INTRODUCTION

The psychological analysis of the emotions is little more than a hundred years old. Darwin's Expression of Emotion in Man and Animals (1872) and William James's “What Is an Emotion” (1884) are the first studies of the emotions using scientific methodology. Over the past century empirical and theoretical studies of the emotions have accumulated at an accelerating rate. In Chapter IV, I draw on these contributions to outline my understanding of what the emotions are and what they do.

In many ways, these modern studies go beyond anything that is found in writers from earlier centuries. The idea of “depressive realism” (IV.3), to cite just one example, was not anticipated in prescientific writings on the emotions. Yet many of the recent insights were already present, often in aphoristic and condensed form, in earlier writers. In II.2 I argue, for instance, that Aristotle anticipated the key elements of the modern theories and, moreover, had important insights that have not yet been rediscovered. I also believe that with respect to an important subset of the emotions we can learn more from moralists, novelists, and playwrights than from the cumulative findings of scientific psychology. These emotions include regret, relief, hope, disappointment, shame, guilt, pridefulness, pride, hybris, envy, jealousy, malice, pity, indignation, wrath, hatred, contempt, joy, grief, and romantic love. By contrast, the scientific study of the emotions can teach us a great deal about anger, fear, disgust, parental love, surprise, and sexual desire (if we count the last two as emotions).