Emotions in Context

Abstract

In the Rhetoric, Aristotle considers emotions in two different contexts: as motives for wrongdoing in book I, and as influences on judgement in book II. In the long chapter on pleasure in book I, he adopts a Platonic framework, treating pleasure as the fulfilment of a painful lack. In book II, he describes emotions as caused by impressions (φαντασίαι‎) of either good or bad things, suggesting a theory that would classify them as either pleasures or pains. The Stoics developed a theory of emotion along these lines, with the difference of insisting that impressions that lead to emotions are always mistaken.