is self
initiated
Thus appetite seen to have both passive and active aspects
 The faculty of appetite therefore has two aspects, one active,
the other passive, and consequently can both move and be
moved. In so far as it desires, it is moved by the objects of its
desire; in so far as it responds to desires, passions, and wishes
it is a kind of movement, expressed in bodily motion. (James,
2003, p45)
De Anima and Pathos
So Aristotle, like plate – puts forward rationality as
being superior to appetite – An unmoved mover
But does not rely upon cosmologies and mythologies
Kenner to attach meaning to sensible world
But not an out and out rejection of dualistic
epistemology and ontology
Maintained presence of supersensible principle in
humans
Aristotle
Places importance upon emotion theories of moral
virtues and moral psychology
Writes about virtues of character in Nicomachean
Ethics explains are positioned in non-rational part of
the soul: the primary seat of emotion
Would expect to find full account of emotion in his
book on the soul (De Anima) unfortunately one is not
offered
Best account we have in Book 2 of the Rhetoric
Aristotle
Rhetoric concerned with how
styles of language affect persuasive
arguments
Asks such questions here as: ‘What
are the instruments of reasonable
persuasions? What linguistic
devises actually work?’
Important that orator understands
beliefs of people to stir
corresponding emotions
Induce in their audiences
appropriately directed states of
emotion that will influence their
audiences’ judgment on the matter
under discussion in a way favourable
to the orators and their cases... The
orator needs to know how to
represent himself to the audience as
being moved by such emotions as
will help to establish him as a good
person in general, and well-
intentioned toward the audience in
particular; and he needs to know how
to engender in them the emotions
that will cause them to judge the
matter as he wishes them to.
Aristotle
Emotion not blind animal force, but rather intelligent
and discriminating parts of the personality
Subject to cognitive modification and cultivation
All types of desire (including emotion) malleable and
potentially virtuous (subject to good habits) through
reasoning and teaching
Can be taught to emotionally respond to objects, to form
beliefs about those objects
If your belief about a certain object changed, your
emotional response (feeling) to the object would also
change
Aristotle
To develop good decisions or judgmental practices - person should
learn to consult emotions: fear and love
Draw on emotional experience to make the decision more not less
rational
Cognition and emotion intimately entwined
Moderation the key to good decisions
One becomes the virtuous person – eudaimonia
Virtue is the mean between two extremes (the golden mean)
food and drink – too much suppression or too much indulgence
balance of the appetite: moral education of the child to form the right
kinds of habits
choose appropriate types of foods and drinks at the right time in right
amounts
Aristotle
Emotion such as ‘fear’
Elicitation not seen irrational
If a person completely without fear this does not strike
Aristotle as virtuous
Courageous person will fear, for example, death, but in
an appropriate manner as reasoning instructs
Nussbaum: “[T]he good person, rather than being the
fearless person, is one who will have appropriate rather
than inappropriate fears-and not be deterred by them
doing what is required and noble”
Aristotle
Aristotle
Social element to emotion development
Family teaches child appropriate kinds of emotional
responses
Formed through habit
Gross adds: Aristotle’s account of emotion is
thoroughly psychosocial (Gross, 2006)
 Maybe physiological consequences of feeling ‘shame’,
(blushing)
Aristotle more concerned with object of one’s shame
Aristotle
Shame directly related to person’s social position and
social status
No ‘shame’ where there is no potential reputation to lose
“where social institutions are most dense: where one’s
reputation really matters, where the opinions of others are
valued, where social rank is effective, where credit can be
given and debts owed, where honor can be realized or lost,
where there are fragile bonds of intimacy, and where social
prestige can be measured according to one’s institutional
access to the truth: for example, through formal education,
proven credibility, and so on.” (Gross, 2006)
Aristotle
Aristotle’s understanding of anger (orge) similarly illustrates the
importance of its psychosocial nature
Induced through relationships of inequality
Requires a public stage
Some perfectly entitled to belittle others without any recourse for
retaliation (such as a king)
Slave has no social status and does not have entitlement to ‘pride’
which makes one susceptible to anger
Presumes “a contoured world of emotional investment” (Gross, 2006)
Person not only feels shame when he or she has been belittled, but
also when person does not defend parents, children, spouse, or
dependants etc.
Aristotle
Aristotle: often the case that those who
are considered ‘better than us’ draw our
emotional attention
Aristotle looks at Greek tragedies
Points out people of low status tend not
to be given a lower emotion status also
Tends to be the rich and the famous
that we tend to feel for
Think about the death of Princess
Diana
Often emotionally caught up with the
world of celebrity – or caught up with
the emotional world of celebrity
Emotion is unevenly distributed in
terms of social power relations