From Passions to Emotions: The Creation of a Secular Psychological Category

ISBN-13: 9780521827294 / Angielski / Twarda / 2003 / 300 str.

Thomas Dixon

Opis

Until two centuries ago "the emotions" did not exist. Thomas Dixon reveals in this study how emotions came into being as a distinct psychological category. They replaced such concepts as appetites, passions, sentiments and affections, which had preoccupied thinkers as diverse as Augustine, Aquinas, Hume, and Darwin. The book is a significant original contribution to the debate which has preoccupied western thinkers across many disciplines in recent decades.

Recenzje

'… a most significant and most interesting contribution both to the history of psychology and to the study of relations between the modern scientific world view and religion. … it will substantially alter how writers refer to the history of what we loosely call the 'feelings'. … There has been little systematic history of the 'emotions' before this book, and this book provides a new and firm reference point. … [there] is a much-needed seriousness about the centrality, complexity and subtlety of interrelations between religion and psychology. There is no doubt that ignorance, indifference or antagonism to religion has marked the history of this field. Here we now have a model study that shows what is involved in overcoming this limitation. … very valuable scholarship and persusasive clarity …' British Journal of the History of Science

Spis treści

Acknowledgments; 1. Introduction: from passions and affections to emotions; 2. Passions and affections in Augustine and Aquinas; 3. From movements to mechanisms: passions, sentiments and affections in the Age of Reason; 4. The Scottish creation of 'the emotions': David Hume, Thomas Brown, Thomas Chalmers; 5. The physicalist appropriation of Brownian emotions: Alexander Bain, Herbert Spencer, Charles Darwin; 6. Christian and theistic responses to the physicalist emotions paradigm; 7. What was an emotion in 1884? William James and his critics; 8. Conclusions: how history can help us think about 'the emotions'; Bibliography; Index.