During high school I have studied ancient Latin and Greek so maybe you can get my passion about the etymology of words.
My name Alessandra, for example, has a Greek root and means “defensor (alexo) of men (andros)”, which is pretty cool, if it only was true lol. The word emotion has a Latin origin from the word emovere, which means “to move (movere) out (e/ex)”. Indeed, emotions are manifestations of something that is inside us.
According to the American psychologist Robert Plutchik, there are eight main emotions: fear, anger, sadness, disgust, joy, anticipation, trust and surprise. As you can notice already, some of them are negative (the first four) and some positive. Moreover, each of them has a stronger and weaker related emotion. For example, terror is stronger than fear and apprehension is weaker. Similarly, ecstasy is more than joy while serenity is weaker.
In the Rhetoric, the Greek philosopher and physician Aristotele gives a beautiful definition of emotions, which often calls pathe (plural of pathos= feeling) and he says that are “all those feelings that so change men as to affect their judgments, and that are also attended by pain or pleasure”. I found this definition so complete because it links the emotions (feelings) to the thoughts (judgments) and to the physiological and behavioural manifestation that emotions trigger (pain or pleasure). Aristotele particularly likes to pair an emotion with its opposite (for example anger vs calmness and shame vs shamelessness) and he provides detailed description of emotions and the contexts in which they arise. He acknowledges that emotions are part of our life and that they have an effect on our thoughts and behaviours. I am totally with Aristotele in this sense.
On the other side, stoic philosophers including Cicero and Seneca, give a negative interpretation to emotions in general. They believe that emotions perturb the tranquility that is of the wise man. A good life is to be lived without pathos and indeed they value the apatheia (absence of pathos). I know few people that would rather leave emotions (of all sorts) out of their lives. They believe that emotions disturb the perception of reality and lead them out of control. Those people appear extremely sensible and rational and rarely let themselves go with spontaneity. Most likely they are not comfortable with their emotions, just not knowing how to deal with them and are not keen to show them as that could mean weakness.
But this takes me to a whole entire topic about emotions, vulnerability and Brene’ Brown, which I will address another time.
Thanks for reading, hope you enjoyed! If yes, please clap!
Also published on my blog about emotions on Wordpress https://httpletstalkaboutemotions.wordpress.com/
