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Passions, Affections, and Emotions: Methodological Difficulties in Reconstructing Aquinas's Philosophical Psychology
Author(s) -
Dryden John
Publication year - 2016
Publication title -
literature compass
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.158
H-Index - 4
ISSN - 1741-4113
DOI - 10.1111/lic3.12261
Subject(s) - passions , psychology , epistemology , philosophy , psychoanalysis , cognitive psychology
One methodological difficulty with studying emotions in medieval culture is that the very category of emotion is a modern one that did not exist until two centuries ago. Medieval affective psychology involved concepts such as passions, affections, sentiments, and appetites. It is not immediately clear whether any of these medieval categories are commensurable with the modern category of emotion. I refer to this problem as the problem of incommensurability. In this paper, I illustrate this methodological issue by focusing on Thomas Aquinas's “Treatise on the Passions” and offer some suggestions for overcoming this difficulty.