A little note to myself about the emotions. Remember, o readers of mine, that I would like comments, if you have any, about the 'negative' and 'positive' emotions.
In the early modern period, there were three points of view that determined the discourse of the passions. Firstly, there was the medical view, based on a system of four internal humors. Second, there was the characterological view, which projected a gallery of different human types: the miser, the jealous man, the hypocrite, the clown, etc. A disposition and a role, from this point of view, were tightly bound. And thirdly, there was the religious view, which impressed upon the emotions a certain moral order. As the social foundations for this three fold view changed - as a new system of production and a state assisted free market arose - the discursive modes changed: for instance, the Galenic physicist gave way to the physiologist, just as – as a creator of character types – astrology gave way to physiognomy and various proto-anthropologies, and the church gave way – to an extent - to a whole, competing set of institutions – businesses, the state, political movements, etc. – but the threefold structure remained.
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this reminded me of Psalms 37:4 Delight thyself also in the LORD; and he shall give thee the desires of thine heart.
ReplyDeletesearched Strong's for "friction". xestes, "as if from xeo (properly, to smooth, by implication [of friction] to boil or heat); 1) a sextarius, a vessel for measuring liquids, holding about a pint (.5 litre); 2) a wooden pitcher or ewer from which water or wine is poured, whether holding a sextarius or not". appears twice in Mark 7 as "pots" (more xestes/xeo). and from Gates of Fire: An Epic Novel of the Battle of Thermopylae, "War is work, not mystery," Xeo laments.
Pharisees complaining about dirty hands & the tradition of washing hands, cups & pots. poterion = cups (Tarot cups = emotions), "metaph. one's lot or experience, whether joyous or adverse, divine appointments, whether favourable or unfavourable, are likened to a cup which God presents one to drink: so of prosperity and adversity". parable here is nothing outside makes you clean because it goes to the stomach not the heart. but what comes out of the heart makes you unclean. complaint here involves bypassing spiritual commandments to observe human traditions. eg, Corban nullifies the first commandment with a promise.
Damn. I wrote a comment and it just went through the memory hole.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, North, you, I have decided, are a forty niner, as per the essay by Roberto Calasso in The Forty Nine Steps. It is on Google books, hm, last time I put on the link this thing was eaten so I will just say: page 111.
I, on the other hand, am a five step person.
page 111
ReplyDeleteLiving Beyond Forty-nine :: Between Pesach and Shavuos there are seven weeks of seven, 7 x 7 = 49 days. The Torah states, "Seven weeks count to yourself." Deuteronomy 16:9 Kabbalistically speaking, each week as we count the days and weeks we are to focus on a particular area of thought between Pesach and Shavuos as listed below. Each day within the week we are to consider a particular discipline of that week's focus [...] In Gematria the Hebrew letter Nun represents fifty. The Nun is also a final lettter which represents seven hundred. A few weeks ago in the parsha discussion entitled "How to change the world with one action we discussed the number fifty." So in this discussion we will not trace those steps. Instead we will excellerate to the Gematria of the final letter of the Nun.
HEB-756 = NVN. (funny, Barry Bonds hit #756 yesterday) = OVOYM. (perversities, waywardness) = OLVMYM. (young days, youth; prime or vigour) = THVRYPS (Sephiroth, intelligences or numbers; ten emanations of the Tree of Life; see: HEB-355 SPYRH (Sephira)).
{1} NVN (note Kethiv in Psalm 72:17). {2} OVOYM, from
ReplyDeleteOVH Isaiah 19:13 The princes of Zoan are become fools, the princes of Noph are deceived; they have also seduced Egypt, even they that are the stay of the tribes thereof. 14 The LORD hath mingled a perverse <05773> spirit in the midst thereof: and they have caused Egypt to err in every work thereof, as a drunken man staggereth in his vomit. {3} OLVMYM. {4} Gill mentions Sephira in Romans 8:29, 1 Peter 2:9, 1 John 2:27 & Revelation 3:14 And unto the angel of the church of the Laodiceans write; These things saith the Amen, the faithful and true witness, the beginning of the creation of God. The word "Amen" is the name of a divine Person with the Jews, and it seems the second Person; for so on those words in #Pr 8:30; "then was I by him as one brought up with him", they observe {y}, do not read "Amon", the word there used, but "Amen"; and, a little after, "Amen", they say, is the "notaricon", or sign of AL MLK. NAMN., "God the faithful King"; they make {z} "Amen" to be one of the names of the second "Sephira", or number in the Cabalistic tree, by whom the second Person in the Godhead seems to be designed: and they say {a}, that the word "Amen", by gematry (or numerically) answers to the two names "Jehovah, Adonai". Christ may be so called, because he is the God of truth, and truth itself [...] the same character is given to the Logos, or Word of the Lord, by the Targumist in #Jer 42:5, let the Word of the Lord be to us LSHYK. QShVT VMHYMN., "for a true and faithful witness".
Quickly, let me return the ball to your court. How would you characterize the distinction between "feeling", "mood", and "emotion" -- or do you use them interchangably?
ReplyDeleteAlan, I'm comfortable with saying that the modern consensus is to characterize feeling as raw sensation, emotion as intentionalized feeling - that is, sensation with an object, be it a memory, an idea, and mood as the prolongation of an emotion that keys an experience for a longer period of time than is usual for an activated emotion. And, on the level of continuous emotions - those we are referring to when we say I love H, or I hate X - such things are observations of the emotion we attach to H or X. Now, outside of philosophical circles, I think feeling and emotion are conflated for a pretty good reason - raw sensation seems to be a theoretical object, which exists to fill an explanatory gap rather than an experiential one.
ReplyDeleteOf course, for me, what is important is the how emotions are embedded in everyday life. And that brings up the question that is pertinent to my project - granting my three viewpoints on emotion per this post, is it the case that the way emotion is organized has no effect on the emotion as it is experienced, i.e. somebody who is sad in the seventeenth century experiences something that is exactly the same kind of thing as somebody who is sad in the twentieth century? Or does context matter? Is it that emotions are simply as they are, wrapped in whatever social usages you imagine, or do the social usages impinge on how they are experienced?
My answer is: I'm not sure. But - as I will put up in another post - my project about what I'm gonna call emotional customs - the meaning of emotions - and I'm going to presume that even if the means of communicating and interpreting them are different, the variation is small. However, it is striking that when you read lists of core emotions - as, for instance, in Descartes Passions - it is striking that certain items would probably not be on the modern list. For instance, admiration.
Does that answer the question? I hope you don't think it is slippery to say, well, this is what the moderns think instead of this is what I think. Or is it?