Hi, I'm Peter Adamson, and you're listening to the History of Philosophy podcast, brought to you with the support of the philosophy department at King's College London and the LMU in Munich.

Online at History of Philosophy.net.

Today's episode, States of the Union, Descartes on the Passions.

Watching Buster Keaton's film Sherlock Jr. at a special cinema event, you marvel at the scene in which he is barely

missed by an onrushing locomotive, somehow filmed with technology from the 1920s. You look to

your left where your daughter is sitting, wrathed with attention, and are suffused with a feeling

of deep affection for her. Then you're distracted by the popcorn on her lap. You'd love to take some,

but promised she could have it all. Your attention is wrenched away again by the boorish people

two rows back, talking during the movie, unforgivable behavior, even, or perhaps especially,

at a silent film. Then another rush of positive emotion as you exult in the way that the whole

audience is laughing along to this film that is now more than a century old. Finally, despondency

sets in when the film comes to an end and the experience concludes. You've just managed to experience

all six of the emotional reactions or passions recognized by Descartes,

namely wonder, love, hatred, desire, joy, and sadness.

Of course, we have plenty of other emotional experiences, but Descartes thinks that these all derive

from the six fundamental ones just listed.

For instance, we feel hope when we have some prospect of getting what we desire.

So says Descartes in his last philosophical work, published in 1649 the year before his death.

Called Passions of the Soul, it was written because Elizabeth of Bohemia prompted him to explore the subject.

As Deborah Brown has written

in her indispensable study of Descartes's theory of passions, his final treatise attempts to

plug the whole in his previously rather incomplete account of the relationship between soul and body.

...