In the Mind in the Body and in the World

This volume of newly commissioned essays marks a collaborative effort among scholars of ancient Greece and early China to investigate discourses of emotions in ancient philosophy, medicine, and literature from c. 5th century BCE-2nd century CE. The aim is to bring scholars working in the two ancient traditions together to explore ways in which cross-cultural and cross-disciplinary investigation might be deployed to advance our understanding of the emotions in these ancient societies, and ultimately, to confront and challenge certain long-standing modern approaches to emotions.

The volume not only highlights the diverse ways in which emotions have been portrayed and discussed in different geographical and cultural contexts, but also interrogates the concepts through which writers and thinkers in the past experienced and thought about the emotions. The book takes emotions not as natural givens, but as aspects of human experience and conceptualization whose significance can be properly assessed only within the practices, discourses, and institutions of particular societies. The volume addresses a wide range of topics, such as equanimity and impassivity in Daoism and Stoic thought; therapies of emotions in Greco-Roman and early Chinese medicine and philosophy; the cultivation of emotions in relation to perception, attention, and appraisal in Mengzi and the Stoics; the workings of emotion in Aristotle’s moral psychology; models of embodiment in canonical ancient medical texts; the ethics and politics of respect, fear, and awe across time, space and genre; and the social function and expression of contempt in Greek literature. In fostering engagement across traditions and disciplines, the volume seeks to make substantive contributions to existing research in the history and philosophy of emotions, as well as the cross-cultural and global study of emotions.

Douglas Cairns is Professor of Classics at the University of Edinburgh. His many previous publications include Aidos: The Psychology and Ethics of Honour and Shame in Ancient Greek Literature and, as editor, A Cultural History of the Emotions in Antiquity and Emotions though Time, from Antiquity to Byzantium.

Curie Virág is Senior Research Fellow and Co-Project Director in the Department of Classics at the University of Edinburgh, and the author of The Emotions in Early Chinese Philosophy.