Passions

Horkay Hörcher Ferenc: Esztétikai gondolkodás a felvilágosodás korában (1650-1800) (Aesthetic Thought in the Age of Enlightenment, in Hungarian), Gondolat, Budapest, 2013, pp. 27-66.

A comparison of 17th century French aesthetic views based on Descartes' and Pascal's philosophy.

A Descartes és Pascal filozófiáján alapuló esztétikák vitája a 17. században.

È vietata la traduzione, la memorizzazione elettronica, la riproduzione totale o parziale, con qualsiasi mezzo, compresa la fotocopia, anche ad uso interno o didattico. L'illecito sarà penalmente perseguibile a norma dell'art. 171 della Legge n. 633 del 22/04/1941 ISBN 978-88-6995-415-3 Per la presente edizione © 2017 by Pacini Editore 56121 Pisa, via A. Gherardesca, 1 http://www.pacinieditore.it © ____ASSOCIAZIONE SIGISMONDO MALATESTA

Purpose: Passion is essential for effective and high-quality teaching. A passionate teacher is one with the updated growing knowledge inspiring the students in a classroom, by making learning excited. The objective of the study was to analyze whether the teachers were teaching out-of-field and to analyze what type of passion influences them. Design/methodology/approach: 241 teachers working in Higher Education Institutions in Oman participate in the survey. Structural Equation Modeling was used to analyze the data. Findings: The empirical results reveal that the teachers sometimes do out-of-field teaching. The Basic Passion qualities and Harmonious Passion qualities help to improve the Effects of Passion based learning in classroom teaching. It is also revealed that the teachers need to increase Harmonious passion rather than Obsessive passion as it might result in burnout or disengagement in the long run. Practical Implications: The study suggested that the teachers should make emotional attachments with the students, not to criticize anyone, rather encourage them for innovation & creativity, and should allow enough time to learn by making a conducive environment. Originality/value: The research work is of its first kind as it focuses on the impact of Passion-based teaching in the classroom using the SEM-PLS approach which has suggested means for effective teaching.

""In his « little Treatise in English» on Human nature (1640), and, later, in Leviathan (1647 – 1650), Thomas Hobbes examines and redefines the passions. Basing his argument upon the concept of motion, he conceives them as thoughts: passions are nothing but perceptions, which transit through the brain, and then move towards the heart. There they cause various sensations of pleasure or pain, by helping or hindering « vital motion ».
Anger, Hobbes claims, is a break-through in front of a sudden opposition, not the response to an outrage, as the Ancients had erroneously claimed. « Courage, in a large signification, is the absence of fear in the presence of any evil whatsoever; but in a stricter and more common meaning, it is contempt of wounds and death, when they oppose a man in the way to his end. Anger (or sudden courage) is nothing but the appetite or desire of overcoming present opposition. It hath been commonly defined to be grief proceeding from an opinion of contempt; which is confuted by the often experience we have of being moved to anger by things inanimate and without sense, and consequently incapable of contemning us. » (Leviathan, I, 6, 1-2.  Cf. Human Nature, VII, 1-2).
The definition of 'orge', as the grief for an undeserved slight, joined to the wish to retaliate, comes from Aristotle’s 'Rhetoric', a text Hobbes not only knew, but also translated. Anger was, for Aristotle, the political passion par excellence. It is because we are insulted that we revolt, and that our revolt is justified. It is in anger that we commit tyrannicide. Be it a tumultuous explosion or a long lasting grudge, ire is by definition the reasoned answer of a social actor, who suffers in his body as well as in the social image that he has  created for herself, and on behalf of justice: one does not recognize this person for that which he wishes to be considered. The gender mark is intended, given the heroic context. This criticism might appear to be just a minor detail, confined to Hobbes’ typology of the passions.  But since the new description of anger disconnects the emotion from any justification (thus from justice), refuting Aristotle was crucial for the consistency of Hobbes’ theory of the state. Leviathan must have zero tolerance for any form of social violence, from sedition (his sickness) to civil war (his death). Therefore the celebration of the noble killing of a king (conveniently labeled “tyrant”), has no place in modern politics. Those who come to treat a sovereign as an obstacle in their way understand nothing of the nature of the state, which is artificial and vulnerable, always threatened by a return to the state of nature.
    Furthermore, to object to Aristotle on anger was consistent with Hobbes’ profound weariness with classical political theory. One of the most insidious causes of the dangerous misunderstanding of the state, Hobbes argues, was ideological. People learned to cultivate dissent and glamorize discontent from subversive, poisonous political theories: those of the Ancients. « From the reading, I say, of such books, men have undertaken to kill their Kings, because the Greek and Latin writers, in their books and discourses of Policy, make it lawful and laudable, for any man so to do ; provided, before he do it, he call him tyrant. For they say not regicide, that is, killing a king, but tyrannicide, that is, killing of a tyrant is lawful » ('De Corpore Politico', XXVII,  10).  No learning of a language, Hobbes dryly comments, has ever been paid with so much blood, as that of Greek and Latin (Ibidem, 150).
In the transition from a theory of man as a political animal, naturally inclined to sociability (Aristotle), to a vision of human nature, made up of movement and competition, Hobbes rethought the anthropological underpinnings of politics. This required the simplification of the passions, and the rejection of that interlacing of rights, habits and body, which framed the complexity of the emotions in the classical past. The demystification of anger was critical.
 

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Perché ci prendiamo cura degli altri anche quando non siamo legati da rapporti personali? Perché lottiamo per la giustizia anche quando non ci riguarda direttamente? Quali sono, insomma, i fondamenti motivazionali che ci spingono ad agire eticamente e ad adottare comportamenti socialmente empatici? La risposta a questa domanda richiede di interrogarsi sul ruolo delle passioni, per gettare un nuovo sguardo sui due paradigmi nei quali si riassume di fatto la proposta etica del nostro tempo. Partire dalle passioni (come invidia e indignazione, paura e compassione, risentimento e amore), purché affrancate da ogni sospetto di irrazionalità, ci consente in primo luogo di pensare un'idea di giustizia diversa da quella che fonda il paradigma razionalistico corrente, per mostrarne piuttosto i fondamenti affettivi e distinguere tra pretese legittime e pretese illegittime di giustizia. In secondo luogo, ci consente di sottrarre la cura a una visione altruistico-assistenziale per mostrarne, insieme alla complessità emotiva non priva di aspetti perturbanti, le potenzialità di una forma di vita. Infine, permette di riaffermare, contro ogni riduzione unilaterale, la complementarità tra le due prospettive etiche, tanto più necessaria quanto più esse sono chiamate a misurarsi con le sfide radicali del nostro mondo globale: prima fra tutte, l'ampliamento dell'idea stessa di altro attraverso le due figure inedite dell' altro distante nello spazio (lo straniero, il diverso) e dell' altro distante nel tempo (le generazioni future). Muovendosi attraverso i grandi classici della «simpatia» (Hume e Smith), la riflessione filosofica del Novecento (da Anders a Jonas, da Arendt a Derrida, da Mauss a Ric?ur) e il dibattito contemporaneo (da Rawls a Sontag, da Gilligan a Nussbaum, fino a Foucault e Sloterdijk), Elena Pulcini si chiede quali passioni presiedano alla lotta contro l'ingiustizia e quali alimentino la capacità di una buona cura, confidando nella genesi di un soggetto emozionale: un soggetto che attraverso la dinamica interminabile della relazione con l'altro, sappia distillare dalle passioni la qualità etica e generativa capace di promettere un mondo migliore.

While many of Bernard Mandeville's contemporary critics read him as trying to ridicule and subvert all ideas of morality and virtue, others criticized him for insisting on too demanding a conception of virtue as self-denial. In this article, I take the latter line of criticism as my point of departure and evaluate whether Mandeville's ‘origins of virtue’ thesis can be reconciled with his claims about virtue requiring self-denial. To do so, I trace the changes to Mandeville's account of virtue between the different editions of The Fable of the Bees and An Enquiry Into the Origin of Honour, placing particular emphasis on the conceptual distinctions introduced in the 1723 edition of the Fable. I show that there are important tensions in Mandeville's argument and I evaluate potential ways in which they might be resolved. The most important inconsistency, I argue, is that it is unclear whether Mandeville's speculative historical explanation of the origins of virtue can support the strongest claims he makes about virtue requiring a complete conquest of the passions, even if it can support weaker conceptualizations of virtue as self-denial.

Although for Aquinas habituating the passions to obey reason is crucial for the acquisition of virtue, recent Thomistic scholarship has paid little attention to the question of how this habituation works. Furthermore, there are many discrepancies within the recent secondary literature on Aquinas’s understanding of the passions, which makes it impossible to derive an account of the habituation of the passions from this literature. In addition, recent research in the field of neuroscience has paid much attention to a means of controlling one’s emotions called cognitive reappraisal; this research is ripe with information that may be helpful for informing a Thomistic account of the habituation of the passions. Therefore, the purpose of this dissertation is to construct a Thomistic account of the habituation of the passions that incorporates insights from neuroscientific studies of cognitive reappraisal and that helps to resolve some of the conflicts in recent Thomistic literature on the passions.
The first chapter of this dissertation reviews the recent Thomistic literature on the passions and concludes that many of the conflicts in this literature regarding the habituation of the passions are rooted in deeper conflicts regarding Aquinas’s psychology. The second chapter examines Aquinas’s psychology in detail, focusing in particular on the parts of the soul that are involved in the generation of a passion, in order to set up a theoretical framework for the third chapter. Chapter three constructs a Thomistic account of how the passions become habituated to obey reason, arguing that reason must habituate the powers of the soul to provide it with an accurate representation of a perceived sense object and to follow its commands regarding such a
sense object with ease. The third chapter then revisits the literature review in chapter one and discusses how this account helps resolve the conflicts in the secondary literature. Chapter four examines recent neuroscientific research on cognitive reappraisal and discusses how some of its findings regarding the effects of gender, age, and practice can inform a Thomistic account of the habituation of the passions. Finally, chapter five recapitulates the account and discusses directions for future research.

The chapter examines the feminization of elite pagan men in Apocryphal Acts of Andrew. It argues that the ancient author constructs ascetic Christianity as the ideal realization of masculinity, whereby male and female converts control their passions and appetites. Si­multaneously, elite pagan men are portrayed as appetitive, passionately emotional, and lacking self-control. Such ethical weakness was commonly thought to be characteristic of women. While attributing such ethical “femininity” to pagan men trades on ancient no­tions that women are prone to moral weakness, the author’s portrayal also dislodges ethi­cal character from biological sex. Thus, men and women who take up Christianity in its ascetic forms are superior in ethics and gender, compared to those who reject ascetic Christianity.

Is postlapsarian sexual desire primarily altruistic or disordered? This paper utilizes the resources in the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas and in the contemporary magisterium to argue that recent phenomena such as the #MeToo movement underscore the inherently unstable and aggressive nature of sexual desire when it is uprooted from its natural end (i.e., is endless). Aquinas highlights three aspects of desire that more sex-positive accounts of sexuality would do well to heed: its natural infinity, its self-referential nature (grounded in amor concupiscentiae), and its power of rationalization. By directing the motor of desire toward its natural ends, virtue-led by reason-can redirect desire away from self and toward the good. National Catholic Bioethics Quarterly 18.4 (Winter 2018): 629-646.

È il peccato di Lucifero geloso dell'uomo, quello di Caino verso Abele, quello di Saul nei confronti di Davide, ma anche quello di Grimilde per Biancaneve. Se è vero che ogni vizio comporta piacere, ciò non vale per l'invidia, veleno dell'anima che genera tormento e sofferenza: si soffre per il bene e la felicità altrui, vissuti come una diminuzione del proprio essere e segno del proprio fallimento. L'invidia nasce sempre dal confronto. Perché lui/lei sì e io no? Una domanda che deve restare segreta, perché rivela la propria inferiorità. Dall'antichità alle società moderne, dalla fiaba fino alle veline dei nostri giorni, l'autrice insegue questa passione "triste" - ma non priva di violenza quando si trasforma in risentimento - che inquina le relazioni, depotenzia l'Io, paralizza le energie.

In the De malo, Thomas Aquinas claims that the first movements (primi motus) of the sensitive appetite are sinful. This seems surprising, since these movements do not appear to be under the control of reason. Unfortunately, the brevity of Aquinas's discussion makes it difficult to understand why he would make such a claim. However, if he is read in light of the medieval debate about the first movements that was ongoing during his time, then Aquinas's reasoning becomes much clearer. This paper thus gives an overview of the medieval debate concerning the sinfulness of the first movements in order to situate Aquinas within his historical context. It argues that Aquinas largely adopts the position of William of Auxerre, who distinguished between first first movements (motus primo primi) and second first movements (motus secundo primi). Auxerre argued that the first first movements were of animal sensuality and where therefore not sinful. The second first movements were of human sensuality and therefore, since they were in some way rational, were sinful. The paper then discusses how Aquinas makes use of this distinction and how this affects the interpretation of his position that the first movements are sinful.

Il problema del soggetto è uno dei nodi centrali della riflessione femminile e femminista degli ultimi decenni. In questa raccolta di saggi il tema viene affrontato, nell'ambito di una critica della modernità, dal punto di vista privilegiato di una teoria delle passioni e della 'differenza emotiva'.

Saint Basil of Caesarea understood heresy to be a type of madness, an understanding consistent with his doctrines on the Holy Spirit. His intellectual training having familiarized him with philosophical and medical traditions on the passions, Basil considered heresy to be a peculiar 'illness of the soul' caused by its indulgence in images that aroused heterodox passions, which drove out from the soul the salutary influence of the Holy Spirit. Reluctant to 'fix' theology in rigid formulae, yet resolute in his opposition to heresy, Basil constantly weighed the relative merits of bold speech and circumspection. Preferring on the whole to censure by indirection, he often resorted to storm and maritime imagery to depict the madness of heresy and heretics. The prevalence of these images in his letters and other writings makes it possible to use them to illustrate a narrative of the Bishop of Caesarea's career in the defense of orthodoxy.

“Desire is the very essence of man” Spinoza says, inverting a most deeply held conviction: that in our “very essence” we are “mind, reason and judgment.”  The ethical implications are difficult: only “through fear society can be established ... not by reason … but by threats.” Yet Spinoza explores these implications mercilessly, reversing the roles of reason and passions: instead of subjecting the unruly passions to reason’s knowledge of true and good, Spinoza entrusts the passions, as causal conduits of natural order, with controlling the selfish and idiosyncratic reason.  The paper follows Spinoza’s motivations and resources for this reversal and looks at his contemporaries’ responses to his radical ideas.

L'importanza del tema delle passioni per la formazione del legame sociale e in particolare per la politica è stata a lungo sottovalutata dalla riflessione filosofica contemporanea, prevalentemente orientata negli ultimi decenni in senso normativo. 1 Eppure, è evidente la sua rilevanza in quanto consente di porre il problema delle motivazioni dell'agire sociale e delle scelte che in base a esse si compiono sul piano politico. E se ciò vale per le passioni in generale, vale ancor più per quella particolare passione che è la paura, sulla quale infatti si è fondato il paradigma hobbesiano, fortemente rappresentativo della modernità. Da un primo confronto con questo paradigma emerge immediatamente la necessità di porre un interrogativo che riguarda l'oggetto della paura. Quando parliamo di paura dobbiamo chiederci: paura di che cosa? Paura di chi? Si tratta in altri termini di una passione che deve essere sempre declinata, perché a seconda dell'oggetto essa subisce delle metamorfosi decisive, come cercherò di mostrare concentrando l'attenzione soprattutto sulle sue trasformazioni nell'età globale. 2 Tornando allo schema hobbesiano, si può dire che esso risulta essere relativamente semplice e lineare. La condizione pre-politica, secondo Hobbes, 3 è una condizione di conflitto in quanto tutti gli uomini hanno gli stessi diritti e le stesse passioni; e nel perseguirli essi arrivano inevitabilmente allo scontro e alla reciproca aggressione, creando una situazione di insicurezza e di paura. La paura in questo caso è paura della morte, o meglio della morte violenta che ci viene dall'Altro in quanto rivale e nemico. A questa condizione di guerra e di distruzione che rende impossibile la vita associata, gli individui rispondono attraverso 15 Elena Pulcini insegna Filosofia sociale all'Università di Firenze.

Resumen El presente artículo desarrolla el análisis de la relación analógica entre la alquimia y la emoción-pasión que se da de manera implícita en Feux y en Les charités d'Alcippe, de Margue-rite Yourcenar. La doble materia prima de la alquimia-física y espiritual-le permite conver-tirse en modelo de esa conmoción de la materia viva que también se manifiesta como fenó-meno psíquico y como pensamiento. La emoción-pasión se constituye-según sus teorías más recientes-entre preconsciencia y cognición, y el opus nigrum es la fase cuya descripción con-viene a esa indecisa zona. Un mismo anclaje en el cuerpo demandan la alquimia de la carne y la alquimia del verbo rimbaldiana: de ahí que la poesía sea reconocida como lenguaje natural por esos saberes preconscientes o herméticos reacios al lenguaje conceptual. Palabras clave: Marguerite Yourcenar. Alquimia. Teoría de las emociones. Pasión. Poética. Abstract This paper develops the analysis of the analogical relation between the alchemy and the emotion-passion that occurs implicitly in Feux and Les charités d'Alcippe, by Marguerite Yourcenar. The double raw material of alchemy-physical and spiritual-allows it to become a model of that commotion of living matter that also manifests itself as a psychic phenomenon and as a thought. Emotion-passion takes place-according to its most recent theories-between pre-consciousness and cognition, and opus nigrum is the phase whose description suits that indecisive zone. The alchemy of the flesh and the alchemy of the verb-by Rimbaud-demand the same anchoring in the body: hence poetry is recognized as a natural language by those pre-conscious or hermetic knowledges that are reluctant to conceptual language.

This is the final typescript (AAM) of a chapter that will appear in Nicholas Allen, ed., Passion, Persecution and Epiphany in Early Jewish Literature.
After surveying the range of senses of Greek pathos, from suffering to emotion, incidentally arguing that the pathe of 4 Maccabees are much more instances of suffering than emotions (as usually translated), this essay explores the senses of this key term in Josephus' Judaean War. It finds that, although Josephus fuses the two senses, suffering is primary; emotion (suffering of the mind) follows from that.
Finally, this emphasis on suffering connects with a deeply tragic view of political relations, which today we would call 'realist'.

This article aims to explore the meanings and functions of temperature in Liviu Rebreanu’s novel „Ion”. The conclusions of my research are paradoxical from at least two points of view: first, the Romanian writer uses a language that is at once rudimentary and subtle, encoding a small number of meanings, but in a discreet manner; then, Rebreanu creates a genuine scale of passions arranged on the axis cold (death) – warmth (life), but at the same time he regards the boiling passions as forebodings of death.

Mark the Hermit, a monk from the 4th century, active probably in Asia Minor, indicates in an original way that the cause of passion in man is forgetting about good thoughts (lēthē), carelessness (rhathymia) and ignorance (agnoia). This threefold evil is opposed by the following means: forgetfulness – by memory of good works, carelessness – by most sincere readiness, ignorance – by enlightened cognition. Nobody before him had ever dealt with the causes of passion in such a way and indicated such an antidote to them. In order to understand Mark the Hermit’s theory, it is necessary to look in detail at this writer’s teaching about passion and the ascetic fight against it. This article is devoted to this spiritually important issue.

Schiller's political thought has been subject to conflicting interpretations. Taking Schiller's historical essay The Legislation of Lycurgus and Solon as a point of departure, this article locates him more precisely within the context of eighteenth-century debates on republicanism and moral philosophy. One of Schiller's central criteria in the evaluation of different republics is the question of how they comply with man's sensual and passionate nature. By attacking Sparta's constitution as despotic and unfit to meet human self-realization, he dissociated himself from Rousseau and repudiated classical republican models. Instead, Schiller sided with modest proponents of luxury and progress by defending Athens' abundant and polite lifestyle. In response to the French revolution, Schiller developed his own aesthetic model of cultivating senses and passions to achieve a free society. Despite significant liberal elements, he thereby remained true to the republican principle that freedom and self- realization can only be achieved in the political community.

Contrary to the widespread view that Reid and Hume agree that reason, alone, is inert, I argue that they disagree on this point. Both accept that reason plays a role in forming moral sentiments, and that affections are components of moral evaluations. However, I show that for Reid moral evaluations (comprised of moral judgments and moral affections) are different from moral motives (which are not comprised of affections). Moral motives for Reid are mind-independent states of affairs that are grasped by reason and do not require affections to influence human beings. Reid hence holds a non-humean theory in which reason, alone, is not inert.

Passioni e politica: quale nesso può mai esserci tra la sfera emotiva che siamo per lo più abituati a identificare con l'immediatezza, l'eccesso, l'intimità, il caos, e la dimensione della politica che esige invece mediazione, ragionevolezza, pubblica negoziazione, ordine? È la domanda che implicitamente, e provocatoriamente, si pone Michael Walzer in un breve testo nel quale "la questione della passione" diventa un ulteriore tassello della sua critica del liberalismo. Walzer si propone, in altri termini, nell'ambito del più ampio progetto di introdurre correttivi alla teoria politica liberale, di restituire dignità ed efficacia a un tema che da questa è stato illegittimamente escluso, in quanto incompatibile con i suoi stessi fondamenti normativi: La politica propriamente intesa, la politica nella sua versione ragionevole e liberale, è una questione di pacata deliberazione (…) la passione, al contrario, è sempre impetuosa, non mediata, una questione di tutto o niente (Walzer 1999, pp. 61-62).

Much contemporary philosophy of religion suffers from an overly abstract and intellectualized methodology. A more ‘humane’ approach would acknowledge the vital contribution of the emotions and passions to a proper cognitive grasp of the nature of the cosmos and our place within it. The point is illustrated by reference to a number of writers, including Descartes, whose path to knowledge of God, often thought to depend on dispassionate argument alone, in fact relies on a synergy between intellect and emotions.

The paper is a discussion of P. M. S. Hacker, The Passions: A Study of Human Nature (2018). After a general presentation of the book I mostly focus on its first part, which deals with categories and concepts essential to the philosophy of the emotions. Next I pass on to two subsequent parts of the book devoted to particular emotions. After a brief overview I say more, by way of exemplification, on the chapter on love. I end with a final assessment.

This paper lays out in detail how, on David Hume’s account, curiosity relates to the other (direct and indirect) passions that guide our actions, and in particular how curiosity is able to identify potential targets and make inquiry self-perpetuating. This is followed by a discussion of the risks associated with the unbridled pursuit of knowledge and the role of sympathy in anchoring curiosity to shared conceptions of value and epistemic worth. The overall picture, I argue, is one in which curiosity is recognized as indispensable in carrying our inquiries beyond the narrow range of our immediate practical interests; at the same time, it is seen as being naturally constrained by the way it is embedded within the wider network of the various passions, which in turn reflect aspects of our own social and cognitive situatedness. By tracing the workings of curiosity in this way, and by relating it to the rich tapestry of passions that animate our mental lives, Hume’s theoretical philosophy provides a subtle and insightful framework for thinking about the moral psychology of curiosity, or so I argue.

Issue n. 5 of journal "English Literature: Theories, Interpretations, Contexts" devoted to
1. Adaptations, Especially (but not Only) in Cinema
2. Passions, Emotions and Cognition in Eighteenth-Century Literature (Part 2)

To read and download the articles for free, see: http://edizionicafoscari.unive.it/en/edizioni/riviste/english-literature/2018/5/

Table of Contents:
SECTION 1. ADAPTATIONS, ESPECIALLY (BUT NOT ONLY) IN CINEMA
1. "What Isn’t a Cross-Cultural Adaptation, and, If You Know That, Then What Isn’t a Cross-cultural Text?" by  Thomas Leitch
2. " ‘#DifferenceMakesUs’: Selling Shakespeare Online (and the Commerce Platform Etsy)" by  Anna Blackwell
3. "Narrative Suspense in Edgar Allan Poe and Alfred Hitchcock" by Elaine Indrusiak
4. "Film Adaptation as the Art of Expansion: The Visual Poetics of Marleen Gorris’ Mrs. Dalloway" by Polina Rybina
5. "Adapting Shakespeare Around the Globe: The Construction of Otherness and its Ideological Stakes  in the Films O and Omkara" by Andrei Nae
6. "Re-run and Re-read: Tom McCarthy’s Remainder as an Archeology of the Present" by Alessandra Violi

SECTION 2. PASSIONS, EMOTIONS AND COGNITION IN EIGHTEENTH-CENTURY LITERATURE (PART 2)
1. "The Fear of Laughter in Restoration Prose Fiction" by Jorge Figueroa-Dorrego
2. "Frances Greville’s A Prayer for Indifference: The Limits of Sentiment" by Karin Kukkonen
3. "Isaac Watts’s Hymnody as a Guide for the Passions" by  Daniel Johnson
4. "Passionate Educations: John Locke, Aphra Behn, and Jane Austen" by Aleksondra Hultquist
5. "The Literature of Fear in Britain:  Coleridge’s Fears in Solitude and the French Invasion of Fishguard in 1797" by Ildiko Csengei

La filosofia contemporanea, come quella di tutti i secoli, s’interessa alle passioni ma con sfumature nuove. L’apertura della filosofia alle scienze umane, ai loro metodi e alle loro interpretazioni decostruttive, così come il rinnovamento dell’intensione filosofica fondamentale nella fenomenologia, hanno accompagnato uno sguardo nuovo su questo mondo interiore che sembra opporsi alla chiarezza richiesta dalla ragione. La riflessione sulle passioni partecipano così all’intenzione speculativa contemporanea che intende non rinchiudere il suo sforzo di pensiero alla sola articolazione concettuale della ricerca scientifica.

In this article I seek to show in what manner the Stoic principle of total blending, illustrated by the example of the penetration of fire into iron, finds its refraction in Byzantine Christological teachings. According to the Stoics, total blending occurs when one body accepts certain qualities of the other, while remaining itself, or when both mixed bodies acquire qualities of each other while preserving their natures. I argue that Origen’s use of the example of incandescent iron had an effect on the later theological discourse. There it appears in two contexts, Christology and deification. In this article the focus is on Christology. I claim that the example was introduced into the Christological discourse by Apollinarius of Laodicea. Then, I investigate how it was transformed in later theological writings by (Ps.-) Basil of Caesarea, Theodoret of Cyrus, Cyril of Alexandria, Sever of Antioch, John of Damascus, and the Corpus Leontianum. In this context, I pay special attention to the discrepancy between John of Damascus and Leontius of Jerusalem as regards the issue of the complexity of Christ’s hypostasis. I clarify the causes of this discrepancy.

PDF-PowerPoint presentation of the talk I gave on Thursday, 10th May 2018 at the Congress Discourse, Power and Resistance 2018, Education and the striving for dignity, 10-12 May, 2018 – Coimbra, Portugal, Faculty of Psychology and Educational Sciences, University of Coimbra.
In my talk, I interpret Spinoza’s philosophical programme as a programme for making the mind active, for “activizing the mind”: Making the mind active means to develop the knowledge of the reality from the individual and to become aware of the factors causing passions in the mind. Making the mind steadily active can be obtained only through the process of knowledge of the reality, that is, through the philosophical education. Spinoza aims at making the mind active since, through this process, the dimension of passivity of the mind represented by all the passions produced by ignorance and imagination diminishes. An increase in the activity of the mind correspondingly means a greater percentage of self-mastery of the mind. Only the philosophical education can increase the activity of the mind, since only knowledge and only emotions deriving from knowledge are activity. The process has consequences both for individuals and for the society in which individuals live.
The educational process means, therefore, the liberation for the knowing subject from the slavery of passion. However, this liberation is not acquired once and for all. Liberation is, for men, a continuous process; it is not a condition: since men are a part of nature, men are always subdued to the influence of the nature and, consequently, they are always subdued to the passions. Moreover, the original condition of every individual is highly disadvantaged, since every individual begins his life process from a condition of total passivity; the process of knowledge requires a constant diligence from the individual.
Only knowledge can give the grounds of the passions the value they deserve. The process of knowledge changes the individual and gives the individual the instruments in order to withstand his passions and his being passive. Knowledge of the reality brings about an emendation of the intellect. Ethics cannot function without ontology: ethics is a kind of applied ontology, that is, an ontology applied to the mind and to the psychic constitution of individuals. Without knowledge of ontology, we cannot understand the coming about of passions: Therefore, we are not able to defeat passions. An anthropology without ontology is not possible, since the causes of our emotions are rooted in the very structure of reality. The analysis of man needs, in order to be complete, an analysis of the totality of the reality. Only an analysis of the totality of the reality can give us the instruments in order to understand how the individual functions; at the same time, only an analysis of the totality of the reality can give us the elements in order to find the solutions to the moral problems of the individual and of the society.
Spinoza’s project is a moral psychology, since the problems for the individual (and for the society) depends on the dispositions of the mind: the whole morality depends on the education of the mind. To different level of education of the mind, correspond different levels of morality. In order to reach a greater level of morality it is necessary to reach a greater level of education. Levels of knowledge reached by the individual and levels of morality reached by the individual do correspond to each other.
Spinoza’s criticism of imagination in the Ethics and in the Theological-Political Treaty is directed not only to the analysis of the bad influences that imagination can have on individuals as individuals: the criticism of imagination is directed to the analysis of the influences of imagination in the social field too. Persons subjected to imagination are persons ready to be manipulated. Therefore, a society that does not possess philosophical education is a society steadily exposed to the risk of being manipulated.

The Summa Theologiae is Thomas Aquinas' undisputed masterwork, and it includes his thoughts on the elemental forces in human life. Feelings such as love, hatred, pleasure, pain, hope and despair were described by Aquinas as "passions," representing the different ways in which happiness could be affected. But what causes the passions?  What impact do they have on the person who suffers them?  Can they be shaped and reshaped in order to better promote human flourishing?  The aim of this book is to provide a better understanding of Aquinas' account of the passions.  It identifies the Aristotelian influences that lie at the heart of the Summa Theologiae, and it enters into a dialogue with contemporary thinking about the nature of emotion.  The study argues that Aquinas' work is still important today, and shows why for Aquinas both the understanding and attainment of happiness requires prolonged reflection on the passions.

PRESENTAZIONE. Viviamo un'era caotica, tormentata socialmente, economicamente e psicologicamente. Molte certezze che permisero finanche ai disperati sessantottini d'identificarsi con un'idea politica o religiosa sono scomparse senza che nulla abbia avuto capacità di sostituirle, se non per eccezione di un archetipo preminente di crescita monetaria che coinvolgerebbe tutti gli strati sociali, ma che in effetti ne premia pochi! Idea che, infatti, pur diffusa e nota, è propria solo dalle élite dominanti che la classificano come globalizzazione dei mercati. Globalizzazione che potrebbe avere una modesta logicità per prodotti non deperibili, ma che certo non può essere vera in tema d'agroalimentare, dunque in materia d'alimentazione umana, e ciò sia per la deperibilità dei prodotti, sia per la diversa educazione alimentare delle genti e anche, non certo ultimo concetto, per il loro fabbisogno d'alimentazioni specifiche secondo l'ambiente geografico vissuto. In questa nuova lapalissiana enorme demoralizzazione sociale, dove tutto ruota intorno al libero mercato, anche gli stessi concetti di bene e male, se pur sempre sofferenti per un certo relativismo politico-religioso, più non hanno un accettabile definito contorno. Infatti, troppi tra noi agiscono senz'alcuna certezza che le azioni compiute rispondano a canoni etici, o anche soltanto a necessari compromessi. Così, sempre più spesso nella società s'avverte la necessità di ricorrere a psicoterapeuti e psicologi capaci d'illuminarci. Sotto questo profilo potremmo ricevere aiuto anche da riflessioni sul pensiero di Baruch De Spinoza. Anche i genitori han smesso il loro sapiente lavoro dal marasma generale corrotti, e i figli, già preadolescenti, sono abbandonati in gruppi dove unica legge è l'essere "in" nel branco che rivela discordanza con ogni accadimento già precedentemente noto e codificato; ciò spingendosi sino al punto che solo l'imitazione e la forza fisica

Si la pensée est universelle, nous ne pouvons toutefois pas nier la spécificité des modalités de pensées. Les études réunies dans cet ouvrage apparaissent ainsi comme une occasion d'interroger et de dégager les différentes modalités d'appropriation de la philosophie cartésienne au Brésil. Nombre de pages: 222

"Passions, Emotions and Cognition in the Long Eighteenth-Century Literature in England", 4th number of journal "English Literature: Theories, Interpretations, Contexts" .
Open access.
URL  https://edizionicafoscari.unive.it/en/edizioni/riviste/english-literature/2017/1/

Articles by: Michael McKeon ("Aesthetic Cognition "), Margaret A. Doody ("The Actor, the Mirror, the Soul and the Sylph "), Regina M. Dal Santo ("The Rhetoric of Passions in John Tillotson's Sermons"), Judith Hawley ("Scriblerian Cognition"), Katarzyna Kozak ("The Hurry and Uproar of Their Passions: Images of the Early 18th-Century Whig"), Riccardo Capoferro ("Fears, Apprehensions and Conjecture "), Lucia Quinault ("Poetry and Emotion in the Abergavenny Scandal of 1729")

Est-ce que les passions de l'âme parviennent à concilier le dualisme entre l'esprit et le corps chez Descartes? Travail remis à Monsieur Alexandre Rouette Baccalauréat en philosophie Université du Québec à Trois-Rivières 19 décembre 2017 Introduction René Descartes est un philosophe qui a grandement marqué son époque. On pourrait même dire qu'il a initié une révolution philosophique. Reconnue pour son plan cartésien, Descartes invente une méthode permettant de décrire les objets géométriques.

Wojciech Kosiński w moich wspomnieniach My memories of Wojciech kosiński Streszczenie Artykuł zawiera wspomnienia autora z 59-letniej znajomości z profesorem Wojciechem kosińskim. Autor wraca myślami do okresu studiów i wspomnień ze wspólnej wspinaczki w podkrakowskich skałkach i drugiej, wysokogórskiej, w Tatrach, a także do wędrówek po Tatrach i wspólnych wyjazdów narciarskich. omawia wpływ gór na postawę twórczą Wojciecha kosińskiego. Szkicuje jego sylwetkę jako architekta, naukowca i pedagoga, a także intelektualisty i człowieka o rozległych zainteresowaniach.

There is a hidden tension underlying current debates on issues such as liberalism, communitarianism, multiculturalism or nationalism in the field of political theory. This hidden tension is at least as problematic as the tensions expressed by other, more explicit binary codes, such as community/individual, monism/pluralism or universalism/particularism. In this chapter, I will argue that the Reason/Emotion dichotomy, a foundational dichotomy or more precisely a dualism, originating in a partial and radical interpretation of Enlightenment thought, lies as an undisputed assumption behind those other binary codes, hindering the very possibility of arriving at new developments in the theory of democracy and of politics itself. The Reason/Emotion dichotomy induces with the “blissful clarity” of myth – using Barthes’ expression – an undisputed and omnipresent hyper-rationality. In turn, this has very negative de-politicizing effects on a large part of the arguments advanced by political t...

Passion propice à la démesure et à l’éclat, nœud d’intensité volontiers opposé au logos, la colère dévoile en réalité nombre de ses caractéristiques lorsqu’on veut la saisir dans la langue et l’interroger en tant que processus de signification passionnelle. Cette étude aborde la colère comme une aire passionnelle complexe, constituée de strates de discours et de représentations dont héritent écritures et lectures dans leur présent. C’est sur ce fond que nous cherchons à caractériser deux styles de colère, celui d’H. Michaux et celui de L.-F. Céline, marqués par une commune forme d’ostentation autant que par des poétiques apparemment antithétiques, complefixiant à leur tour notre appréhension de cette émotion faussement évidente.