Thinking about the Emotions A Philosophical History Mind Association Occasional Series

Philosophical reflection on the emotions has a long history stretching back to classical Greek thought, even though at times philosophers have marginalized or denigrated them in favour of reason. Fourteen leading philosophers here offer a broad survey of the development of our understanding of the emotions. The thinkers they discuss include Aristotle, Aquinas, Ockham, Descartes, Malebranche, Spinoza, Hobbes, Hume, Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, Kant, Schiller, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, James, Brentano, Stumpf, Scheler, Heidegger, and Sartre. Central issues include the taxonomy of the emotions; the distinction between emotions, passions, feelings and moods; the relation between the emotions and reason; the relationship between the self and the emotions. At a metaphilosophical level, the collection also raises issues about the value of historical study of the discipline, and what light it can shed on contemporary concerns. Thinking about the Emotions is a fascinating and illuminating collective study of how philosophers have grappled with this most intriguing part of our nature as beings who feel as well as think and act.

Alix Cohen is a Chancellor's Fellow at the University of Edinburgh. She is the author of Kant and the Human Sciences: Biology, Anthropology and History (Palgrave, 2009), the editor of Kant's Lectures on Anthropology: A Critical Guide (CUP, 2014), Kant on Emotion and Value (Palgrave, 2014), and Associate Editor of the British Journal for the History of Philosophy and the Oxford Bibliography Online (OUP). Robert Stern is a Professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Sheffield. His publications include Hegel and the Phenomenology of Spirit (2nd edn, Routledge, 2013), Hegelian Metaphysics (OUP, 2009), Understanding Moral Obligation (CUP, 2012) and Kantian Ethics (OUP, 2015). He has formerly been editor of the Hegel Bulletin and the European Journal of Philosophy, and is currently President of the British Philosophical Association.