Over the past few years, the history of emotions has proved a lively area of research, and the territory for interesting methodological experimentation. The sixteenth century offers a particularly promising laboratory, since discourses on passions traditionally held within the territories of medicine and philosophy intersected with renewed political and religious concerns. Religion is relevant in many ways to the study of the historical construction, expression and perception of passions. Medieval theologians had developed some of the vocabulary and categories most influential in the West. Although the vocabulary and mental maps were not static, Stoicism and Aquinas still provided the most popular taxonomies and value systems by which early modern writers made sense of the feelings and psychological conditions of individuals and suggested paths to a good life. According to a simplified scheme that was nevertheless popular at the time, Stoics, on one hand, regarded passions as always negative and in need of eradication; they listed four as key ones, resulting from the intersection of two variables: they could refer to good or to evil, and be applied to the present or the future. On the other hand, Peripatetics regarded passions as per se neutral and worthy to be experienced in moderation; the Thomistic series (totalling eleven), the object of systematic analysis within his Prima secundae, in particular, expanded the Stoic criteria of classification by adding to present and future a third dimension – that of passions not yet attained or suffered – and included a third set of variables: whether, in a fundamentally Platonic psychology, passions developed within the concupiscible or else the irascible power of the soul. The paper will sample the circulation of and interaction between these paradigms within a variety of sixteenth-century texts and attempt to relate them to meaningful historical contexts.
Sixteenth-Century Classifications of Passions and Their Historical Contexts
ARCANGELI, Alessandro
2013-01-01
Abstract
Over the past few years, the history of emotions has proved a lively area of research, and the territory for interesting methodological experimentation. The sixteenth century offers a particularly promising laboratory, since discourses on passions traditionally held within the territories of medicine and philosophy intersected with renewed political and religious concerns. Religion is relevant in many ways to the study of the historical construction, expression and perception of passions. Medieval theologians had developed some of the vocabulary and categories most influential in the West. Although the vocabulary and mental maps were not static, Stoicism and Aquinas still provided the most popular taxonomies and value systems by which early modern writers made sense of the feelings and psychological conditions of individuals and suggested paths to a good life. According to a simplified scheme that was nevertheless popular at the time, Stoics, on one hand, regarded passions as always negative and in need of eradication; they listed four as key ones, resulting from the intersection of two variables: they could refer to good or to evil, and be applied to the present or the future. On the other hand, Peripatetics regarded passions as per se neutral and worthy to be experienced in moderation; the Thomistic series (totalling eleven), the object of systematic analysis within his Prima secundae, in particular, expanded the Stoic criteria of classification by adding to present and future a third dimension – that of passions not yet attained or suffered – and included a third set of variables: whether, in a fundamentally Platonic psychology, passions developed within the concupiscible or else the irascible power of the soul. The paper will sample the circulation of and interaction between these paradigms within a variety of sixteenth-century texts and attempt to relate them to meaningful historical contexts.
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