Emotion Theory in Ancient Greece and Rome

This chapter reviews the most prominent philosophical theories of emotions from Plato and Aristotle to the Stoics and explores their relationship to modern analyses. All the classical schools took account of the phenomenology of emotions, their intentionality, and their cognitive and moral dimensions, and all conceived of emotions as psychophysical experiences. These characteristics, along with a practical emphasis on the education of the emotions and their relation to social institutions, opened up a space for something like today’s theories that acknowledge the socially and culturally malleable character of emotions.