Emotions

Problems and Promise for Human Flourishing

Barbara J. McClure

• Publisher: Baylor University Press
• Year: 2019
• ISBN:
  9781481311656
• Topic: Theology & Religion
• Subtopic: Christian Theology

Emotions are two-sided. They contain deep truths about what it means to be human, but they also deceive, mislead, and manipulate. They are celebrated for the insights they provide, but they also are denied, repressed, and dismissed. Though many institutions recognize and study the power of emotion, its potential has yet to be fully realized.

Barbara J. McClure seeksto rectify this. In Emotions: Problems and Promise for Human Flourishing, she examines how emotions can be properly engaged for health and healingboth individually and corporately.Starting with the current understandings of emotion, she notes the limitations of current thought. She then draws on significant emotions theories from ancient philosophy, Christian theology, natural sciences, psychology, social theory, and contemporary neuroscience to create a more well-rounded understanding of emotions and their place in Western society. Ultimately, McClure argues that emotions, if understood and engaged correctly, can be a source of guidance for flourishing and a resource for nurturing the common good.

With this wide-ranging multidisciplinary approach, McClure proposes an understanding of emotions that allows for a newmodel of human flourishing: one that does not dismiss emotions but utilizes them properly to engage life's challenges. Emotions should not be censored, silenced, or sidelined—they areimportant tools for discerning and cultivating what is Good and resisting what is not.

1

Emotions as Dangerous, Disruptive, and Symptoms of Dis-ease

Socrates/Plato and Early Greek Perspectives

Introduction

For the first two millennia of Western history, Greek philosophers, Jewish and Christian theologians, and the earliest physicians were among those who devoted most attention to the emotions (or, more accurately, words that are commonly translated as the passions, sentiments, affections, and appetites). This chapter explores the passions through the eyes of Socrates/Plato, Hippocrates/Galen, Aristotle, Epicurus, and the Stoics, each of whom significantly influenced various contemporary understandings of emotion. Their studies of the passions, their analyses, and their conclusions about the passions’ proper place in people’s lives advanced many of the core questions with which subsequent scholarship about the origins, value, purposes, and meanings of emotions has had to contend.1 For example, these early thinkers debated the relationship between bodily appetites and reason, the origins of suffering and one’s proper relationship to it, what it means to be human (including whether and how humans are different from animals), the relationships between personal, affective experience and one’s social context, how truth is apprehended and understood, the dynamics and strength of one’s will in relation to “disruptive” passions and behaviors, and the nature of the good life and the best means of achieving it.2

Early scholars differed in their answers to these questions, and the language they use to describe what they are studying often gives away their opinion about them.3 For example, Plato and his followers used the term passions to describe all affective experience and either valued them all or valued none. Other philosophers, such as hedonistic philosopher Epicurus, distinguished among certain passions, examining whether they were directed at desires that are “worthy” or not. Still others, such as Christian theologian Augustine, used terms such as appetites for some (by which he usually meant bodily urges that take one away from what is good or salvific) and affections for others (by which he meant the movements of the soul directed to what is good or godly). The choice of terms indicates fairly clearly a particular scholar’s opinion of certain passions’ worth. While some early scholars (a minority, to be sure) found some passions to be useful guides to health and growth, others determined that all passions are anathema to the good life, harmful, and a general nuisance. The earliest Greco-Roman philosophers, including Plato, for example, assumed that the passions (pathai) are irrational, disruptive, and untrustworthy and as such should be carefully monitored and disciplined by reason.4 They understood particular passions to be especially problematic, including anger, which they took to be a “brief bout of madness.”5 For these thinkers, the senses were untrustworthy, and reason alone was dependable. For example, Anaxagoras (500–428 BCE) argued that “through the weakness of the senses we cannot judge the truth,”6 Democritus (460–370 BCE) asserted that the soul (which he argued includes the mind) must be without passions,7 and Pericles (495–429 BCE) sought to prove that reason is invincible.8 This line of thinking laid the groundwork on which a wide variety of thinkers would later wrestle, including philosophers such as Socrates/Plato, Aristotle, Friedrich Nietzsche, and Martha Nussbaum; scientists such as Charles Darwin, Paul MacLean, Joseph LeDoux, and James Russell; psychologists such as Sigmund Freud, William James, Magda Arnold, Paul Ekman, and Sandor Rado; social theorists and cultural anthropologists including Max Weber, Catherine Lutz, Arlie Hochschild, Sara Ahmed, and Theodore Kemper; and Jewish and Christian theologians from Philo, Augustine, and Origen to Soren Kierkegaard, Paul Tillich, Andrew Lester, and John Caputo—most of whose thinking about emotions is treated at least briefly in this book. Each of these scholars’ conclusions about the passions/emotions and their role in the good life differs from those of others. And each has contributed to both contemporary wisdom and current confusion about the value and meaning of emotions in human experience.

Some early philosophers in particular—Socrates/Plato, Hippocrates/Galen, Aristotle, Epicurus, and the Stoics—devoted their lives to understanding the value and meaning of passions, and they left a long record that laid the groundwork for the variety of contemporary views held today—even in popular culture—whether these early thinkers’ influence is recognized or not. Each group or name identifies a distinct stream of early thought about the passions. Socrates/Plato believed the passions were disruptive, harmful, and even potentially dangerous and thus must be controlled. Hippocrates/Galen found them symptoms of physical illness and mental dis-ease and thus potentially useful guides to diagnose root causes of sickness. Aristotle believed passions can be used to guide and motivate growth and maturation and thus, he also argued, potentially be useful. Epicurus reasoned that the passions are natural and at times positive if guided appropriately, but the Stoics understood the passions as the root of suffering and thus something that should be eliminated if possible. Because the work of these philosophers laid the foundation for how the passions/emotions have been understood since, the following sections briefly explore each of these perspectives.

The Passions Are Dangerous and Must Be Controlled: Socrates/Plato

Happiness: The Aim or Goal of Human Life

In their early examinations of the relationship between reason and the passions, the philosophers Socrates (470–399 BCE) and Plato (429–347 BCE)9 argued that knowledge of oneself and the world is accessible only when one uses reason to analyze personal experience, explicitly privileging people’s cognitive abilities rather than their perceptual senses as the source of real knowledge and wisdom. In this, Socrates and Plato were students of Pericles, who had championed the unique ability of reason to work out the most difficult problems of justice, law, and ethics. As Socrates/Plato argued, “Knowledge does not consist in impressions or senses, but in reasoning about them.”10 Only reasoned reflection (which is informed by divine, pure and transcendent reason: the only source of truth—the Supreme or the Good) matters.11

To prove that the senses were not important in the pursuit of truth and wisdom, Socrates/Plato noted that animals have senses, as do infants, but neither knows truth, and neither can be wise. If knowledge and wisdom were dependent on the senses, Socrates/Plato argued, then when the object of sight or smell or hearing disappeared, wisdom would, too. Instead, Plato asserted, the thinking soul is the only capacity that can discern truth and wisdom, derived from the ability to reason about things.

One of Socrates’/Plato’s chief concerns was the role of reason in relationship to the passions in cultivating the good life.12 In Plato’s dialogue The Republic, the character Socrates defends the fact that he encourages others to engage in philosophical reflection by saying that the unexamined life is not worth living.13 In this dialogue Socrates argues that reflecting on what one values in life and why they value it (that is, “doing philosophy”14) is critical to a life well lived. However, Socrates argued, that is not enough. Individuals must become a master of themselves, using reason to reign in their passions, and doing what each can do to help promote the stability of their community; furthermore, each must want to do what is right. In fact, in response to Glaucon,15 Socrates argued that living a just and ethical life (that is, living a good life) is not only about behavior, but also about the state of a person’s soul, and the condition of one’s soul is reflected in one’s actions. Individuals and communities are responsible for guiding people to the right state of their souls.16 Socrates/Plato, then, were concerned both with individual people and life in community—the state or polis—and with the passions’ role in the workings of both.

Plato was convinced that all men (sic) seek happiness (that is, they love the good and want to possess it, and what they will gain by seeking the good is happiness), that happiness is desired for its own sake, not for the sake of anything else, and that happiness requires a life of virtue. For Plato, the happy man is the just man.17 Happiness results from the exercise of the highest part of the soul—that is, reason—and men should aim at virtue or the good, not pleasure. Socrates/Plato thus argued that the good life (eudaimonia, happiness, well-being)18 is not about a particular feeling or experience. Rather, the good life is a just and ethical one. For them, justice requires citizens to mind their own business (that is, to be self-sufficient—not dependent on external sources to figure out what is good),19 do the best they can to discern what is right, and do what is good for one and all, according to their abilities.20

The Soul’s Role in Happiness

As Socrates’ student, Plato sought to identify and describe the soul—what he understood to be the center of being and experience—so that he could prescribe remedies for the “diseases of the passions.” Plato believed the soul has three parts: the reasoning, spirited, and appetitive parts, each of which has its own function.21 The appetitive soul, Plato asserted, is both concerned with getting immediate sensual pleasure—basic biological urges and drives, bodily pleasures, and wealth—and interested in avoiding suffering. The appetites are often misguided, Plato wrote, and he imagined them physically located away from the head, “where they can do as little harm as possible.”22

The intermediate, noble, and spirited part of the soul is where Plato believed the passions are. This part of the soul is responsible for self-assurance and self-affirmation as well as aggressive self-assessment. This part of the soul is trainable and can be led by the bodily appetites or be guided by the head (reason). The spirited, passionate part of the soul, then, is located in the chest, separated from the head by the neck (the isthmus) but close enough to be used by the rational mind when needed. The spirited part of the soul serves as an intermediary between the rational and the physical, appetitive parts. In Plato’s model, then, any of the three parts of the soul can initiate action, and they often struggle against each other.23

Ideally, in Plato’s thinking, the reasoning part of the soul must guide the spirited part, and both must control the appetitive part of the soul. In a well-known metaphor depicting the relationship of reason to the passions, Plato compares the soul to a chariot guided by a charioteer and led by two horses: one horse represents the appetites or desires in the lowest, basest part of the soul. This appetitive soul is impulsive and stubborn and must be controlled. The other horse represents the spirited part of a person’s soul. The spirited part of the soul is noble and can be used by the rational mind, represented by the charioteer, to guide the chariot where it ought to go. The spirited soul can be understood as the life force of the person, directable in a number of ways—some harmful, some good, depending on whether the appetites or reason are guiding the spirit. In Plato’s metaphor, if one does not use reason to control one’s desires, the person is as misdirected as a chariot run off course by an impulsive, uncontrolled horse.

Reason’s Role in the Good Life

For Plato, behaving justly (that is, being controlled by reason and living ethically) is fundamental to the good life. Behaving ethically means both doing one’s part to contribute to a stable society and community, which necessitates controlling oneself and one’s desires. Plato’s understanding of the good life restricts individual freedom for the good of the whole. Too much individual freedom, he indicates, would result in a wide-spread lawlessness that is not good for anyone.

In Plato’s understanding, what is true, right, and good (that is, ethical and just) requires knowledge of permanent and universal principles of the world. This truth is not affected by changing appearances or perceptions. The good life, then, is the reasoned life about otherworldly things.24 Plato asserted that knowledge of the telos or aim of life—the good life—exists inside each man (sic) in the form of reason.25 Human reason can discover the eternal truths that are hidden within the soul: that is, they can access the eternal truths that are in individuals before birth and which survive after an individual’s death.26 What is right and good, then, must be discovered and unearthed by reasoned reflection rather than acquired or learned.27 In other words, “the knower has the truth. He doesn’t learn it; he merely recalls it with the aid of instruction.”28 In Plato’s view, reason knows and loves what is good, and reason ideally should govern the entire person, guiding his thoughts and his actions.

Because the soul’s reasoning is pure in some sense, Plato assumed that the passions are, fundamentally, disruptions of r...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• 1. Emotions as Dangerous, Disruptive, and Symptoms of Dis-ease
• 2. Emotions as Sinful, Signs of the Fall, and Impediments to Salvation
• 3. Emotions as Functional for Physiological Survival
• 4. Emotions as Pathological, Signs of Dysfunction, and Indicators of Need
• 5. Emotions as Relational and Sociocultural Artifacts
• 6. Emotions as Psychological Constructions in Context
• 7. Emotions as Crucial
• Conclusion
• Notes
• Works Cited
• Index