Search

This paper argues that Aristotelian practical wisdom (phronēsis) is a state of conviction (pistis) in the goodness of our goals based on proper grounds. This state of conviction can only be achieved if rational arguments and principles agree with how things appear to us. Since, for Aristotle, passions influence appearances, they can support or undermine our conviction in the goodness of ends. For this reason, we cannot be practically wise without virtuous dispositions to experience appropriate passions. Along the way, I argue that this reading allows us to explain the shortcomings of self‐controlled and akratic agents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines a particular aspect of Paolo Mantegazza's (1831-1910) work: the establishment of the Museo Psicologico as part of his anthropological project. The study begins by examining the general characteristics of Mantegazza's anthropological viewpoint, justifying the inclusion of comparative psychology as a subfield of anthropological psychology, with a focus on the key principles that served as the theoretical foundation for the establishment of the Museum. Subsequently, the proposal for the foundation of the Museum will be analyzed, including a description of the theoretical and methodological principles underlying the selection and arrangement of the objects to be collected. Finally, the paper will describe the Museo Psicologico at the time of its inauguration, providing an overview of its organization in the following years and an attempt to uncover the reasons behind its abrupt dissolution after the death of its founder. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the first half of Part 5 of the Ethics, Spinoza presents his directions for mitigating the passions through reason. He touts his account of the power of reason over the passions as ground-breaking and unique, while positioning himself squarely within the traditional debate of akrasia, or weakness of will. Spinoza claims he is the first to identify the affects through their characteristic effects, and demonstrate the way these effects can be countered by the mind's activity. It follows that Spinoza's claim for originality can be explained in (at least) two ways: first, passions themselves have been misunderstood, and second, previous philosophers have misunderstood the relationship between reason and the passions. In the first part of this paper, I place Spinoza's discussion of the passions and reason's power over them in a historical context. Next, I present Spinoza's definition of the affects, and his directions for 'destroying' the passions. In the third section I point to the differences between my interpretation and that of recent commentators. Finally, I discuss the way in which Spinoza's directions for mitigating the passions serve as the psychological basis for his moral theory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper seeks to contribute to the discussion of Hume's theory of personal identity, by examining a conflict regarding the vivacity of the self in his writings about sympathy. Although the mechanism of sympathy supposes that self is the liveliest perception of thought, when we consider sympathy through the perspective of the 'desire of company', we find that self lacks vivacity and, without alterity, it would be in reality nothing. Our objective is to present the conflict and show that, far from being a contradiction in Hume's thinking, it is consistent with how the philosopher conceives personal identity as a product of imagination, that is, a perception that, like any other, exists within the flow of perceptions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, I analyze the concept of passions in Kant, trying to answer the question: are passions good for society or are they the source of evil and irrationality? I begin by showing the danger of passions, if compared with affects. In the Anthropology, as well in the Religion, Kant claims that passions are the evil we should fight against. More than inclinations, or affects, the evil principle refers to passions. However, in the Ideia for an Universal history with a cosmopolitan aim, Kant admits that passions are good for society. They are not the cause of their irrationality, but the possibility of the development of the natural predispositions of human being. I claim that we have two distinct answers in Kant, and I try to understand this ambiguity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the anthropology, ethics, and politics of Helvetius, focusing on the theme of power and the passions that gravitate around it, and highlighting the transition from a position that could be broadly defined as "anarchic" (all powers are bad) to one that realistically takes power for granted as an insurmountable horizon (and which leads to the future-laden idea of a "democratic despotism"). By analyzing these themes, it questions the common interpretation of Helvetius's thought as a compact block ("Le système d'Helvétius"), emphasizing the way in which the theoretical reworkings presented in De l'homme must be understood in light of the internal tensions of De l'esprit. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Descartes' theory of the passions has important connections to his view that nonhuman animals are automata. In this paper, I show how critics of animal automatism exploited these connections. I interpret a criticism of animal automatism developed by Gabriel Daniel (1649–1728). Daniel argues that animal automatism commits Descartes to an implausible account of the phenomenology of conflicts between passion and reason. If animal bodies act by mere automatic mechanism, then when a human being resists their animal impulses they should experience a conflict between the disposition of their body and their rational soul. However, our experience of conflicts between passion and reason instead suggests that these conflicts are internal to the soul. Daniel's objection to Cartesian animal automatism was later criticized by David Renaud Boullier (1699–1759), but Boullier himself raises an objection to Cartesian animal automatism that develops insights from Daniel. I argue that Boullier succeeds in raising a powerful objection to Cartesian animal automatism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For Descartes, the passion of generosity—defined as legitimate self-esteem— appears to be egocentric, the result of agents' contemplation of their nature. Yet Cartesian generosity is also intended to serve as the foundation for other-regarding passions, attitudes, and dispositions. This paper examines this tension as it is addressed in the writings of an early Cartesian feminist, Mary Astell. We uncover the social dimension of generosity in Descartes's Passions of the Soul and demonstrate how Astell extends the Cartesian concept in her Serious Proposal. We argue that while there is an internal relationship between Cartesian generosity and good will toward others, Astell's work recognizes that generosity can only be fully actualized under equitable social conditions. We thus provide a deeper analysis of the role that this master passion plays in Descartes's ethical thought as well as a greater appreciation of the impact of Cartesian ethics on early modern feminism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Adam and Eve served their passion of gastrimargy and their ambition to become gods without the grace of God. The result was their exile from Paradise and death. The incarnation of Logos, His crucifixion, His death on the cross and His resurrection gave a second chance of man's salvation. Unfortunately, people do not put into practice this gift of their reconciliation to God. In this paper, we will compare the opinion of two important Church Fathers, Isidore of Pelusium and Theodore Stoudite. It is important to underline for what kind of passions these Church Fathers speak. Do they relate the passions only with monks or general with Christians? How can we get rid of a passion? Can their teaching be put into practice in nowadays? Which is the worst passion according to them? Are diseases and pandemic a punishment of God for our sins? Of course, we should explain that the passions in the life of a Christian can be proved deadly but they have no connection with the view that diseases are punishments from God for our passions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focused upon Descartes' writings and letters, this paper considers the exponentially-charged relationship between sadness, melancholy, doubt and philosophical inquiry. The first sections examine the relation between sadness in the Cartesian corpus and melancholy as a traditional pathological classification, with both set against a larger seventeenth century intellectual discourse. The letters exchanged between the Princess Elisabeth of Bohemia and the Palatine and Descartes between 1643 and 1649, that is, just prior to the death of the philosopher in 1650, reveal the central paradigm of this particular relationship between sadness and melancholy. The call to use philosophy as a cure against sadness also enters consideration, with the theatrical, artificial nature of the philosophical cure presented as essential not only to Descartes' relation to sadness, but also to philosophical method in general. The moral aspect of the establishment of mental habits and their emendation by philosophy hence yields central insights into the larger Cartesian project, here viewed as essentially premised upon a medical vocation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The question concerning the nature of "true philosophy" is a constant in Hume's philosophical enquiry. The present paper revisits the Conclusion of Book i of the Treatise of Human Nature, a crucial piece of writing to understand his answer to that question. In this dramatic section, the author narrates the crisis he suffered after confronting his science of human nature with sceptical arguments. I interpret Hume's narrative as a phenomenological description of the flux of passions, dispositions, and transformers which, after reflection, determine the transit from false to true philosophy, that will be justified by sceptical motives. Hume's voyage shouldn't be read only as an autobiographical experience since it represents the desired turn that should be followed by anyone who feels inclined towards philosophy, in order to discover both the utility and the pleasure derived from its practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper collects some reflections that revive and connect different theories on desire, affections, and ways of life in common. It examines some implications of a succession of statements concerning specific attributes that can be considered inherent to desire. Based on philosophical and psychoanalytical insights, recognizing the semiotic dimension of passions, their collective scope is examined by considering analyses from sociology and Marxist theory. Finally, such apprehensions allow us to admit the immanence of the affective conflict within the human condition and return to the inquiry into the most convenient possible ways of our coexistence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to bring into conversation the understanding of anger in the writings of the Evagrian tradition and the school of John Cassian, on the one hand, and the Mahāyāna discourse on anger that is exemplified in the writings of Śāntideva, on the other hand. Evagrios's and Cassian's reflection on emotions and their role in the monastic life are grounded in the Philokalic tradition of Eastern Christianity, while also drawing on the Stoic understanding of the inner life and the Neo-Platonic tripartite notion of the self as comprising a higher nous (intellect) and a lower set of passions bridging the gap between the mind and the body. The Mahāyāna understanding of the emotions, for its part, is geared toward the achievement of active nirvāna , where practitioners can finally discern the fundamental identity between the samsaric and the nirvanic character of our attachments. This paper will uncover a variety of points of contacts between the two traditions, both of which envisage anger as an obstacle preventing communion with God or the achievement of liberation. At the same time, this reading of texts from the two traditions will also highlight their irreducible differences, as well as their distinctive understanding of subjectivity, soteriology, and ultimate reality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents the semiotic analysis of Giedrė Kazlauskaitė poem Venecijietiška kaukė... The research aims to delve into the structures of the poetic world of Giedrė Kazlauskaitė, which is achieved through executing a detailed semiotic analysis of one poem. Accordingly, this paper follows the semiotic framework of the analytical trajectory, which encompasses the analysis through the means of discursive, narrative, and logical semantic levels. In addition, the study includes Yuri Lotman's discourse of the concept of the mirror in cultural semiotics. Findings derived from the semiotic analysis suggest that the figures of the mask and the mirror become central representations at the discursive level of the poem, as they exist in a paratopic space - the make-up room. The mask and the mirror appear in Kazlauskaitė's poetry as an essential tool for shaping one's own identity. Moreover, the analysis of the poem is supplemented with the expression of the passions of anger and jealousy. Such approach highlights two different forms of anger: destruction arising from jealousy and a creative act. These forms suggest that the passion of anger drives the subject to the act of doing. Furthermore, in this poem, the figure of the poet is not presented as calm or accommodating, but rather as angry and unafraid to show contempt. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper pursues the central thesis that the construction of the eighteenth-century spectator of tragedy as passive opens the self to a radical experience of otherness and a compassionate relationship to the public sphere. The paper examines two related arguments: first, that eighteenth-century tragedy and aesthetic autonomy are related, and that the persistent dismissal of eighteenth-century tragedy as effete and its audiences as complacently bourgeois might be overturned by another look at Adorno's ambivalent definition of aesthetic autonomy; second, that the tragedy of the early eighteenth century develops a special relationship to passivity, both onstage and in its characterisation of its own spectators, and that this passivity is understood to be a comment on tragic form. I conclude that passivity has a specific contemplative moral value in the early eighteenth century, and that its value is incorporated into ethical concepts of aesthetic apprehension. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Language is a means of interaction and in the graphic novel, also known as comic book, there are specificities that require the orator to have this knowledge not to miss elements of a good persuasive text, such as clarity, coherence, and cohesion. In this sense, Rhetorical art, which aims to disclose persuasive mechanisms of discourse, is also present in graphic novels, as persuasion can occur in verbal and/or multimodal texts. By presenting verbal and visual language, the discourse, through a multimodal text, is presented to the audience in a more touching and compelling way, capable of awakening movements of exposure of emotional evidence, linked to the heart. This awakening of passions occurs in the graphic novel Wrinkles by Spanish writer Paco Roca. By presenting Alzheimer's disease in a light and emotional way, he allows the work to be persuasive. In this paper, we sought to identify how this multimodal text uses graphic resources to arouse passions in the audience/reader. This study is relevant, as it demonstrates the potential of Rhetoric in multimodal texts -such as in Paco Roca's work, which condenses in images a range of meanings- and how theoretical rhetorical concepts can underpin diverse texts. Comic books references such as Eisner (1999; 2013) and Ramos (2012), as well as Rhetoric references such as Aristotle (2015), Reboul (2004), Meyer (2007), Ferreira (2010), Abreu (2001) Figueiredo (2018) and Fiorin (2016) were used as theoretical background. Our findings reveal some of the passions in the multimodal text, and, based on the theoretical background we used, how they can be evoked in the reader. Graphic sequences like Wrinkles show to be persuasive as they turn to be touching and pensive. In the graphic novel, there is also a pedagogical side of Rhetoric, because in addition to movere and comovere, when reading it, one gets to know a little about Alzheimer's disease, linked to docere. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The universe of Brazilian popular music is full of passionate elements, but the genre that used the passion as style was the samba-canção (in English, literally "samba-song"). In this paper, based on semiotic notions, we analyse the passions in the discourse of this musical genre, trying to understand how the passionate sense effects in its composition are elaborated. In this regard, guided by A. J. Greimas renowed essay De la colère, we made an excerpt consisted by the songs As rosas não falam (1976), Volta (1978), Quern há de dizer (1972), Atiraste uma pedra (1958), Vingança (1972) e Castigo "(191%). When observing passional courses, they serve as strategy to perform a reading of that musical genre. In brief, we work with the passions, which determine the passional course of revenge, inserted in the cholera course, in order to reveal the treatment provided to them in samba-canção 's compositions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper challenges the notion that Galenic humouralism stripped the early modern body of agency and argues that some accounts of early modern materialism were connected to epistemology. It evidences how Milton's passions are inscribed with the shocking language of agency and moral responsibility to overturn the assumption of "passive", unconscious passions. It explores two pictures of passions in connection with knowledge: passions as obstacles to knowledge, and passions as sources as knowledge. Both images recast the material body as a knowing agent, but do so with complications. Agency-ridden passions complicate a straightforward notion of agency, and seem to leave early moderns with the option of blaming their passions instead of themselves for deception. Frequent references to internal passions in political discourses also suggests an unsettling degree of comfort with subjectivity in making knowledge-statements, but it is a version of subjectivity that seems far more public than private. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article explores water's capacities as a vibrant matter with specific properties that generates passions, attachments and a sense of belonging, and which enrols bodies in new connections, socialities, alliances and politics in unpredictable ways. Based on research into practices and engagements with water in a large urban public space the paper builds on studies of blue space. It concludes that water has the capacity to enhance a sense of well-being in those that swim in it and to mobilise a very particular sense of embodiment which gives this form of public space its distinctiveness constituting new forms of sociality and connections amongst diverse individuals. It seeks to do this by paying attention to the experiences of things themselves and the active participation of nonhuman forces in events and the 'vital materiality' that runs through and across bodies both human and non-human. The article also explores water's capacity to be constituted and defined by experts as dangerous and risky matter, and to thus engender political associations and connections amongst diverse groups who seek to oppose such expert interventions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the present study, I would like to recover the phenomenology of a thinker that remains still undiscovered in the Ibero-American realm. Dietrich von Hildebrand (1889-1977) was born the same year as Martin Heidegger, and was a disciple of Max Scheler and Edmund Husserl, working brilliantly in his phenomenological method. I am not going to explain here the fundamental phenomenology of this author but his phenomenology as it is applied to affectivity, in order to subtly provoke theology. This paper, then, is going to take notice of a special phenomenology and not of a general one, by dedicating our efforts to the personal quality of a diverse and unified affectivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the place of the concept of philautia in the Evagrius Ponticus’ conception of disease of the soul. We consider that this notion (philautia) has serious implications for the complete understanding of the evagrian vision of disease of the soul. Indeed, the philautia is, in the evagrian system, the most direct consequence of the ignorance of itself that the nous suffers after its fall. Philautia is also the immediate cause of the parà phýsin orientation of the passionate part of the soul. Putting the self-satisfaction as a precept, the philautia culminates in the state of spiritual atony and passionate eff ervescence called acedia. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The literature on Genesis 4:1-16 advances several reasons why Cain murdered Abel. The majority of commentators believe that Cain killed him because of anger, jealousy or envy. Some suggest that the murder is to be explained by Cain's depression. Those who believe that Cain was jealous of Abel often confuse jealousy with envy. Then there are those who oppose the idea that Cain killed Abel out of envy, and suggest that God was capricious to reject Cain's offering. The aim of this paper is to make sense of these divergent views. First, it establishes with whom Cain was angry and why he got depressed. The thesis is that Cain got angry at God and not Abel, and became depressed because he realised that he could not obtain what he desired (God's favour) on his own terms. It then clarifies the conceptual connection between envy, covetousness and jealousy, and argues that Cain murdered Abel because he envied, resented and hated him for his character and spiritual qualities, and because he lost honour and esteem. It concludes, in contrast to critics, that God was not capricious when he rejected Cain and his offering. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we argue that Samuel Pufendorf's works on natural law contain a sentimentalist theory of morality that is Smithian in its moral psychology. Pufendorf's account of how ordinary people make moral judgements and come to act sociably is surprisingly similar to Smith's. Both thinkers maintain that the human desire for esteem, manifested by resentment and gratitude, informs people of the content of central moral norms and can motivate them to act accordingly. Finally, we suggest that given Pufendorf's theory of socially imposed moral entities, he has all the resources for a sentimentalist theory of morality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is about the problematic interface between evolutionary scientists’ talk about ethics and current work in philosophy and theology. The paper proceeds by taking four main figures from four different disciplines. The four disciplines are neurophysiology, cognitive psychology, primatology and game theory, and the four figures are Joshua Greene, Mark Hauser, Frans de Waal and Ken Binmore. The paper relates the views of each of these figures to recent work in philosophical and theological ethics. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper discusses the accounts of self-cultivation and self-denial of Archibald Campbell (1691-1756). It analyses how he attempts to make room for moral self-improvement and for the control of the passions in a thoroughly egoistic psychological framework, and with a theory of moral motivation that focuses on a specific kind of self-love, namely the desire for esteem. Campbell's views are analysed in the context of his criticisms of both Francis Hutcheson's benevolence-based moral philosophy and of Bernard Mandeville's version of an egoistic psychology. The paper explores the key role of Campbell's distinction between true and mistaken self-love, and it discusses how his account of self-cultivation reflects both his optimistic view of human nature as being naturally disposed to virtue and his moral rehabilitation of self-love - two points on which he is in conflict with the period's orthodox Calvinism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is a result of ethnographic research about talking and associative life in public markets in south-east Mexico. The paper proposes to revise some aspects of the social psychological, linguistic and anthropological theories about passion, and especially envy, based on a constructionist and interpretative perspective. The paper explores some notions of metaphoric and narrative analysis, the possibilities of these strategies for developing cultural analysis of interaction situations in the ordinary life of these urban institutions, its actors and emotions involved including those of the analyst. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to restore the doctrinal continuity on the basis of the Aristotelian analysis of the relation between body and soul. First, we attempt to bring into question some classical dichotomies used to summarize the hylomorphic theory. We shall also try to demonstrate the impossibility of characterizing this theory as monism rather than dualism. Finally, in light of the doctrine that seems to be exposed in De Anima, we will do a comparative analysis between this final period of the Aristotelian thought and the thesis contained within his moral texts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

French semiotics emerged in the 1960s with Greimas' researches, and it aimed developing a study of signification by adopting a structuralist methodology which, initially, excluded from its analysis all the elements related to discourse subjectivity. This paper aims to reflect about the advances of semiotics, from its beginning, involving passion studies, to the manner which the reflections on tensivity and phenomenology, along with Greimas' modality and passion studies, little by little expanded the grip of the theory in question, gradually replacing a semiotics that had action as the center of its concerns by another one, the semiotics of passions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we intend to revisit the discussion on affectivity as object of semiotics, in order to retrace the path towards a socio-semiotics of emotions of Piercian roots. Thereunto, we address in the role this paradigm assigns to the corporal in cognition, establishing a significant distance from the structuralist tradition. After a brief analysis of the relationships established between emotional and logical interpretant, we intend to outline a hypothesis about emotions as effects of meaning: we argue that what we call emotions would be a particular type of signs characterized by the relevance acquired in them by emotional interpretants. Afterwards, we introduce the reader to the matter of the distinction between emotions and feelings, steering the discussion toward the manner in which the discursive construction of these feelings may affect the production of the rules governing the emotional production in a given community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Commentators have sometimes underappreciated or misunderstood the point of Hume's theory of the passions. This paper offers an overview of the literature on Hume's psychology of the passions, with the aim of showing that it is not simply another mechanistic analysis alongside the offerings of Malebranche, Hobbes, and Spinoza. Recent discussions reveal that Hume's theory makes an influential contribution to the eighteenth-century debate on the importance of certain passions in human well-being, offers a conception of a social rather than a solitary self, and, among other things, has important implications for moral and motivational theory. This essay begins with the background to and the details of Hume's theory, with reference to contemporary interpretive treatments of Hume's taxonomy of the passions. It then considers specific questions to which Hume's theory of the passions has given rise, and appraises the various perspectives offered in response. Last, it considers broad interpretations concerning the import of Hume's theory of the passions on the whole: that the passions are crucial to morality; that the passions offer a solution to the problem of the self; that the passions are key to sociability and self-regulation; and that the passions play a fundamental role in religion and in the appreciation of tragedy. Throughout, this essay also notes topics on which more scholarly discussion would be especially beneficial. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Among the commentators who problematize the issue of the moral self in David Hume's thought, Pauline Chazan (1998) has argued for the existence of some tensions between the passionate self that Hume thematizes in Book 2 of A Treatise of Human Nature and how this self subsequently gets in the moral domain, which Hume elaborated in Book 3. This paper offers an innovative reading of Hume's theory of subjectivity, which allows reconsidering and resolving this apparent conflict between the passionate self and the moral self. To do so, it develops a multidimensional conception of the subjectivity allowing to conceive the formation of the self as a complex and gradual process involving simultaneously different levels that, even though may be studied separately, are closely connected. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses Bernard Mandeville's (1670-1733) conception of governability. It grounds his key distinction between a submissive and a governable subject in terms of his alternative account of human sociability to demonstrate the nature and structure of relationships that are necessary for upholding stable and flourishing societies. Using Sir William Temple as an interlocutor (1628-1699), it also explores the role played by the cultivation of reverence to authority in Mandeville's analysis of governability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, the author focuses on the work of Bernard Mandeville as predecessor of Scottish Enlightenment and liberal tradition of thought. Starting from the social, political and economic context of the all-embracing crisis of the society in transition of his time, special attention is devoted to his moral, social and economic views based on methodological individualism. The author argues that Mandeville's controversial thought resists one-sided labeling and unambiguous fitting into mutually opposed camps of mercantilism and market liberalism, i.e. constructivism and evolutionism. This is the reason behind the variety of interpretations, and sometimes even completely opposite readings of his work. He was a satirist, social critic, physician, philosopher and economist, who effectuated a shift and a turn with regard to the habitual perceptions of the age in all those segments of his reflection and activity, and he launched a sort of "revolution in thought", which will be given its definitive formulation and elaboration in the second half of the 18th century by the Scottish moral philosophers. The author concludes that Mandeville was, first and foremost, a man of his time and responded to the acute problems of his age. It would thus be inappropriate and wrong to apply his ideas from the beginning of the 18th century to the present time with a clearer precising of intellectual and political projects, and declare him either a mercantilist or an interventionist, or else an advocate of laissez-faire. Nonetheless, Mandeville came up with answers that would later be incorporated in the liberal tradition. One may therefore say that he greatly influenced the Scottish Enlightenment and contributed to the birth of liberalism, although he was not a consistent economic liberal himself, of the type that was familiar to the late 18th century. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Commentators commonly assume that Descartes regards it as a function of the passions to inform us or teach us which things are beneficial and which are harmful. As a result, they tend to infer that Descartes regards the passions as an appropriate guide to what is beneficial or harmful. In this paper I argue that this conception of the role of the passions in Descartes is mistaken. First, in spite of a number of texts appearing to show the contrary, I argue that Descartes does not regard it as the role of the passions to inform us about what is beneficial or harmful. Second, although Descartes calls the passions good and useful, I argue that Descartes does not think we should allow ourselves to be guided by them. When we recognize that the function of the passions is largely motivational and not informative, we can more easily understand Descartes's practical advice in The Passions of the Soul that happiness requires us to guide our passions instead of letting our passions guide us. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the reception of the Stoic theory of the passions in the early modern period, highlighting various differences between the way notions such as απαθεια (complete freedom from passions) and προπαθειαι (pre-passions) were handled and interpreted by Continental and English authors. Both groups were concerned about the compatibility of Stoicism with Christianity, but came to opposing conclu- sions; and while the Continental scholars drew primarily on ancient philosophical texts, the English ones relied, in addition, on experience and observation, developing a natural history of the passions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Terence Penelhum has written extensively about the role of the idea of the self in Hume's account of the emotional and moral life of persons. Penelhum fails to notice, however, a change that takes place in the way that the idea of the self functions in Hume's account of the passions as that account evolved after the Treatise. This paper charts part of that evolution, and reflects on its significance for Hume's moral psychology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with the subject of the signification of metaphor into the Adam Smith's work according to gnoseological-anthopological's principles adopted by the author. In due course, it will attempt to show that in accordance with the anthropological redefinition put forwards by David Hume and accepted to Smith, metaphor would performs an outstanding function for scientific knowledge, without missing its aesthetical assessment, but, in a sense, thanks to it. To understand this, it will be analyzed the function of imagination in relation with human passions both in gnoseological and artistic realms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines the excitement that Adam Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments generated in France during the French Revolution, focusing particularly on the writings of political theorists, participants and commentators such as the abbé Sieyès, Pierre-Louis Rœderer, the Marquis de Condorcet and Sophie de Grouchy Condorcet, who were dismayed at their political opponents' use of Rousseau, and looked to Smith for an understanding of the passions that was compatible with democratic sovereignty and representative government. In the political context of the early 1790s, clarifying the concept of natural sociability, which Rousseau had rejected, but Smith and Helvétius, in different ways, each regarded as indispensible to a society dependent on advanced division of labour, became a central concern in the public lectures delivered by Pierre-Louis Rœderer as the Terror took hold. ☆ My thanks to Emma Rothschild, Michael Sonenscher, Brian Young and other participants in the History of Political Thought Seminar, Oxford, and The Hexagonal Forum, Cambridge, where earlier versions of this paper were presented and helpfully discussed. I'm also grateful for comments on an earlier draft from Carolina Armenteros, Clare Jackson, Duncan Kelly, Michael Sonenscher and Richard Whatmore. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Treatments of sources of Adam Smith's sociological theory of the self and associated ideas inThe Theory of Moral Sentimentstypically refer to classical antecedents or the work of his teacher Francis Hutcheson or his contemporary David Hume. During the seventeenth century, however, many books on the passions were published in London that arguably constitute an important but neglected source of Smith's treatment of moral sentiments. These works are largely forgotten today but at the time were widely read. They are not philosophical, partly devotional and predominantly psychological. Although Smith does not refer to these works his argument resembles theirs in many places. The importance of the seventeenth-century books on the passions, apart from their role in the history of psychology, is their bearing on contemporary economic practices. In this paper the connections between Smith and one of these books, Thomas Wright'sThe Passions of the Minde in Generall, are indicated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An influential view of sexual morality claims that participant consent is sufficient for the moral permissibility of a sexual act. I argue that the complex and frequently dark nature of sexual desire precludes this, because some sexual desire has a character such that it should not be gratified, even if this were consented to. I illustrate this with a discussion of a famous literary character, the Vicomte de Valmont, and draw on Kant's anthropology to illuminate the nature of such desire, before offering an account of its psychological roots. In the course of the paper I explain why the view of sexual desire endorsed by my main opponents is mistaken, and attack the limited conception of the normative which is a central plank in the argument of a prominent recent defender of the view, Igor Primoratz. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay analyzes liberal explanations of social order. Throughout exposition, Ovejero suggests the convenience of reviewing two central insights of liberalism, related with the way that the "problem" of social order is stated and its "solution" through the market. The "problem" is based on the unsustainable idea of presocial individuals inherent to liberalism. The article develops some arguments that shows why it has no sense to ask for the foundation of social order in that way. It supports that sociability can not be chosen, as the language can no be chosen either, in other words sociability can not be explained as a result of exchange or bargaining among individuals. The paper analyzes too the alternatives to explain the existence of social cement: passions, in terms of emotions and instincts, as the central basis that explains the way in which personal interests and the market would guarantee the social order. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]