Emotions in Plato is the first edited volume on Plato’s treatment of emotions, and it is a wide-ranging and sensitive exploration of this underdiscussed aspect of his thought. The editors Laura Candiotto and Olivier Renaut rightly argue that Plato’s dualism has led to commentators either over-cognizing emotion, thus removing all non-rational qualities, or denying all cognitive content, reducing emotions to hinderances of rational thought. This volume treats emotions as ‘complex events which require several faculties’ (5): perception, belief, judgement and some calculation.
The editors and contributors successfully show that, for Plato, emotions should not be avoided, stamped out or ignored in favour of rational deliberation. Rather, they should be utilized and cultivated, so rendering them useful for individual and state.
The volume’s three parts cover a variety of dialogues across Plato’s corpus, and their discussions of pathēmata – a term most easily translated as ‘emotions’ but which covers affections, feelings and experiences of all types. Part 1 addresses the taxonomy of emotions, Part 2 turns to the rationality and non-/ir-rationality of various emotions, and their origins, and finally, Part 3 discusses the relevance of the emotions to individual and city, in terms of education, morality and politics.
While there is some overlap between the sections, this structure does systematically navigate the reader through Plato’s varied (and often incomplete) discussions of pathēmata, and allows the editors and contributors to argue that one only appreciates how Plato puts emotions to use by first understanding their origin and nature. Indeed, Laura Candiotto and Olivier Renaut stress that Plato is usually interested in the emotions because of what they can do for him: how they can promote his own visions of virtue, knowledge, temperance and excellence.
Part 1 opens with Laura Candiotto and Vasilis Politis’ discussion (17–39) of the role of wonder (thauma) in enquiry. They argue that wonder is the beginning of philosophical enquiry because it is an ‘emotive reaction’ to the state of aporia, in which the philosopher finds herself. This is an enticing argument, which takes seriously Socrates’ and Theaetetus’ language in the Theaetetus’ beginning, where the eponymous interlocutor remarks that his aporia is thaumatic. However, perhaps discussion of the soul’s wonder before the Forms in the Symposium and Phaedrus would have pushed the argument further, since these are overwhelmingly sensory, thaumatic experiences, but have cognitive content.
Part 1 concludes with Freya Möbus’ chapter (61–83), which addresses a significant gap in Platonic scholarship: why we avoid pain. She argues, from discussions in the Protagoras, Gorgias and Hippias Minor, that pain is essentially directional, because we perceive it as causing damage, and so avoid it. This conclusion, I think, could be used for interesting interpretations of Plato’s Republic and Laws, where education is centred upon training citizens to feel pleasure and pain rightly (that is, to have correct responses to certain actions and stimuli).
In Part 2, Olivier Renaut’s chapter (103–23) argues that the Timaeus presents a psycho-physiological account of emotion. Emotions only occur in the incarnate soul, where it must deal with necessity, the in- and efflux of sensations. His argument is mostly convincing, but I contest his assessment that the Timaeus is the first dialogue which proposes such a psycho-physiological account. In the Phaedrus, the gods’ souls have two good horses, whereas human souls have one good one bad. Seemingly here, too, embodied souls must deal with the turmoil of how love and desire are experienced when embodied.
Karine Tordo-Rombaut’s chapter (169–86) addresses the dialogue between the emotions in Plato’s psychology. Crucially, it reinforces that emotion is the necessary push which makes us act rightly, and that perception is the seat of emotion: we begin from the sensations of pleasure and pain as children, and these perceptions remain fundamental throughout life. Virtue is a state where our internal dialogue is a dialogue, not an argument.
Luc Brisson and Beatriz Bossi both present articles on phthonos, meaning malicious envy or jealousy, and how Plato utilizes this culturally pertinent emotion, and reorients it towards his own conceptions of virtue, anger and justice (201–20, 220–38). Frisbee Sheffield offers an excellent and sensitive chapter on the roles of philia and eros in Plato’s Laws (330–72). She argues that both are essential to the Athenian Stranger’s Magnesia, because philia fosters a deep bond of connection between citizens, and eros makes us desire things passionately. This chapter convincingly argues for the importance of emotion, passion and human connection in the Laws’ political theory, a dialogue which is often overlooked or considered dry.
David Konstan’s afterword (372–82) closes the volume and harmonizes its three parts, by discussing the category of emotion itself, and its origin. He argues that the category ‘emotion’ is invented and defined by those who discuss it. This is a convincing conclusion to the volume, which reiterates that Plato’s discussion of emotion is founded upon its function: epistemological, moral, and political.
