## 1. Ancient Sources



The philosophical analysis of emotions was introduced by Plato and
developed further by Aristotle. In the fourth Book of his
*Republic*, Plato famously divided the soul into three parts:
the rational part (*logistikon*), the spirited part
(*thumoeides*), and the appetitive part
(*epithumetikon*). This terminology was also used by
Aristotle and later ancient philosophers, even though its
philosophical background assumptions varied. The Latin terms for the
corresponding parts were *intellectus*, *irascibilis*
and *concupiscibilis*. Plato's view of emotions was
basically negative, with the exception of love in the
*Phaedrus* and the educational capacity of the spirited part in
the *Republic* and the *Laws*. He regarded the emotions
as irrational reactions of the lower psychosomatic levels of the soul,
of which the appetitive part sought sensual pleasure and avoided
suffering and the spirited part was the seat of self-affirmation and
aggression. The immaterial reasoning part was the subject of knowledge
and rational will. It was meant to govern the emotional parts by
reducing the activity of the appetitive part as much as possible and
controlling spontaneous suggestions of the spirited part and
habituating it to supporting good conduct. Plato supplied the
emotional parts with a measure of non-intellectual cognitive
evaluation with respect to perceptual representations and took them to
be accompanied by pleasant or unpleasant feelings and related
action-initiating impulses. Plato's main reason for this
tripartition was the phenomenon of acrasy: while the undisturbed
knowledge of right conduct makes people behave accordingly,
uncontrolled lower impulses may draw them in other directions, most
typically toward immediate pleasures or aggression. 



The various aspects Plato associated with the dynamic movements of the
lower soul were more systematically discussed in Aristotle's
theory of emotions as part of the human condition. Aristotle developed
a detailed model for analyzing the psychological structure of
occurrent emotions, which included four basic aspects, most
extensively discussed in the section on emotions in the second book of
the *Rhetoric*. First, the *cognitive* element is an
unpremeditated evaluation (belief or phantasy) that something positive
or negative happens or may happen to the subject or to someone else in
a way which concerns the subject. Second, the *affective*
element is a subjectively felt pleasant or unpleasant feeling about
the content of the evaluation. Third, the *dynami*c element is
a behavioral impulse towards action which typically accompanies
emotional evaluation. Fourth, there are typical *physiological*
reactions such as the changes in the heartbeat. (For emotions in Plato
and Aristotle, see Cooper 1999; Fortenbaugh 2003; Lorenz 2006; Price
2010; Dow 2015.)



The compositional approach has been very influential in Western
thought. As for the first element, practically all ancient and
medieval theories were cognitive, associating some kind of evaluative
representation with an emotion as its principal constituent. While the
Stoics, following their reason-centered rationalist psychology, argued
that it is philosophically sufficient to treat emotions simply as
mistaken value-judgments, it was more common in ancient and medieval
times to follow the view of Plato and Aristotle, who distinguished
between the non-emotional intellectual power and the lower emotional
parts of the soul, which were eliminated by the Stoics. This was the
prevailing medieval view until the Franciscan conception of the
passions of the intellectual faculty of the will (Knuuttila 2004).



As distinct from Plato's control model, Aristotle proposed that
education may change the emotional dispositions so that their
affective evaluations and inclinations support the quest for the good
life instead of disrupting it. This was the basis of his theory of the
virtues, which included the good emotional habits of the sensory soul
and the good habits of the practical reason. As part of his
philosophical psychology, Aristotle developed a considered theory of
how the rational part may co-operate with the powers of the sensory
part (Irwin 2017). 



Plato and Aristotle presented some lists of emotions, the most
extensive being in Aristotle's *Rhetoric* II.1-11
(cf. Plato, *Timaeus* 69d; *Laws* I.644c-d; Aristotle,
*Nicomachean ethics* II.5, 1005b21-23), but they did not
develop any systematic taxonomy of emotions except considering some as
the affects of the appetitive part and some of the irascible part.
Because of the feeling aspect always being associated with an
emotional representation, Aristotle sometimes distinguished emotions
on the basis of whether the emotional evaluation was pleasant or
unpleasant; see also Aspasius' commentary on the *Nicomachean
Ethics* (41.28-43.32). The first elaborated taxonomy was put
forward by the Stoics, who divided emotions into four basic types,
depending on whether the object was regarded as a present or future
good or a present or future evil:




|  |  | Time |
| --- | --- | --- |
|  |  | *Present* | *Future* |
| Value | *Good* | Pleasure | Desire |
| *Evil* | Distress | Fear  |



The Stoics produced longer lists of particular emotions included in
these four types. (See Pseudo-Andronicus of Rhodes, *Peri
Pathon*, ed. Glibert-Thirry, I.1-5; Diogenes Laertius
VII.110-14; Stobaeus II.90.7-92.17.) The fourfold
classification was quoted in many well-known works, such as
Augustine's *The City of God* (XIV.5-9) and
Boethius' *Consolation of Philosophy* (I.7, 25-28),
and it was generally known in medieval times, although the Stoic
explanation of emotions as such did not garner followers. 



A well-known part of Stoic philosophy is the philosophical therapy of
emotions (*therapeia*) described in works by Cicero, Seneca and
Epictetus. Stoic therapy aimed at *apatheia*, the extirpation
of emotions, as a consequence of learning to see things in accordance
with the Stoic conception of rational reality without self-centered
commitments. Emotions were typically regarded as false judgments about
the value of things and the behavioral reactions to them. The Stoics
often described the types of emotion by referring to their typical
psychosomatic reactions, but the positive beliefs about the propriety
of these expressive movements and corresponding actions were regarded
as irrational. The elements of the Stoic therapy were known in later
Latin philosophy through Cicero's *Tusculan
disputations*, Seneca's *On anger* and some Christian
sources. Other Hellenistic philosophers such as Plutarch generally
followed the psychology of Plato and Aristotle, arguing for the
moderation of the emotions (*metriopatheia*). The Stoic
*apatheia* was regarded as impossible because of the emotional
part of the soul and as inhumane insensitivity with respect to other
people. Plotinus and his Neoplatonic followers argued for
*apatheia*, though this did not involve the disappearance of
the emotional part--earthly emotions became useless in higher
Neoplatonic spheres (see Nussbaum 1994; Sorabji 2000). 



The Alexandrian theologians Clemens and Origen combined Stoic and
Platonist ideas, arguing that freedom from emotion was part of
Christian perfectibility and the precondition for divinization through
participation in divine love (*agape*). This mystical
union was described in highly emotional language, but supernaturally
caused spiritual feelings as experiences of the apathetic soul were
not called simply emotions. John Cassian made this combination of
divine love with freedom from mundane emotions known in Western
monasticism. It was employed in influential treatises by Gregory the
Great and Bernard of Clairvaux. While this approach was also present
in the Cappadocian fathers and Augustine, they stressed the importance
of Platonic control and moderation in everyday life to their
non-monastic audience. 



The monastic literature on mystical ascent developed introspective
analysis of subjective feeling, which Bernard of Clairvaux called the
sense of being affected by divine action (*sentit intra se
actitari*, *Opera* II, 10, 28-29; Kopf 1980:
136-174). Many later theologians such as Albert the Great and
Thomas Aquinas wrote commentaries on the Pseudo-Dionysius's
works (late fifth century), which taught on mystical experience from
the point of view of Christian Neoplatonism. (For ancient Christian
discussions, see Hadot 1995; Knuuttila 2004; for Augustine, see also
Byers 2013; Gao 2018; for Gregory the Great, see Straw 1988; Humphries
2013; for medieval commentaries of Pseudo-Dionysius, see Coakley and
Stang (eds., 2009); Blankenhorn 2015.



Monastic psychology also made use of the originally Stoic doctrine of
first movements, which Origen, followed by Augustine and many others,
applied to the Christian conception of sin. The Stoic idea, described
by Seneca in *On Anger* (2.1-4), was that even apathetic
people might react quasi-emotionally on exceptional occasions, but
this was not really an emotion because it did not involve judgmental
assent. Augustine taught that sinful thoughts which easily and
frequently came to mind because of original sin became sins through a
subsequent assent (*Expositio quarundam propositionum ex Epistola
ad Romanos*, 2066).



According to Augustine's influential doctrine of sin, the
original fall was followed by shame, which Adam and Eve felt when they
found themselves being moved by the movements of the lower soul and
the body, the functions of which they as rational beings should
control. Original disobedience of the higher part of the soul founded
the functional mode of the inherited original sin in the sense of
penal disobedience of the lower part, the relative autonomy of which
continuously reminds humans of their shameful condition of not being
what they should be and demands continuous control (Augustine, *De
civitate Dei*, XIV.23). Augustine held that spontaneous emotional
agitations are emotions even though they do not involve an assent to
the emotional evaluation or its behavioral suggestion. In his view,
the Stoics did not refer to these representations as emotions because
of their sinful pride, which prevented them from realizing the
weakness of the fallen soul in themselves (*De civitate Dei*
IX.4). Augustine thought that the occurrence of evil thoughts and
desires is not directly under voluntary control. The temptations are
therefore not accountable as sins (*culpa*) before one can in
principle expel them from the soul. If this is not immediately done,
they can be regarded as being freely consented to (as all sins are)
(*De sermone Domini in monte*, 12.34-35).
Augustine's doctrine of sin was later developed into a detailed
theory of the modes of assent as the degrees of venial and mortal sin.
As distinct from Augustine, sinfully oriented first movements were
increasingly regarded as venial sins even before a free choice. This
was also the view of Aquinas. See Knuuttila 2004: 178-192.



Apart from the first sinful movements, love and compassion were other
central emotions in medieval theology. *Misericordia* was a
Latin translation of the term *eleos* used in Greek philosophy
and literature. In the Vulgate translation of the Bible, the term
*misericordia* was used of divine mercy as well as of a human
emotion of sorrow for the misery of another. *Compassio* was
not a Classical Latin word, but it came to be employed by some
Christian authors and then increasingly used. The reason for this new
terminology was apparently the need for an unambiguous word that would
apply to the human part of the meaning of *misericordia* which
continued to be used as a term with divine and human references. (See
Konstan 2001: 106; Konstan 2006: 201-216.) It was usually
assumed that God has no emotional sorrow or pity and no other emotion
for that matter. Augustine wrote that "pity
(*misericordia*) is a kind of compassion (*compassio*)
in our hearts for the misery of others which compels us to help them
if we can" (*De civitate Dei* IX.5). Gregory the
Great's understanding of compassion was similar to that of
Augustine, and he treated it as a Christian sentiment which is
included in the virtue of charity love. Because of the influence of
Gregory's works, compassion became a central notion in medieval
theology (Straw 2013; Coolman 2008). Quoting Augustine's
definition, Aquinas explains that compassion is an emotion which as
such is ethically neutral. When it is connected with charity, it
becomes an affective part of *misericordia* (mercy), a virtuous
concern for the miseries of others (*Summa theologiae*
II.2.30). Aquinas writes that a person should be compassionate in
affect and helpful in effect (*Summa theologiae* II-2.45.6, ad
3). (See also Miner 2016.)


## 2. Early Medieval Discussions



While the works of Augustine, Cassian, and Gregory the Great were
among the main sources of the discussion of emotions in early medieval
literature, new non-religious impulses were supplied by the Latin
translations of some philosophical and medical works. One of these was
the translation of the Arabic medical encyclopedia of 'Ali
ibn al-'Abbas al-Magusi (in Latin Haly
Abbas), which contained various remarks on the emotions based on
Galen's medical philosophy. The first partial translation by
Constantine the African (c. 1080) was called the *Pantegni* and
the complete translation by Stephen of Antioch (1127) the *Regalis
dispositio*. Elements of ancient medical and philosophical
theories of the emotions were also included in Nemesius of
Emesa's *De natura hominis* (17-21) from the late
fourth century and John Damascene's *De fide orthodoxa*
from the eighth century, the latter being much influenced by
Nemesius's work. These treatises were translated into Latin in
the eleventh and twelfth centuries. An important early medieval
psychological source-book was the sixth book of Avicenna's
*Shifa'*, translated into Latin in the middle of the
twelfth century by Gundisalvi and Avendauth. This translation was
called *Liber de Anima* or *Sextus de naturalibus*.
Avicenna's work influenced the terminology of early commentaries
on Aristotle's *De anima*, which became the principal
textbook of psychology in the middle of the thirteenth century;
Aristotle's work was translated *c.* 1150 by James of
Venice and 1267 by William of Moerbeke. 



Drawing from Aristotelian and Neoplatonic psychology, Avicenna
distinguishes between the functions of the soul by attaching them to
special powers or faculties. The most relevant in this connection are
sensory moving powers and internal senses: common sense, imagery
(retention of sensations), estimation, memory, and imagination
(separation and combination of sensory forms). Inner senses are
non-perceptual apprehensive powers of the sensory soul (*De
anima* IV.1, 1-11; IV.3, 37-40). The moving power of
the sensory soul is divided into a commanding power and an executive
power, the former of which is the center of emotions. The executive
moving power operates through the nervous system and the muscles. It
is moved by the commanding moving power, the acts of which are
triggered by an occurrent evaluation of estimative power and
accompanied by bodily affections as well as behavioral changes,
provided that the executive moving power is also actualized. If the
commanding act is strong enough, the executive power is necessarily
actualized in animals, but not so in humans because they can prevent
the impulse of the executive moving power by their will. The will is
the moving power of the immaterial intellectual soul. Together with
practical intellect, it should control the emotions (*De anima*
I.5, 94; IV.4, 54-56, 59).



The sensory commanding faculty is divided into concupiscible and
irascible parts. The reactions of the concupiscible power are desires
for things taken to be pleasurable, and the reactions of the irascible
power are desires to defeat adversaries and repel harmful things
(*De anima* I.5, 83; IV.4, 56-57). The objects of
emotions are recognized as emotionally relevant by the estimative
power. By this power, the sheep judges that the wolf is to be avoided,
"even though the exterior sense has not previously perceived
it". Avicenna calls the representations of the estimative power
"intentions". The recognition of the intentions is often
instinctive in animals, but it is mostly conscious and
pre-intellectually conceptual in humans (*De anima* I.5, 86,
89; IV.1, 7; IV.3. 37-39; see also Black 2000; Hasse 2000:
130-141: Perler 2012). As an occurrent emotion involves acts of
separate faculties, there must be some kind of governing awareness
that combines these acts (*De anima* V.7, 158-159;
*Kitab al-najat* 2.6.15, trans. Rahman, 64-68);
cf. Toivanen and Yrjonsuuri 2014: 441-442).



Avicenna's theory includes all elements of Aristotelian
compositional theory, but he uses the behavioral suggestion as the
central factor. For this reason, he does not include pleasure or joy
among the concupiscible or irascible emotions, regarding them as
affective apprehensive acts. Somewhat strangely, he adds pain or
distress to the irascible motive acts such as fear and anger,
apparently thinking that they are moving acts and not merely
apprehensive (*De anima* IV.4, 57-59).



While there are emotions common to humans and animals, the human
estimative faculty also operates as a sensory reason, which qualifies its
recognizing emotional intentions. Hope and fear with respect to not
yet actualized future things, shame at wrong action, and wonder at
unusual things presuppose conceptualization that animals lack. It is
also human to express wonder by laughing and anxiety by weeping
(*De anima* V.1, 69-76). Avicenna discusses emotions also
in his *Canon of Medicine*, translated into Latin by Gerard of
Cremona in the twelfth century. His medical approach to the cardiac
and spiritual affects shows similarities to that of the
*Pantegni*. See Knuuttila 2004.



Twelfth-century Latin discussions about accountability were influenced
by Augustine's view that sins are acts of free consent. This
seems to mean that spontaneous emotional reactions are not immediately
guilty-making because they are not freely chosen (*Expositio
quarundam propositionum ex Epistola ad Romanos*, 2066).
Augustine's position led to some controversies. Those who argued
for sinless first movements, such as Anselm of Canterbury, Peter of
Abelard, William of Champeaux, or Aelred of Rievaulx, held that
something is a sin only if it is a free choice or consent. The other
interpretation held by Anselm of Laon, Peter Lombard, and others was
that the first movements towards forbidden things are immediately
venial sins even when they are not free. They could be regarded as
indirectly voluntary because of insufficient precaution (Knuuttila
2004, Wu 2010).



Central terms in the influential Augustinian model of sins were
suggestion, temptation, first movement, pleasure, and consent.
Augustine thought that a first movement was accompanied by reflexive
awareness as soon as one could voluntarily stop it. Without this
awareness, the soul could not react to first movements with a
conscious withdrawal. The Augustinian model of inner control was
relatively simple and easily understood, which made it popular in
medieval and early modern theology of sin. The traditional monastic
exercise of repelling evil thoughts by redirecting attention was also
repeated in philosophical treatises by Descartes and Leibniz. In fact,
this seems to be the only device for making oneself free from
occurring temptations used in Western philosophical and theological
literature. (See Descartes, *Les passions de
l'ame*, 487-488; Leibniz, *Nouveaux Essais
sur l'entendement humain*, 187-189, 195-197.)




In his *Ethics* (1130s), Peter Abelard contrasted consent and
will, suggesting that if one consents to a goal, one also consents to
the necessary means, whereas one can will the goal without willing the
necessary means to it. Abelard's terminological point concerning
the use of "will" as extended to rational and lower parts
of the soul did not find many supporters. Most thinkers did not agree
that whatever is called "willed" is emotionally liked, but
took the "will" to behave like Abelard's
"consent". Separating will and emotions, they argued that
reluctantly chosen acts can be said to be willed (Knuuttila 2004).



Aelred of Rievaulx (1110-1167) and Hugh of St Victor
(1096-1141) were two monastic authors who discussed
Augustine's psychology by attending to the spontaneous affect as
a subjectively felt present movement of the soul. In his book *The
Mirror of Charity*, Aelred extensively dealt with affect
(*affectus*) as an element of love (*amor*). His
examples of affects are mainly attachments to other persons. Following
Augustine's remarks on first movements, Aelred explains that
affects are spontaneous and non-voluntary sweet attractions that
should be controlled by the rational power of will (*Mirror*
3.16.39). Affects can be characterized as early stages of desiderative
emotions. The first movements are not sins, but the continuation of
the love initiated by affect is voluntarily controllable and
accountable as in Augustine.



Using the Augustinian concept of free consent as the kernel of his
view of a chosen love attitude, Aelred argues that this love may be
based on affect, reason, or both. Love arises from affect when the
higher part of the soul gives consent to affect, and it arises from
reason when the will joins itself to a representation of reason; in
the third form of love, love, reason, and will are fused into one.
"The first is pleasant but dangerous; the second is harsh but
fruitful; the third having the advantages of the other is
perfect" (*Mirror* 3.20, 48). He remarks that in loving
what we ought to love, we love more intensely with the sweetness of
affect than without it.



Hugh of St Victor regarded love as the basic emotion and defined it as
the pleasure of the heart that is directed to something because of
something (*On the Substance of Love* 2.48-49). This
emotion is an actual orientation of the soul to an object with a
subjectively felt pleasure. In the same place, Hugh dealt with love as
the first stage of the sequence of love, desire, and joy
(49-51). He thinks that emotions are generated in the heart as
various forms of the sensory moving affect, not the controlling
intellectual will (*De sacramentis* 273C). The incipient
pleasant feeling of love about a reachable end, if not expelled,
increases in power, and leads to new emotional stages separated from
each other by typical behavioral changes. It is desire when moving the
subject towards an end and joy when reaching the end (*On the
Substance of Love* 2.50-51). The beginnings of emotions are
not acts of free choice as their continuances are, but Hugh differed
from Aelred in regarding involuntary sexual movements as venial sins
(*De sacramentis* 315C-316A, 391B). 



In their affective psychology, Aelred and Hugh regarded affect as
pleasantly (or unpleasantly) felt awareness of a movement of the lower
soul with a behavioral impulse. While this account could be understood
as an external interpretation of any animal action, it was associated
with an Augustinian doctrine of spontaneous movements that should be
controlled and guided by free will as soon as possible. This adds the
introspective knowledge of first movements to the analysis, making
affects a matter of subjective awareness of inner changes, as in
Bernard of Clairvaux.


## 3. New Taxonomical Ideas



Early medieval medical theory of the emotions concentrated on the
Galenic ideas of the humors and the system of the spirits, the
vitalizing spirits in the heart and the psychic spirits in the nerves
and the brain. In the *Pantegni* (Theor. VI.110-114), the
physical aspects of the emotions were dealt with as slow or quick
movements of the vital spirits towards the heart or away from it. (See
also the translation by Stephen of Antioch, V.38, p. 69.) This led to
a popular medical classification of emotions:




|  |  | Direction |
| --- | --- | --- |
|  |  | *Centrifugal* | *Centripedal* |
| Intensity | *Slow* | Joy | Distress |
| *Quick* | Anger | Fear |



John of la Rochelle, a Franciscan theologian, referred to this scheme
as a commonly known model in his *Summa de anima* (1235 [1995:
262]). It was presented as a table with brackets in the
sixteenth-century handbook of Jacob Wecker, *Medicinae utriusque
syntaxes* [1576, I.3, p. 181]. For a fourteenth-century
formulation, see Maino de Maineri, *Regimen sanitatis* 3.8,
Paris 1506, f. 38v. (Cf. Gil-Sotres 1994.) 



Avicenna's account of emotions was addressed in Dominicus
Gundisalvi's *De anima*, which consisted to a great
extent of texts from the Latin translation of Avicenna's *De
anima* by Gundisalvi and Avendauth. Almost half of
Gundisalvi's quotations from Avicenna's account of the
sensitive motive acts concern the relationship between the
concupiscible and irascible powers and the changes in the heart and
the spirits. These were found interesting by the early
thirteenth-century Latin authors John Blund and David of Dinant. They
took the medical account of the physical aspect of emotions as
causally primary, somewhat similarly to the James-Lange theory of
emotions, but this was not an influential view (John Blund,
*Tractatus de anima*, 25.380; David of Dinant, *Fragmenta
Quaternulorum*, 36-39, 67-68).



Twelfth-century taxonomical discussions pertained to the division
between concupiscible and irascible emotions, which proved to be
cumbersome to many authors. A more simple but influential division is
found in the treatise on the nature of love by Hugh of St. Victor, in
which he defined the ascending sequence of love, desire, and joy (see
above). A similar tripartite classification was used in
thirteenth-century classifications of concupiscible passions. In his
*The Twelfth Patriarchs*, Richard of St. Victor (d. 1173)
operates with a list, not found in other authors, of seven emotions: hope, fear, joy, distress, love, hatred, and shame (see
Palmen 2014). 



William of Conches (d. c. 1154) argued that there were two primary
types of emotions, love and hate, which were divided according to
whether an object is liked (*placet*) or disliked
(*displicet*). Other emotions derived from these: love included
joy and desire, and hate included distress, fear, and anger
(*Glosae super Platonem* 69, 122). This terminology was later
employed in Radulfus Ardens's *Speculum universale* (c.
1200), an extensive work on virtues and vices, and then in the basic
division of concupiscible emotions in John of la Rochelle's
influential *Summa de anima* (1235). Isaac of Stella (d. 1177),
a Cistercian theologian, presented an Augustinian classification which
combined the Stoic fourfold table with Platonist concepts as
follows




|  |  | **Time** |
| --- | --- | --- |
|  |  | *Present* | *Anticipated* |
| **Faculty** | *Concupiscible (about what is
loved)* | Joy | Desire |
| *Irascible (about what is contrary to what
is loved)* | Distress | Fear |



(Isaac of Stella, *Letter on the Soul*, 1878d, trans. in McGinn
1977). Isaac's classification was quoted in the influential
twelfth-century pseudo-Augustinian treatise *De spiritu et
anima* (782; cf. 814, trans. in McGinn 1977) and through it in
Philip the Chancellor's *Summa de bono* (748-749).
Before Isaac, the Stoic classification of emotions and the Platonic
division of the soul were presented together in William of St.
Thierry's *De natura corporis et animae* (trans. in
McGinn 1977), without an explanation of how they are related to each
other (2.88-91). Distress is an irascible emotion in
Isaac's classification, as in Avicenna, but Isaac was influenced
by the Latin tradition in which concupiscible emotions are directed to
good objects and irascible to harmful ones (Knuuttila 2004: 229).
William of St. Thierry writes that anger and love are good irascible
dispositions of a pious soul and match together because of the fervor
of love and the hatred of vices. Bernard of Clairvaux similarly
classified joy and anger as irascible passions. (*Opera* V,
358-359). For the Cistercian list of affects, see also Boquet
2005.



These considerations show some uncertainty about how to combine
various classificatory ideas. When Aristotle's account became
better known in the early thirteenth century, it was realized that the
twelfth-century divisions between concupiscible and irascible emotions
were not compatible with Aristotle's idea of the contrary
emotions of the same part of the soul. (See John Blund's
somewhat complicated attempt to solve this problem in *Tractatus de
anima* 18-22.) An influential new taxonomic idea was
introduced as a solution in the 1220s. (See the anonymous treatises
*De anima et potentiis eius*, 47-48, and *De potentiis
animae et obiectis*, 159, 164, as well as Philip the Chancellor,
*Summa de bono*, 161). It was held that the objects of the
contrary concupiscible acts were simply pleasurable or painful, and
the objects of the irascible acts were also arduous (*arduum*),
difficult to obtain or to avoid.



A detailed early thirteenth-century classification on the basis of the
notion of *arduum* with contrary emotions was developed in John
of la Rochelle's *Summa de anima*. He regarded emotions
as the acts of two moving powers, the concupiscible and irascible,
both with several types of reaction divided into contrary pairs. The
concupiscible pairs are associated with the contrary dispositions of
liking (*placentia*) or dislike (*displicentia*) and
irascible emotions with strength (*corroboratio*) and weakness
(*debilitas*). These correspond to different types of
estimative acts which are their causes. The new systematic idea was to
use these dispositions of feeling and corresponding behavioral
reactions as classificatory principles. The emotions of the
concupiscible power are classified as follows:




|  |  |  |
| --- | --- | --- |
|  | *Liking* | *Dislike* |
| **Self-regarding
reactions** | *first orientation* | appetite  | distaste  |
| *action initiation* | desire  | aversion  |
| *towards results* | joy  | pain  |
| *towards durable results* | delight  | distress  |
| **Other-regarding reactions** | *towards another person who experiences:* | *good* | love | envy  |
| *evil* | hate  | pity  |



Pity and envy were treated as different forms of other-regarding
distress in Nemesius of Emesa (c. 19) and John Damascene (c. 28); for
pity, compassion and mercy, see also Aquinas, *Summa
theologiae* II-2, 30. Love as liking with respect to another
person's prosperity was also a traditional characterization (cf.
Aristotle, *Rhet.* II.4). The somewhat less used idea of hate
as liking with respect to another person's troubles was included
in Calcidius's Latin list of emotions in his fourth-century commentary on the
*Timaeus* (ed. Waszink 1975: 216-217). Liking and dislike were also used as
principles in Radulfus Ardens's late twelfth-century
classification that otherwise was closer to the approach of Isaac of
Stella (*Speculum universale*, book V).



Of La Rochelle's irascible emotions with the "arduous and
difficult objects", ambition and hope pertain to future honor
and prosperity, hope involving the belief that they will be achieved.
The opposites of these are poverty of spirit and desperation. Three
emotions, pride, lust for power, and contempt, are associated with
attempts to strengthen one's social rank and power. The opposite
of pride and lust for power is humility, and the opposite of contempt
is reverence. Of the acts directed towards evil things, courage is a
desire to meet the enemy with confidence, anger is a desire for
revenge, and magnanimity is rising up against evil. Three forms of the
flight from evil are somehow opposites of courage: penitence toward
past evil things, impatience with present evil things, and fear of
future evil things.




|  |  |
| --- | --- |
| *Strength* | *Weakness* |
| ambition  | poverty of spirit  |
| hope  | desperation  |
| pride  | humility  |
| lust for power  |
| contempt  | reverence  |
| courage  | fear penitence impatience  |
| anger  |  |
| magnanimity  |  |



See *Summa de anima*, 256-262; Knuuttila 2004:
230-236; Knuuttila 2016. A more theological discussion of
concupiscible and irascible emotions is found in William of
Auvergne's roughly contemporary *De virtutibus*, chs.
16-18. For a twelfth-century treatise on pride and humility, see
Bernard of Clairvaux, *On the Degrees of Humility and Pride*
(*Opera* III, 13-59). 


## 4. Albert the Great, Bonaventure and Thomas Aquinas



Following Avicenna's faculty psychology and the new division
between concupiscible and irascible emotions, Albert the Great and
Thomas Aquinas treated emotions as acts of the sensory moving powers.
While Albert employed the Stoic-based classifications of Nemesius of
Emesa and John Damascene in his works (*De homine* q.
66-67; *De bono* 3.5.2-3), Thomas Aquinas put
forward a new taxonomy (*Summa theologiae* II-1, 22-48)
which was probably influenced by John of la Rochelle. Albert argued
that emotions should be regarded as qualities as Aristotle described
them in *Categories* 8 (*De bono* 3.5.1, 3.5.3). Aquinas
defended the characterization of them as movements of the soul,
finding the basic classificatory principles of emotions in
Aristotle's doctrine of contrary movements in *Physics*
V.5. Bonaventure differed from these authors in relativizing the
difference between sensory and intellectual moving powers and
attributing emotions to the intellectual soul in a proper sense and
not merely metaphorically as was traditionally done. In addressing the
soul of Christ in the third book of his *Commentary on the
Sentences*, Bonaventure argues that there were concupiscible and
irascible parts in Christ's intellectual will as well as
passions of joy and distress. Similar ideas were also put forward
earlier in the so-called *Summa Halensis* (Bonaventure,
*Sent.* III.16.2.1 (354); III.33.1.3 (717); see also Prentice
1957; Vaura 2017). Even though Bonaventure's account remained
sketchy, it influenced the Franciscan view of the emotions of the will
that came to be more systematically analyzed by John Duns Scotus.



In discussing emotions in *Summa theologiae* II-1.22-48,
Aquinas first divided them in terms of their generic objects: the
concupiscible emotions react to what seems good or evil at the sensory
level, whereas the irascible emotions react to arduous sense-good and
sense-evil. The sensory moving faculties are activated by objects
through cognition, and the modes of the resulting emotional movements
serve as further qualifications in defining particular emotions. In
employing the Avicennian conception of the estimative power that
grasps the emotionally relevant aspects of objects, Aquinas says that
this could be called particular reason in humans (*Summa
theologiae* I.78.4) The recognizable evaluative property (such as
being dangerous) could be called the formal object of emotion
(*Summa theologiae* II-1.43.1; cf. Kenny 1963: 189; King
2011).



In his attempt to classify emotions with the help of Aristotle's
physical theory of movements, Aquinas distinguishes between two types
of the contraries of movements: the approach to something and retreat
from it, and movements associated with contrary endpoints. The
contrary movements of the concupiscible power are of the second type,
towards contrary ends (sense-good and sense-evil). The contrary
movements of the irascible power are of the first type, with respect
to the same objects.



Aquinas classifies (1) love, (2) desire and (3) pleasure or joy as the
three self-regarding concupiscible emotions with respect to the
sense-good; the contrary movements with respect to sense-evil are (4)
hate, (5) aversion and (6) pain or distress. As for the irascible
emotions, the arduous future sense-good may give rise to (7) hope or
(8) despair, the arduous future sense-evil to (9) fear or (10)
courage, and the arduous present sense-evil to (11) anger--this
is without a contrary pair (*Summa theologiae* II-1.
24.2-4, 25.2; see also King 1999.) 



Aquinas's attempt to combine the Avicennian view of emotions as
the act of the sensory moving power with Aristotle's doctrine of
movement involves some theoretical problems. In distinguishing between
love, desire and pleasure as the incipient movement, actual movement,
and rest, Aquinas treats emotions as the behavioral changes that the
moving power is supposed to cause rather than the moving acts
themselves (*Summa theologiae* II-1. 25.2; for moving acts, see
30.2; 23.4.) This is confusing, but he apparently assumes that the
various acts of the moving power could be distinguished as causing
various behavioral movements if these are not prevented. Aquinas also
distinguishes between the formal constituent of emotion, which is the
generic content of emotional evaluation, and the material constituent,
which is the particular intentional object, and further between the
movements of the moving power that constitute the form of emotions
with respect to their material constituents such as the movements of
the heart, the spirits and the humors (*Summa theologiae* II-1.
28.5, 30.2, 43.1, 44.1). The behavioral movements to which
Aristotle's physics is applied are not mentioned in these
contexts. Emotions are essentially psychosomatic in Aquinas, and thus
not possible for bodiless beings such as God and angels (*Summa
theologiae* II-1.22.3). 



As for pleasure and distress, Aquinas explains that while one might
speak about a stone as loving its natural place and desiring to be
there, it does not make sense to speak about the pleasure or pain of a
stone because it does not feel. He holds that pleasure or distress is
a pleasant or unpleasant awareness and this is an aspect of emotions
in general since some kind of pleasure is involved in positive
emotions and some kind of pain in negative ones (*Summa
theologiae* II-1.43.1). Giles of Rome, who mostly followed
Aquinas's taxonomy, remarked that pleasure and distress as
emotions are states of having moved rather than movements. He also
wanted to add meekness, an opposite to anger in Aquinas's
taxonomy (see Marmo 1991). 



Aquinas's discussion of emotions, the most extensive in medieval
literature, involves detailed terminological, psychological and
ethical remarks on each emotion type. Like all medieval authors,
Aquinas argues that the intellectual soul should keep emotions under
strict control, but he also criticized the Stoic *apatheia* and
Plotinus's version of freedom from emotions (*Summa
theologiae* II-1.24.3, 59.2, 61.5). As in Aristotle, the virtues
of the sensory soul are habits to feel emotions in accordance with the
judgments of practical reason. Emotions themselves do not provide a
sufficient guidance for a good life. Aquinas's theory and
taxonomy were very influential until the seventeenth century. (For
medieval discussions from Avicenna to Aquinas, see Knuuttila 2004; for
Aquinas, see also King 1999, 2002, 2010, 2011; Lombardo 2011; Miner
2009; Murphy 1999; Pickave 2018; Kahm 2019; for the discussion
of the sensory passions in Christ, see Gondreau 2002; Madigan
2007.)


## 5. John Duns Scotus and Late Medieval Discussions



John Duns Scotus regarded the taxonomies based on the notion of
arduousness as artificial and criticized the influential Avicennian
idea that there are "intentions" in things which can be
grasped by an estimative power and then move the motive power. He
argued that representations of a certain kind cause learned or
instinctual behavioral changes in some animals and others in others,
this being a matter of law-like fact. A sheep naturally flees from a
wolf which it perceives, not its inner hostility recognized by the
inner sense as in Avicenna; it even flees from a peaceful sheep which
looks like a wolf (*Ordinatio* I.3.1.1-2, p. 43-44;
III.15, 42-43, p. 495-496; III.34, 35-38, p.
193-196; cf. Perler 2012). The influential part of
Scotus's approach to emotions was his systematic discussion of
the Franciscan position of postulating the passions of the will, which
appears in the discussion of the emotions of Christ. This was also
where Scotus developed his theory of emotions. According to Scotus,
when one is aware of the actuality of what was desired or its
contrary, "there follows a passion of the will, joy or distress,
which is caused by the object present in this way". These
passions are not directly caused by free will (*Ordinatio*
III.15, 48, p. 498). Even though joy or distress are acts of the will
in the sense of being actual states of the intellectual moving power,
they are passions in the sense of having an external efficient cause
and not being free acts of the will. This corresponds to the
traditional view of emotions as passive reactions. 



Scotus's longer list of the factors which are sufficient to
cause distress as a passion of the will involves the apprehension that
what takes place is (1) what one actually wills against, (2) against
the natural inclination to happiness (*affectio commodi*) even
though no particular act of will is actual, (3) against sensory
desire, and (4) in accordance to what is reluctantly willed in
circumstances in which the opposite is preferred but cannot be
achieved (*velleitas*). There are corresponding factors which
are sufficient to cause pleasure, the other passion of the will
(*Ordinatio* III.15, 60, p. 505). The intellectual soul is
consequently regarded as very emotional--its feelings are changed
by the influence of actual volitions or nolitions as well as by the
inclinations of the will and the sensory part of the soul. Since these
states considerably influence people's activities as motivations
or hindrances, moral education should give strength to the natural
inclination to justice (*affectio iustitiae*) and good moral
habits. New habits of will change the condition for feeling pleasure
and distress (cf. Boulnois 2003; Knuuttila 2012; Drummond 2012).
Scotus treated liking and dislike (*complacentia* and
*displicentia*), the unpremeditated first orientations of the
will as analogous to sensory emotional reactions except that they were
free acts. These not yet efficacious acts could be directly
controlled, as distinct from the passions of the will. John Buridan,
who otherwise followed Scotus's analysis, stated that liking and
dislike were not free acts and in this respect were similar to sensory
emotions (*Quaestiones super decem libros Ethicorum*, X.2; Zupko 1995).
Buridan's revision increased the number of non-free emotional
phenomena of the will, but the tendency to apply emotion terminology
to the will took other forms as well. Ockham followed Scotus's
view of pleasure and distress as the passions of the will, though he
restricted their conditions to the first and fourth case in
Scotus's list. But he also explained that "a passion is a
form distinct from a cognition, which exists in the appetitive power
as its subject and requires a cognition for its existence"
(*Quodlibet* II.17, p. 186).



If this was a considered view, it made all occurrent volitions
passions, whether free or not (see Hirvonen 2004; Perler 2017). Is
Ockham speaking about passions or "pseudopassions"? King
(2012) and Miner (2009) use this term in discussing Aquinas's
remarks on volitions as dispassionate passions. Since Ockham often
employed Scotus's account of pleasure and distress as the
passions of the will, it is possible that his definition of passion
was somewhat sketchy and not meant to introduce a new semantics for
the term "passion" after all. However, Adam Wodeham, his
younger colleague and collaborator, argues that volitions and
nolitions are evaluative cognitions to which all human passions can be
reduced because of the unity of the soul. An occurrent volition or
nolition has a cognition as a partial cause to which the evaluation
pertains. This cognitive account of emotions shows some similarities
with the Stoic theory, but there seems to be no historical connection
to it (*Lectura secunda*, prol. q. 1, secs. 2, 5-6; d. 1,
q. 5, secs. 4-5, 11; cf. Knuuttila 2004: 275-282; a
different interpretation in Pickave 2012). 



Many theologians criticized the postulation of the real distinction
between love and pleasure in beatific vision (*fruitio*) by
Scotus and Ockham, who argued for this position because love is a free
act of the will, but pleasure is not. The opposite view was
particularly stressed by Peter Auriol who held that all intellectual
pleasures are free acts of the will and love and pleasure are
indistinguishable in the fulfilment of beatific vision. Auriol was
followed by Wodeham and Walter Chatton with respect to the fruition,
but not with finite objects. Scotus and Ockham offered various
examples for the distinction between the fulfilment of love and the
experience of pleasure, one of these being the successful action of
the evil angel without pleasure (see Kitanov 2014).



When the notions of "liking" and "dislike"
were moved from the context of sensory experience to that of the will
in Scotus, Ockham, and others, they continued to refer to subjectively
accessible first-person matters. Their being free acts of a person
prevented Scotus from calling them emotions (passions), but some
others such as Ockham and Peter Auriol did not stress this difference.
In fact, they were treated as some kind of quasi-emotions even in
Scotus. Because free will was the center of personality in voluntarist
theory, attending to its non-efficacious likings and dislike was an
aspect of morally relevant self-awareness; one should not merely
control the intentions to act but also non-efficacious likings and
dislikes in general. These were directly voluntary and the passions of
the will were indirectly so; both had a motivational role in moral
behavior. (See the discussion of wrong pleasure in *Ordinatio*
II.42 and the evaluation of the history of the text in Barnwell 2010;
Cross 2014).



Scotus and Ockham did not regard the occurrent love necessarily known
to the subject, but they thought that it was known to those who willed
to recognize it by a separate introspective act. Ockham writes that
when someone loves an object, it is not required that this person
knows that he or she loves it. However, when a person wills
one's own act to be known, immediately this act of knowing
occurs, namely one by which the act of loving is known. Some others
such as Walter Chatton thought that an awareness of an intentional act
was embedded in the act. (See Brower-Toland 2012.)



Late medieval philosophical compendia on emotions include Peter of
Ailly's influential *Tractatus de anima* (c. 1380), which
eclectically employs the views of the anonymous thirteenth-century
compilation of the views of Albert the Great, *Summa
naturalium*, and Gregory of Rimini's brief remarks on the
theories of Scotus, Ockham, Auriol, and Wodeham on the passions of the
will and the relationship between love and pleasure. Ailly's
work was one of the sources for introductions used in psychology
teaching at the universities such as the Erfurtian treatises by John
of Lutrea and Bartholomeus Arnoldi of Usingen in the late fifteenth-
and early sixteenth-centuries (Karkkainen, 2009). Usingen
applied the Buridanian version of the psychology of *complacentia* and *displicentia* and regarded them as
non-accountable first movements (Saarinen 2011: 106-107). John
Gerson's treatises on emotions included long lists of passions
classified under the eleven types of Aquinas's taxonomy
(*Oeuvres* IX, 1-25, 155-61).



Medieval theories of emotions were also discussed in many influential
sixteenth-century scholastic works such as Gabriel Biel's
*Collectorium* on Peter Lombard's *Sentences* and
the commentaries on Aquinas's *Summa theologiae* by
Cardinal Cajetan, Bartholome de Medina, and Francisco
Suarez, often comparing the theories of Scotus and Aquinas.
John of la Rochelle's taxonomy of emotions was also known
through a paraphrase in Gregor Reisch's popular early
sixteenth-century encyclopedia *Margarita philosophica*
(12.4-5). Among the most discussed medieval theories in early
modern thought were Aquinas's taxonomy on emotions and
Scotus's theory of the passions of the will, both commented on
by Suarez (King 2002; Knuuttila 2012).