[MUSIC] Hi. Welcome again. In this set of sessions, we'll try to explain the several and diverse philosophies on emotions. In this initial session, we will try to, to explain the cla, classic debates among Western thinkers. So come on, I, even before to talk about different between Western and Eastern views on philosophical aspects of emotions, we will need to explain one basic thing. The attitude towards cognition and emotions that are be, have being imple, implemented in most Eastern philosophies or Western philosophies. And even taking into account that there are various specific out or that I have not, inside this view, in both sides, we can, we can justify and explain that. For Eastern philosophers, cognition is a bad or, or a not possible thing to be accomplished. And emotions are also a bad thing for the human being. On the contrary, for, for Western philosophers, cognition is, is a, is a good process. Well we try to achieve knowledge but on the other side, emotions are bad things that are noisy for our cognitive processes. So, in a nutshell, we can state that for Eastern philosophies cognitive and emotional processes are bad, and for western philosophies, cognitive processes are good, but emotions are bad. So, we, now we look at the western, Western philosophy, and we can start with the. Most important thinker of, of the ancient times, that it was Aristotle. He talk about emotions, he use a specific work, pathos, to talk about emotions as passive states. He make several leads on, on, on, on the number of, of emotions that can be ranged between 11 and, and 14 emotion. He considered emotions like feelings that were accompanied by pleasure or pain and that at the same time this, those feelings were morally significant. But at the end and above all emotions where disruptive for reasons of processes are for, for good action processes. So it's not so strange that he had so negative attitude toward emotions because he had really wrong idea about anything. He was, brilliant. Stupid, but, brilliant. It's very difficult to be brilliant and explaining everything with wrong, reasons. So, just take into account that, that Aristotle talk about the the place. Of the, of the cognitive processes was, was the hair. And, and the brain, the main function was to cool all the hot, processes that happen inside the body. At the same time, he tried to understand emotions from, from a practical perspective. And he say that drama and not comedies, just drama was able to put somebody into other peoples, that he was talking about empathy and the drama was, channel, to, to, qualify, and to force, the emergence of good emotions like fear or compassion. At the end, he, he was talking about how emotions could help us to follow the, the good life. So emotions were useful for practical purposes and with the control of emotions, we could be able to achieve a catharsis, a new spiritual level, in which emotions where not so disruptive. Westerly, stoicism showed a really intolerant view of pathe because they considered them as passive and out of control activities that, that. Really creative narrative situations in which we are, we're not able to achieve our more highest goals. Just take into account the translation of Cicero, of pathos from Greek to [FOREIGN] as perturbation. Anyhow, Seneca also was talking about effectors considering that the the painful view of, of the effect in which emotions were always negative things that affected human beings. Later the Epicureanism or St. Augustine or, or, or St. Aquinas, St. Thomas of St. Aquinas all of them talk of negative ways of understanding emotions. Because all these emotions were ways by which the human being was lost. Emotions were considered like the door to the sin. The door to the, to the painful. That door to the misunderstanding of the, the real meanings of the world. So they considered that, that, the passions are emotional attitudes were really negative. It, was the same when we arrived to the Renaissance in which there was not a systematic view on, on the nature of, of emotion or, or about the, the theory of emotions. Several authors talk about, about, the roll of emotions into, into cognitive systems but similar arguments of previous authors, considering emotions as disruptive, morally, or cognitively. Emerge in these, in these emo, in this, in this, area. At the end of, of, of this process, and starting to the, to the modern times, new authors tried to make taxonomies of, of the several emotion or several existing emotions for example, Descartes talk about six basic emotions, Hobbes about 30 or, or 25 emotions, and Spinoza 40. And several authors try to understand which was the role of emotions. And when we arrive to the 18th Century, we see that, that there is an identification between emotion and sense perception in which a start that, the discovery of emotions like the feeling that, that, like that experience of, of the being. It's normal, the romanticism is very close, and a new wave of interest towards how people is feeling and the feeling of the world was very important. At the same time, they, they were al, also claiming about the use of emotions for a functional perspective, about how to understand the possibility of, of control these emotions, in order to achieve a higher spiritual status. For example, in Malebranche. And finally, for example, in this moment, we can see that in, in in the medical literature. Early I, Epigenetic ideas, for example. The, the, the notion of how pregnant woman with bad feelings could or bad imagination about the future or about, about possible mental state could really affect the, the, the design of the fetus when it was inside their body. So from a basic perspective, the, the vision of emotions, in early, and, and, and, medieval, even, modern philosophy is bad view, about emotions. Because emotions are more boldly stated and the body is bad. Because this is a Christian pairing in which, the body is not good. And the, and the divine soul is the real good point of our beings. At the same time, emotions are negative from a cognitive perspective and from moral perspective. And thus emotions must be really minimized or completely controlled. So, thank you so much. I hope to see you in the next session. Bye.
